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What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The Basics

Written by: Honor Hart

Article Overview: Not everyone seeking to own or create a small business website understands the complexity of getting ranked in the search engines. To achieve any ranking at all, a website owner needs to perform a function known as 'search engine optimization.' Here are the basics to getting a website into the search engines and showing up in the search engine results.

What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The Basics

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization is the skill of making your website appear high in search engine ranking results. This can be done using keywords in your website content, getting other websites to link back to your website and other ways of promotion such as submitting articles to free website content databases.

Astounding amounts of websites are found through search engines – 42% to 86% of websites are found on the results page when a searcher uses the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are three hundred million searches carried out every day on just these search engines alone!

Now you know why it’s so important to have your website reach high rankings with search engines.

Basic Use Of Keywords On A Web Page:

Use your keywords in the first twenty-five words of any page. This will help search engines pick up on your website through those keywords.

Use your keywords in your text, in links, on your page title, in headings, in bold and more.

Off Page Optimization and Linking:

Off page search engine optimization can be done by writing articles rich in your keywords, and relevant to your website. Submit your articles to free web content sites where they can be picked up by other websites, creating even more links and promotion to your website. Make sure you include your name and website link in the bio area or this will not work.

Take advantage of link exchanges with other websites that are related to yours in some way. You should have your website name and the link in the other person’s website and in exchange you provide a link to their website on yours.

4 More Quick Tips on Optimization:

1. Use effective keywords – you can use a keyword tool to help you find effective keywords, such as Google’s at Wordtracker.com

2. Create keyword articles on a regular basis and add them to your website

3. Read more about search engine optimization and stay on top of the latest trends of search engines

4. Target the most popular search engines

Summary

Running a new small business website takes many skills. Often, outsourcing your SEO efforts is the wisest path but if your site is new and you wish to do-it-yourself for the time being, follow these few tips and guidelines.

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Related Forum Posts
What Do You Want To Be Taught? - Hi, My name is Jeff Foster, I will be moderating this new section. I want to get your opinion on topics you would like to discuss & be taught on. I see a great need for small business owners to learn how to perform basic Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which would include the basics about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What do you want to be taught on? Jeff
Re: Search Engine Optimization - If you are interested to get more information about Search Engine Optimization you can visit Search Engine Watch site gives you a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the search engine world. This site provides a ton of information about a very wide range of subjects related not only to search engine optimization, but also the flip side of the coin; subjects related to searching online.
Re: Can someone explain Search engine optimization to me? - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) could be compared to a big popularity contest: A High School Computer Geek and a High School Football Captain who are trying to promote a party. The computer geek tells everyone in school & even hands out 100's of flyers about his party Friday night...what happens? his friends end up showing up and a few new people...even the new people leave right away because it is not what they are looking for. The High School Football Captain ends up just telling a few good buddies, and within hours the entire school not only knows about it, but everyone wants to come, and everyone does come & stay. One defenition of "optimize is "To make as perfect or effective as possibe." How effective are your article marketing campaigns? Could you be distributing content (that is what search engines index) more effectively? In a perfect world, who would you want promoting your website, web pages, and web content? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is determining this perfect & effective way to do this. Jeff
Re: How do I engage seo works to be done for my site? - I read "Search Engine Optimization" for dummies. Gave me a real good foundation on which to build my sites. Really helped a lot.
Re: How to Promote Your Business Online - Apart from using Search Engine Optimization or SEO for promoting websites, I also find Pay per Clicks (PPC) to be a very good way to do. Why? For me it doesn't open only one oppurtunity for you, in fact it opens 2! You can generate your awaited traffic even w/o saying stop, ready and go and gain a maximized profit too.


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