Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on the surface appears easy to the laymen. Build your site, make it look pretty, register it with the search engines, and the users will flock to the site making you the next internet billionaire. Nothing could be further from the truth! It takes hard work and dedication to build a website that not only ranks well in the search engines, but is also a hit with your visitors. You should have a basic knowledge of website development, even if you build your website with a template, before reading this tutorial.
This short tutorial is designed to give you a head start on your SEO journey. If you desire to learn more, that are a lot of websites out there with more advanced information, and several very good books on the subject. These tips are designed to get you indexed in the search engines quickly and (hopefully!) rank for one or two of your keywords.
- Choose your keywords carefully. Changing keywords in mid-stream means a lot of wasted work.
- Use your primary keyword in your domain name. This helps your ranking in all the major search engines.
- Put your primary keyword in your title. Twice is even better, but make sure that the title is human readable. Your title should be natural looking to the user so that when they see your listing in the search engines, yours jumps out at them.
- Get a link to your home page from a site that has a higher rank than your own. Even if you get your buddy to put a link on his site to yours it can help. The search engines tend to index sites faster when they find them naturally through links from other sites. The anchor text of this link should be one of your keywords.
- Register with DMOZ, and online directory of websites. A DMOZ link is very powerful.
- If you have the money, register with the Yahoo Directory. Like DMOZ, the Yahoo Directory is considered a very trusted site by all the search engines.
- Create a user-friendly META tag description, but make sure to use your primary keyword once or twice, and a secondary keyword at least once.
- Put your keywords in the content on your home page, preferably in Header tags or Bolded. Search engines give higher credence to words that are set apart in some way. Header tags, bolded/italicized/underlined text, and ordered or unordered list items are some examples.
- If you have images on your pages, use the ALT attribute on the IMG tag. The ALT text should be one of your keywords.
- Find related websites and post on their message boards, comment on their blogs, or exchange links with them. Building relationships with others in your industry doesn't hurt you.
While there are a lot of more advanced SEO techniques, these are a good way to get a foundation built for your SEO activities. Sometimes, following the advice in only one of the tips in this article can increase your ranking.
