If you are trying to learn search engine optimization from forums and blogs, you’ll find that many offer complex or difficult to understand information. It makes you start to think that an SEO expert is trying to make you think this is some magical voodoo that will put buckets of cash into your pockets. In reality, many either don’t know how to teach this important subject or go out of their way to make it sound incredibly complex so you won’t do it yourself.
My advice is: Don’t be overwhelmed. It is actually much easier than you think. There are really only three keys to unlock the SEO knowledge vault. Once you understand how these components fit together, you will be able to fit all those seemingly random pieces you find at other sites together.
Here are 3 simple components behind successful search engine optimization of any site:
1. Research and Analysis – Understandably, the website owner cannot wait to get started on optimization. Before any successful SEO campaign can start though, comprehensive keyword research and analysis must first be performed. The purpose of this research and analysis is to uncover the best key terms to go after during the campaign. These will be the keyword phrase(s) which will be focused on throughout a campaign. Without focusing on a specific set of keywords to start, optimization will seem slow to achieve any results because not enough activities and resources have been put behind each term. A professional SEO company will work together with you to determine which are the best choices for an initial SEO campaign. Uncovering these terms involves using a combination of research tools to arrive at a recommendation.
2. On-Page SEO – These are the activities performed on the site. Also known as on-site optimization, this activity forms the foundation for the later part of the optimization process: off-page SEO. Having the right keywords inserted in the pages title tag, meta description tag, and meta keywords tag is an important part of letting the search engine spiders know what the page is about. In this step, don’t attempt to spam the search engine by inserting irrelevant terms or excessive number of terms within the HTML tags. Besides these important tags, it is also good to consider the existing content within the site how well it describes what the site and the page is about. A site that uses Flash exclusively should include some text elements that can be indexed by the search engine. Inserting keyword content pages for the keyword terms being optimized for is also a good way to improve SEO visibility for the site’s pages.
3. Off-Page SEO – A major component to improve search engine ranking is proper off-page optimization or what is more commonly known as link building. This process of building incoming links can be overdone so it is wise to start off slow. Choosing the sites to obtain links from is also an important part of link building. Simply getting all the links you can get is not a good idea. You definitely want to avoid getting links from FFA sites, banned sites, and ones that have links to gambling/pharmaceutical/adult sites (the only exception is if your site is related to that category). Since link building can be a very time consuming process for a business, it might be a good idea to outsource it. There are many link building services and programs to suit every budget.
Now that you are armed with this information, you can plug-in the various pieces behind these major steps in the SEO process.