Search Engine Optimization For Beginners

It seems that many people who are new to search engine optimization seem to think that it is big and scary and in all actuality it is very simple. SEO is nothing more than a process to make your web page more attractive to the popular search engines.

This hub is on SEO For Beginners because it seems as fast as things change on the intenet and as far as SEO goes, we are all beginners. We will talk about some of the most basic seo concepts here as well as some more advanced. We hope that you find the information here useful and helpful with your own seo efforts.

Search Engine Optimization For Beginners is just the title don't worry, there is something for everybody in this hub!

If you have any questions you are welcome to contact me direct or use the comments module at the the bottom of this hub.  There are no stupid questions so please feel open to ask anything related to this seo hub that I may be able to help with.

-Nick

Well as far as seo goes, there is no reason to mess with the keyword meta tag any longer.  Some search engines may still use this for keyword data.  However, google does not, so to us it is a waste of time to try to feed them info they don't want.  

Google does still claim to make use of the title and description meta tags, so you will want to make sure that you are entering this information into your pages.  The meta tags help search engines get some quick information about your web pages.  In many cases search engines will actually use the title from your meta tag as the title of the search engine result listings of your pages. 

So, with that in mind, make sure to make solid, accurate titles, because these may be seen many places and also should be keyword rich!

The content that is on the pages of your website is one of the most important factors of SEO or search engine optimization. You must make sure that your site has some sort of focus.  Yes, much like the popular TV show Seinfeld you can make a website about "nothing" and still get traffic and become successful. However, search engines are not looking for a site with content that is all over the place.  So pick your topic, niche or focus and stick to it.

Use Proper Title and Sub-Title Tags

Now for the text on your site, understand that the <H1> and <H2> tags should be the most important text and the second most important text on your site. This is how the search engine takes your pages content into consideration so you should too.  

Keyword and Writing Style

If you are focusing on a specific topic, do not dump keywords all across the page, just write naturally, write for the reader in mind and you will get plenty of keywords in.  If you are writing a large article, remember Google does view each webpage in three sections; top, middle and bottom - so make sure to spread out your information accordingly.  You can use slang in your writing if it is relevant to the topic or the crowd you are speaking to.  If you are talking to poker players you may use phrases that make no sense at all to baseball fans and that is alright.  Google and other popular search engines can relate the phrases to topics, so this is actually a good thing!

Pictures!  

This is one place that many people fail to pay attention.  No Google cannot tell what a picture it by looking at it, but if you name the image file with relevant text and use the title tag, Google will know what you image is and take it into consideration when ranking your page.  You can also get a lot of extra website traffic by taking the time to fill in the image tags from sites like Google Images, Flickr and other sites that love images!

Page Load Time Is Huge!

Once Google released their new "Caffeine" updates to their search algorithm, they have publicly admitted that they are rewarding sites that load fast with higher search engine standings. So optimize your images, compress your code and do anything you can to get your webpages loading quicker.  This may be an advanced method, but if you are beginner, feel free to contact me directly and I would be glad to help.

Don't Fill Your Pages With Advertisements

Finally lets talk about ads.  Don't overdue the ads on your site, both search engines and real people get annoyed by excessive advertising.  You want to give more info and less junk, so don't get crazy with your advertising and the search engines will reward you.

This may be where the bulk of your SEO efforts will be spent once your site is up and running. The on page search engine optimization techniques and tips explained above are where you should start. However, to move forward and get ranked well on Google, you need to take into consideration some external factors moving forward.

Link Building

Most all of the information I am about ready to share below about off site or "external" seo can be summed up in a nutshell and called Link Building. Link building is nothing more than creating links on another site that links back to your own. For any link you create to be helpful in getting you ranked for a certain search term, you must use the same search term or a variation of it in the anchor text. If you are not familiar with that term anchor text is nothing more than the words of the link, not the url.

Link building is arguable the single most important factor to search engine optimization.

The biggest factors you want to pay attention to when building back links to your website are as follows:

1. Relavancy - Is the site your are adding a link to, relevant to the topic of your site?
2. Site Authority - Are you building links on any site you can dump a link on or is this site an authority on the topic and carry a high Google Page Rank?
3. Anchor Text - Must be accurate, concise, relevant and you must use variations of your keyword set to get the most effective use of your time building back links.

Social Buzz

Don't be afraid to get your information out on as many social networks as you can. These sites are used in some social search algorithms and also give relevant links that can be picked up many places including Google's new "real time search". The one thing I must take time to point out in this section of the beginners guide to seo is that you must not become a spammer. You must only share relevant information on your social networking sites and don't share the same thing ten times a day. You will loose all credibility with your followers, friends and search engines if you proceed like this.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are places like: Digg, Stumble Upon, Google Bookmarks, Propeller and the list goes on. These sites are created for nothing more than on person sharing a link that they found interesting, helpful or worthwhile in some fashion. So get on as man of these sites as you can and start adding your links to these high ranking authority sites and start getting more traffic.

Article Marketing

Yes, just another way you can distribute your content and get more inbound backlinks to your site. The biggest and best article directories out there have huge PR or "Page Rank" and carry a lot of authority in the eyes of the search engines. So take the time to write some articles or simply hire an author to write a handful of small articles to get your started. These sites can provide some good clickthrough traffic and can also really boost your website standings in the search engine results pages or "SERP".

Link Wheels

Link wheels are possible one of the most powerful internet marketing and seo techniques out there today. I could write a small book on how these things work, but I simply don't have enough room here. You can learn more about them here : Link Wheels Explained

RSS Feeds

You can use RSS feeds to allow your visitors to get updates from your website in email, RSS readers or on their favorite RSS websites. You can also submit RSS feeds to many RSS Feed Aggregators to get even more free backlinks! As your website grows RSS distribution can turn into a crazy amount of repeat visitors to your site, so get your setup early on to get the biggest benefit.