Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a hot topic because if you want your website to get a good ranking and draw lots of traffic, you need to SEO your site. The question is what does that entail.

For starters, you have to remember one golden rule: text is really all that matters. I'm not saying you should just have a plain white site covered in text and that graphics aren't important. What I am saying is that when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) your main concern is the text. Once you get traffic to the site the graphics are going to keep visitors at the site but when search engines are ranking your site they are looking at your content.

An important part of that SEO text are your key words. You should select one or two key words for each page of your site. None of your key words or phrases should be longer than three to four words.

To SEO your pages, you need at least 250 words of content. Ideally, you'll have 500 words or more of content. Your key words should appear several times near the start and near the end of your content. However, for maximum SEO results, your content should be readable. One mistake people make is using the key words but creating nonsensical content that not only will the search engines ignore but so would site visitors.

Another SEO strategy is to use headings that incorporate your key words. Search engines often give preference to the key words found in headings so you should include several in your content.

Those key words should not only appear in your content, however. When you do SEO, you'll also need to add those key words to your tags, including your meta tags, your title tag, your meta description tag, and meta key word tag.