Search Engine Optimization for Beginners

Search engine optimization (SEO) has become an important part of building website popularity. When the internet was populated by only a few thousand Web sites, it was pretty easy to have a presence on the internet, and there was not much need for search engines. Things have changed in the last few decades. With more than 162 million Web sites populating the internet these days, you need to develop a mindset for optimization.

Developing a search engine optimization mindset will help you make smart choices as you build, edit, and market your website. Factors that are the most important to search engine optimization include title tags, keyword rich content, backlinks, meta tags and navigation. This guide will provide you with the basics to get you started, as well as direct you to more useful resources that will help your website climb to the top of natural search results.

Title Tags
Title tags are the most important part of your search engine optimization effort. A title tag is an html tag that displays your page title at the top of the browser window. It is also the title that appears as a blue link in search engine results. A title tag needs to be rich in high traffic keywords and intriguing to search engine visitors. If your Web page is about buying and selling real estate, your title tag might be "How to Buy and Sell Real Estate: An Investors Guide."

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Keyword Rich Content
The content you create for each Web page should have three elements: 1) It should include valuable information that establishes you as an expert; 2) It should be at least 200 words in length; and 3) It should be keyword phrase rich, with keyword phrases appearing in your title tag and several times within your content.

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Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other Web sites that point to your Web site. A high quality backlink will include keywords about your website in the anchor text. In the example I used before, "How to Buy and Sell Real Estate: An Investors Guide", several keywords appeared. Each time a visitor clicks on that link, your website receives a "credit" for those keywords. This credit is stored in the search engines memory. The next time someone is looking for the same thing, your Web site will rank a little bit higher because it is now more highly valued for those particular keywords.

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Meta Tags
A meta tag is a little hidden piece of code that resides in the head of an html document. Your visitors never see it, but the search engines do. There are several different types of meta tags. The two that you need to be most concerned about are the keyword tag and description tag.

The keyword tag identifies what the Web page is about in just a few words. Keyword tags for the page I discussed earlier would include "real estate", "buy real estate", "sell real estate", and "real investors guide". Your keyword tag should be limited to 10 keyword phrases. The description tag should include a short description of the Web page. The description can be in phrase or sentence form, and sell search engine visitors on the quality of your content.

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Navigation
Web site design is a give and take process, between graphics and search engine optimization. Building a professional looking website should always be a priority, as it is one of the best tools you can create to market your business. As you build it, however, you should not overlook search engine optimization aspects. With this in mind, make every effort to limit the use of graphics for navigation. This is important for the same reason that anchor text in backlinks is important. Each time a visitor clicks on an internal navigation link, your website receives "credit" for those keywords. This credit is stored in the search engines memory. The next time someone is looking for the same thing, your Web site will rank a little bit higher, because it is now more highly valued for those particular keywords.