There are three elements to Search Engine Optimisation.
1. Select the keywords you want to rank for.
2. Optimise your website.
3. Create links to your website.
Select the keyword you want to rank for.
It is critical to make good choices when selecting your keywords. The keywords need to be relevant to your business so that the right people reach your website.
Lots of people should be searching for your chosen keyword. You can check this out by using Googles Keyword Tool (look at the exact match results)
Most people dont go past page one when using the search engines so if you cannot get onto page one you are wasting your time. Measure how hard it is to rank for your chosen search term with a tool like Market Samurai. The level of competition for the keyword should be low enough so that you can get onto page one with your marketing budget.
Optimise your website
Often search engine marketers make on page optimisation sound really difficult. But in actual fact it is quite straight forward. All you need to do is make the search engines think that your webpage is about the keyword that you want to rank for. There are four main ways of doing this.
1. Include the keyword two or three times in the text on the page.
2. Include the keyword in the title of the page (H1 tag)
3. Include the keyword in the meta description tag.
4. Include the keyword in the title tag.
Create links to your website.
Links act like "votes" for the search engines. The more quality "votes" you have the higher up the search results you will appear. The links anchor text tells the search engines what you are "voting" for.
When creating links you should use your target keyword as the anchor text about 30% of the time and use an unrelated terms like "click here" or "read more" the rest of the time.
You can build links in a number of ways but posting on Web 2.0 sites, directories or social bookmark sites are among the easiest ways to get started.
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