An Introduction to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

This brief article has been written with the basis of it being a 'primer' for any of you that are reading it, it wont make you thousands of dollars in and of itself but, it will give you some suggestions of where you should be focusing your SEO related work when it comes to grabbing traffic directly fromt he search engines.

Keyword Research.

Keywords (and key phrases) are probably the single most important aspect of working with the search engines for traffic after all, these are what the people getting to your site are using to find it in Google, Yahoo, etc, so you need to make sure that people can find your site using a nice amount of keywords.

Before you even start work on your meta tags or site text, you need to take a couple of minutes to research the keywords you are going to be using on your site, once you have a list of keywords, also research a couple of phrases, for example, if you have a site featuring uncut guys, you would want to include the keywords:

Foreskin, uncircumcised, natural, penis, etc. You would probably also want to include a couple of phrases such as 'natural uncut cock' or 'big uncut dicks' to maximize the chances of someone finding your site in the major engines.

Title Tag.

This appears at the very top of your page in the HTML coding it should start with a primary key phrase and be around 8 words in length. This is what will appear in the blue title bar on Internet Explorer when a surfer visits your website and will also be the clickable link to your site from many of the search engine listings you get.

Description Tag.

Your primary search phrase should appear as soon as possible in this HTML tag, typically (although not always) a good portion of your pages description meta tag will appear on a search engines description listing for your site which presents another issue, making your description tag appealing so the listing gets clicks.

Keywords Tag.

Commas or not, whichever you choose try to be consistent throughout, dont spam this tag by repeating the same keywords over and over and over and over again. Try to provide a list of relative and complimentary keywords and phrases for your site.

Alt Tag.

This tag, for whatever reasons isnt utilized as much as it should be. If you have images on your website, use this tag to 'describe' the picture being used.

Page Content.

Write your web page copy for actual visitors whilst keeping in mind the search engine spiders. Keyword density and placement are measured by most search engine spiders when the engines decide where to rank your site in the listings. Another big thing right now on the SE's are updates, they tend to give higher listings to site that update regularly so keep this in mind too.

Anchor Text.

Anchor text is the text you use to create a hyperlink to another page on your site, or one of your link partners sites. Some engines give anchor text more value when determining where a site gets listed and some dont. Try not to use text such as 'click here' for text links, use something more descriptive and relevant to your sites content.

Site Maps.

Add a site map to your site and link it from the homepage so that the search engine spiders can crawl the sitemap quickly and thus hit all of your important pages.

Inbound Links.

Inbound links have always been important but as search engines refine their algorithms in order to provide better and more relevant results they give more weight to "quality´ links that are considered relevant to the theme of the site or page. Irrelevant links or links from link farms are increasingly undesirable and may even incur a diminishing affect.

Site Structure And Navigation.

The structure of your site can affect how efficiently search engines are able to spider your site - hence the use of site maps. It can also affect how efficiently a human visitor will be able to interact with your site and whether or not you are able to persuade them to complete the action you desire - whether it be to place an order, make an enquiry or gather the knowledge they need.


Black Hat vs Ethical SEO.

Black hat SEO uses methods to trick the search engines into awarding higher rankings and as these tricks are considered unethical you run the risk of having your site banned if you employ them. Duplicate sites, spamming, hidden text and cloaking are just a few black hat techniques. We would recommend ethical SEO every time.

In Conclusion.

The elements discussed above are considered to be the basics of search engine optimisation. Addressing these elements may be sufficient for some sites but more advanced SEO may be necessary to get rankings for other sites. If you have the time available to learn, research, test, adjust and test again then you have a good chance of being able to produce the kind of results in the search engines that you are looking for.

There is however much more to search engine optimisation than has been covered in these basic elements but this is an excellent starting point. Other elements to consider would include more advanced elements such as competitor research, keyword density and prominence, deep linking, ensuring clean code (W3C compatible), optimal site structure and navigation. You may also wish to consider blogging and RSS feed which can also be very effective methods to increase traffic.

Most importantly of all however is that you need to remember that search engine optimisation is not just about achieving rankings, it is about increasing traffic to your site and converting that traffic to profit. Best of luck!

Article written by Lee.

http://www.condomcash.com