Friday, 8 March 2013

Beginners Introduction to SEO

By Lynn Wilkinson


One of the most valuable skills you can learn to help your small business website get more visitors is Search Engine Optimization. Many website owners have become rich from honing their Search Engine Optimization skills. There are hundreds of large companies that pay thousands of dollars every month to SEO professionals. But Basic SEO practices can help your small business climb to the top of the search result listings. And you can do it for free!

So, just what is SEO? SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, makes your website seem as valuable as possible to search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and of course, Google. Google and other search engines use very complicated algorithms to help them retrieve the best, most relevant results for their viewers. The best search results will rank higher. There are several ways in which a search engine determines how to order web results in a given web search. Search engines are always trying to bring the most valuable results to the consumer, and will look for trusted, informative sites.

One factor that determines how high your site appears in the search results is called a key phrase. A key phrase is simply a word or phrase that customers will most likely use to search for your website. You should make sure this key phrase is in the site's URL, the title, meta tags, section titles, in links, and in all parts of your website.

Creating "backlinks" to your website can help your SEO efforts. The major search engines look at how many times other sites link back to yours. If your site is being linked to by thousands of other sites, the search engine will find your site to be "popular" and the best site for your keyword or phrase. Your website will then be ranked higher. If your site has valuable information, more people will put a link to your site on their own website. But be careful with your backlinks! If a site such as the Washington Post were to link to your website, your site may appear to be an authority on the subject and it will rank up higher in the search results. On the other hand, if your site is linked by spam sites, your website will be considered less valuable and may be ignored by the search engines.

Search engine optimization is very complicated, as nobody really knows how to be ranked the highest in search engines except search engines themselves. There is so much for one to research on the subject, and some techniques are tried and true, while others will come back with limited success. Reaching the top results in a search engine does not happen overnight, and it may even take several months, but if you are patient and work at it, you really can make it. Here's to your first inspiration for using SEO to help you make money on-line!




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