in General

SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is an umbrella term often used to cover a whole breadth of subjects including Search Engine Submission (SES), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Placement (SEP) and so on.

However, there is no “magic bullet” for SEO, as it’s is an ever changing animal, one where ideas, concepts and theories may change on a regular basis.

But there fundamental concepts that every business owner can employ in their website. Plus, there is a plethora of free SEO resources throughout the internet.

So what some of the key SEO fundamentals?

  • Keep your website small, limble and easy to trawl.
  • Do research. Use paid tools such as Wordtracker or Yahoo’s Overture will help you find the best keywords and help you determine the best keywords to target on your website. Of course there are free keyword research tools too.
  • Useful, unique and fresh content. Typically, a blog will help, but anything will do.
  • Use a RSS Feed to help syndicate your content.
  • Backlinks, or Inbound links still matter.
  • Optimise your page titles.
  • Use a Google Sitemap.
  • Don’t spam. Ever.
  • For cheap, but long-term results use ‘Organic search engine positioning’, such as submission to directories, etc.
  • For fast, but potentially expensive results use ‘Paid search engine positioning’, such as Google Adwords.
  • Keep up with the news by following SEOChat, or joining one of the many other SEO forums.
  • Always research a SEO professional before hiring them.

Resources:

  1. SEOChat
  2. Top 10 SEO Tips
  3. SEOBook
  4. Top 101 ways to build link popularity
  5. Free SEO Tools