The SEO Guide for Beginners

Not so long ago, people would fill their websites with words they knew were mostly used for internet searches in order to impress their importance on search engines. Back at the time, search engines weren’t so complex and users were sent to the sites stuffed with particular search words even if their content was useless. Users were greatly frustrated and those sites that had relevance and quality started receiving direct hits, something that was soon noticed by search engines.

Today, the rules of SEO have changed. Essentially, you have to understand how SEO works in order to be successful with your practices. When a user types search words, the search engine makes two determinants: the most relevant pages in its database, and those of them that are most popular. Your objective as a business owner is to make your website both relevant and popular. Attracting the algorithms is one way, and you have to remember these algorithms are designed to weed out stuffed websites. If you offer meaningful information, there are hundreds of algorithmic components that will identify your site’s usefulness.

Do the following:

1. Practice honesty with potential customers by ensuring every word on the website applies to your trade. Using irrelevant words is cloaking, a black hat trick. Distribute your keywords in the URLs, page headers, title tags, image names, and content pages.
2. Keep the text you need indexed clean, by not burying it in images, Adobe Flash, JavaScript, or any other rich media. This is a practice greatly frowned upon.
3. Use strong keywords. These are not the obvious words, as they could be in use by thousands of websites and therefore plunge your website into a deep pool of stifling competition. Take a poll in your target market; find the words specific to your location, nature of your business, and what you offer; and use tools like Google Keyword Tool.
4. Keep off the spam label at all costs as spam engines automatically ignore spam sites. You avoid this by offering concise, keyword-rich content that is unique and natural-sounding. Filler words are a no-go zone.