A very brief outline of SEO

By Robert Steers Marketing SEO January 16, 2010

In order for your website to be picked up by search engines and ranked well, there are some things you need to do and keep in mind.

Understanding how SEO works will make the difference between success and failure of a website. Content is king. It is the number one thing all search engines look at. It is the number one thing that will draw people to your website.

Links to your website matter. Two reasons; 1) It will take people from other websites to yours. 2) Search engines look for links to rank the importance of a website. The more links you have from other websites, the more traffic you will get and the better your website will do. The wider the range of websites the better. Also the anchor text, which is the words used to make up the link, matters. You are better having a link looking like this: Low Cost Insulation than this Another insulation website.

Quality of content is key. It seems more than ever now, Google is penalising Link farms and paid links. Bulk link marketing may get you some good backlinks in the very early days, but you have to be descreet and look for quality websites to get back links to. Now it seems that Google is placing far more emphasis on quality content and links from a diverse range of sources.

Be consistent in your language on your website. Try to use the same phrases to describe your business and your service or products. Make sure you are consistent with your keywords in all parts of your website. This includes the page titles, the link text and the website description.

The things that matter the most in SEO:

1. Trust/Authority of the Host Domain – The longer you have a website at a particular location/domain the better. Also Search engines rank links from.gov websites higher than other domains.
2. Link Popularity of the Specific Page – The more links you have the better
3. Anchor Text of External Links – It matters what text is used
4. On-Page Keyword Usage
5. Traffic and Click-Through Data
6. Social Graph Metrics
7. Registration and Hosting Data

DO NOT try to scam search engines by faking any information or links, or using “Black Hat” tricks. The risk to your business is too great. Google and other search engines can ban your website from appearing, which is definitely something you do not want to happen.

Below are the best links to tools and tutorials on SEO;