What is Search Engine Optimization? Tutorial

This post is part one of four content articles to help you learn how to market your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of "naturally" driving traffic to your site and is generally seen as the more cost efficient way. By making a website more search engine friendly, a site will rank higher on the search engine result page. To optimize your site for the search engines is to try to get it listed in the top rankings when any particular keyword phrase related to your industry is typed into the query box. SEO is particularly important for e-commerce sites. Site improvements include changing or adding content, improving internal and external links, and formatting meta tags. The most important thing to remember is that content is king. Without enough content containing the right keywords, you have very little chance of ranking well. Used correctly, SEO can lead to a very profitable search marketing campaign.

You can perform search engine optimization on your own site if you have the time and knowledge to do so, or you can invest in professional site optimization work. Here is a run-down of the essential elements needed to optimize your site:

1. Do Keyword Research.

Think you know what people are searching for in the major search engines? Think again. The only real way to tell is to ask the search engines themselves. Google and Yahoo make up the lion's share of search engine traffic. Here are some tools to help show you what consumers are searching for on a regular basis:

• Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Keyword Selector Tool

Choose only keywords related to your site. Check all synonyms and alternative phrasing such as plurals and singulars.

2. Adjust your title, meta keyword tag and meta description tags.

These are bits of code that do not appear on the page for visitors to view, but instead are placed into the code for search engines to pick up. You will want to place your chosen keywords throughout these areas of your site, but be careful not to overdo it.

3. Create keyword-rich page content.

Using the keywords that were researched, write paragraphs of information for your on-page content. You will want to describe your business and what you offer for your homepage text. Give a quick summary of brands and features in your category description, and provide detailed information in your product descriptions. These are all primary opportunities for optimized text. Make sure you take advantage of them. Here are some quick guidelines:

• Homepage: Write at least 200 words of text, including your main keyword phrases, about three times.
• Category description: Your description should be 1 to 2 sentences. The description should include the keyword phrase one time. Write a natural sounding sentence describing that product category.
• Product description: In your long description, add as much related content as possible: 200-400 words will help fill this page out. Try a <h1> tag or <h2> tag, using your keyword phrases. Include any phrases you are targeting one time only. Include variations, plurals, possessives or synonyms. Occasionally bold and italicize a few of the keyword phrases within your text.

You should also consider creating some custom pages of information about your products using your keyword phrases. Be sure to never copy information from another site or web page. Duplicate content can result in penalties from the search engines.

4. Properly link back to your homepage.

Whenever you link back to your homepage, always use your full domain name with the "http" (http://www.domainname.com/) instead of a relative link to /index.asp. This will help increase your site's link popularity.

5. Work on link popularity.

Having strong link popularity means that your site has a lot of other websites linking to it and that the sites that link to yours are also doing well in the search engines. You'll want to work on both quality and quantity when it comes to getting other sites to link to you. The more sites that are linking to you and the better those sites are doing with the search engines, the more search engine visibility your site will have.

• Submit your site to search engines and directories
• Trade links with related sites
• Read more about link popularity and how to increase it

These five basic steps will give you an idea of what it will take to start getting your site listed in the major search engines. Of course, search engine optimization is complex, and the methods for achieving top rankings change often.