Search Engine Optimization is shortened to SEO. It is the process of trying to move up in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN search results. These three are called the "big three" because almost all searchers use at least one of them. Because of this, it is best to try to optimise for these three.
In May, Americans did 7.4 billion searches online, which is 12 percent more than in April. With 3.3 billion search queries, Google Sites had the most, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.1 billion) and MSN-Microsoft (1.1 billion) (963 million) - The company Comscore
Search engines look at many things on your website. Making those things work better is called "on-page optimization," and everything else is "off-page optimization." Now, the exact formulas for ranking are secret, but this is what most people think of as "simple SEO."
First, we want to improve the optimization of the page itself. So we need to choose some keywords. You can search for a number of tools that will give you lists of keywords that you can use. Now you know what words to use. So now you have to find out what the top 10 people are doing for them (warning: basic html and math needed ahead). Go to the person at the top of Google for the most important keyword you have. Let's use "free downloads" as an example, and I'll help you do the math. The top website is download.com, so let's look at what makes it so good. Keyword density is a way to figure out how often a keyword shows up in relation to the rest of the text in a certain area. Title, meta keywords, meta description, plain content (text), h1, h2, h3, bold, italics, underlined, and domain name are some of the areas. Let's figure out a few things about download.com... "Reviews and free downloads at download.com" is the name of their site. First, we don't count "common" words like "and," "the," "at," and so on. So, we have: "Reviews of free downloads from download.com." So, "free downloads" takes up 14 of the 35 characters, or 40%. 14/272 = 5.14 percent in the meta description tag, so keep going through the list and keep it in an excel. After you've done the top 10 in Google, go to the top 10 in Yahoo and MSN and do the same thing again, skipping the ones that are the same. Take the average now. Let's say that my average was 15% for the title. I want to try to get close to that percentage. Too much and I could get in trouble, but not enough and it won't help. That's the basic SEO for a website. Using the same number of keywords on the site. Off-site SEO is everything that isn't on your site. For beginners, this mostly means getting links. You want links from relevant sites that don't have a lot of links to other sites. How to get these things: Submit your site to directories and exchange links. Put your site in an online directory. Google has a lot of lists of them. Trading links is what reciprocal linking is, or in other words, "I'll link to you if you link to me." The best way to get one is to go to a site related to yours, find the person's email address, and send them a personal message.
Dear (contact info, or Webmaster)
I was looking at your website and (something on their website) really stood out to me. (comment about site). I put a link to you at (URL of where you put the link) and would like it if you would link back.
Regards,
(name)
(your site url)
Yes, you have to do this by hand, yes, it will help, and yes, you have to link first. Since you're the one asking for a link, you need to show that you're serious.
Do that for all the best websites for your keywords, and keep doing it. If you get more links, you'll move up in the rankings. For example, if you go to MSN search and type in "Link:download.com," you can find out how many customers your competitors have. There were 692,811 links to download.com, it said... Better get to work.
