Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The Basics

While browsing the web, have you ever wondered why a particular site is more popular than the others? If you compare them, you will notice that the content and design of both sites are equally attractive and interesting. The only difference is that the popular site has made use of a very important tool in the digital space: ‘search engine optimization’.

It is true that most webmasters have heard of this term and have probably already used it to get a better ranking for their websites. But the problem is not with your knowledge of WHAT search engine optimization is, but with your lack of knowledge of HOW to implement it effectively.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the simple process of making your website search engine friendly. With the help of keywords, meta tags, inbound links, outbound links, link baiting, etc. SEO aims to:

1. Rank your site higher in search engines

2. Consequently, attract more traffic to your website and

3. Finally, converting traffic into sales and/or business

Before you start stuffing your content with keywords and over-applying other SEO activities to your site, stop…think…and plan. Formulate a strategy, identify your target audience and sensibly design the structure of your SEO campaign.

Step 1- Review and Formulate

Check the current statistics of your website. This will help you understand how much money you will need to spend to improve your site’s ranking and traffic. Find out what your goals are for your SEO campaign, and finally, make sure your campaign is flexible. The elasticity of your campaign will make it easy for you to change and adapt it in the future whenever you want.

Step 2- Execution of the campaign

As you run your SEO campaign, make sure you do it one step at a time and not all at once. Although SEO rules are pretty much the same with all search engines, what works for Google might not work for another search engine. It is useless to have a perfect plan if the execution is disorganized.

• In your content, don’t just insert keywords wherever you want, take your time and place them strategically.

• Optimize your title tag. It is by far the most important step; Pages with keywords in the title tag are supposed to be more relevant to the search query than other results.

• Make sure your HTML coding is accurate if you want search engines to index and analyze your website effectively.

• After you have efficiently applied the above steps, you can start,

– Link Building

– Link Bait

– Publication of incoming and outgoing links.

– Posting on forums and blogs to generate backlinks

Step 3- Monitor, report and adapt

Monitor your SEO campaign and check

• What are your keyword rankings?

• How much traffic are you generating for your website?

• How popular are your links?

Keep a record of all these aspects and correct them when necessary. Here the flexibility of your campaign is of great importance.

By following these few basic steps, you are sure to get the results you want and need. Most webmasters overlook these simple yet vital phases in the SEO process, don’t make that mistake! Remember that the key to successful search engine marketing is in the finite details of your search engine optimization campaign.