SEO for Starters

So let’s say you’ve got a new company website, blog, or product that you want the whole world to see.

“What comes next?”

It’s time to optimize search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) to your wants and needs. Doing so can help your website/product/blog move up the towering search engine ladder and lead to your ultimate success (and ridiculous amounts of traffic!). It can be a long and hard journey, but the sight of your website/product/blog on the first page of a Google keyword search is neat absolutely priceless.

“What is SEO?”

First off, in case you were wondering, “SEO” stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of moving your site up a search engine ladder through the use of multiple SEO techniques and “hacks.” Google and other search engines rank your site via “spiders,” which “crawl” through your site and pick out keywords and backlinks in order to determine where your site should be placed in the ladder.

“So how do I start optimizing?”

Here are a few starter SEO tricks:

• Build meta tags into your site. Although I have read that Google is not relying on these tags anymore, I still use them for all my sites. There is a great meta tag generator here, along with wonderful how-to-install instructions.
• Participate in link exchange. A link exchange is when two blog/site owners both agree to show each other’s links on their own site. Many blog or website owners are very willing to do this. Exchanging links can greatly boost your search engine rankings (especially if you are linked to a site with a high Page Rank or Alexa Ranking). Simply contact the website developer kindly asking them to participate in the exchange. I have nearly a 100% approval rate for exchanging links, even with high traffic sites (I would credit this towards my pleasant manners when contacting the bloggers ). If you would like, I will exchange links with you… just go to the “Contact” section and let me know you are interested.
• Comment often on blogs that offer a “Top Commentators” section. Frequently commenting on blogs is a great way to boost exposure. Not only are you letting the blog owner know that you appreciate his/her hard work, but you also get linked for your appreciation under the “Top Commentators” section (If you are in fact a top commentator ). However, be sure not to spam other’s blogs just to get on their top commentators list, this is an easy way to be deemed “WORTHLESS $%@#!*& SPAMMER!!!”
• Post on forums with your website in your signature. If you are a part of a forum, be sure to add your website/blog to your profile’s signature. Doing so will brand all of your previous and future posts with your site URL. This will expose your website to the forum users, as well as provide major search engines with another reference to your site.
• Find the right anchor text. This is an important aspect of SEO. Look later for a full post designated to finding the right anchor text.

“If this were school, how well would my SEO techniques be graded?”

For all of you website owners that are curious to see how amazing you are at SEO , there is now a new website that gives you a detailed analysis of your SEO skill level (compared to other sites). The site is titled “Website Grader,” and after filling in your websites URL, related keywords, competing websites, and your email address, you get an extremely detailed analysis of you site (Website Grader collects data from nearly all Web 2.0 applications, Google, Yahoo, and so much more…). If you haven’t already checked this out, it’s a definite must!

I am going to be at my freshman orientation for college for the next few days, so I may veer off topic for the days I am on the road (I’ll post some pictures as soon as I take some! ). Please subscribe to my RSS feed!

–Benjamin Cass, BenjaminCass.com, Copyright 2007

Popularity: 22% [?]