The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation - A guide for the Beginner

Search engine optimisation or SEO for short, can seem to be quite a complicated process for someone who is just starting out and doesn't really know what they are doing. If you own a website then it is quite important that you optimise it for SEO if you plan to be competitive on the internet.

The ranking that your website achieves in the search engines comes down to a number of factors including the number of visitors that your website receives, how well it is optimised for SEO and one way links to your site also play a part in determining your search engine rank. Having a good rank in the search engines will provide you with amazing results and gain you a lot of extra traffic for your website.

Basically, unless you are on the first page of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, then it is unlikely that your website will be found in the countless search results found by these search engines. Most people never search past the first page of results. This is where it becomes rather important for you to optimise your webpage for search engine optimisation.

There are quite a few simple, easy to complete tactics that you can use to boost your ranking in the search engines almost immediately. Overall, you should allow a decent time frame to get your site established in the top few rankings. Around 3 months is usually plenty of time to give you a top 3 ranking.

The first thing that you should do to boost your ranking is submit the URL for your website to the search engines. This will get them crawling your website and will ensure that it gets indexed. If you are unsure how to do this, you could hire a professional as there are many companies out there who specialise in this.

SEO Tactics for Beginners

For starting your SEO campaign, it is advisable that you identify about 10 different keywords that describe your services and/or products. These keywords should give an accurate description of what you have to offer and it is best to consider what people are most likely to search for to find your website. The keywords that you select will form the base of your SEO campaign.

The title of your website should not only be eye-catching, but also should be keyword rich. The content on your home page should also contain the keywords that you have selected where possible. Include the keywords throughout the body of your text, but ensure that the content is still readable. Quality content is king.

Having meta tags along with a meta tag title, description and keywords inserted into the header content of your site will help immensely. You may need a programmer or website designer to help you out with this, but if you want to do it yourself then you can find the information you need online for free.

A smart thing to do is to add a site directory to your website and find other sites that compliment yours and try to organise a link exchange with the owners. This is a simple process where you add a link to their page on your site and vice-versa.

Writing SEO articles about your niche area and adding them to your website is a great way to help build your search engine ranking. You can also submit these articles to article directories which can help to provide back links for your site. Remember, quality content is king.

There are plenty of ways that you can market your site and the more that you do, the quicker you will see results. By bringing different strategies together in your SEO campaign you can be ranked on the first page of the search engines in no time.

Shout is one of the fastest growing online marketing companies in Australasia. Shout specialises in search engine optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, website conversions, usability testing and social media marketing. Not only do Shout search engine optimisation achieve top search engine rankings for the most competitive keywords, they deal in all things web that help maximise ROI on your website.