SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization?

“SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.”

- Rand Fishkin, SEOMOZ

Simply put, search engine optimization is the process of configuring your website to give it the best chance to rank highly in the major search engines for your chosen keywords. This first began back in the mid 90s in simpler times, over time the industry has matured and we’ve seen plenty of fades designed to improve your ranking come and go.
It’s important to remember that SEO is not a ‘one and done’ type process, its ongoing, its always evolving and those who wish to stay in the industry must learn to evolve with it.

There are lots of ways which contribute to having an ‘optimized page’ and I’ll do my best to go through all of the most important factors in this section, but truthfully there is no substitute for experience so whatever you learn here try to take it away and use on your own site then gauge the results for yourself, no doubt you’ll soon start picking little things here and there that will contribute to your site improving its rankings eventually.

My advise to those wishing to get involved in the industry is just to read, read blogs, read ebooks, read normal books, attend conferences, also try listening to SEO related radio channels like webmasterradio.fm which I listen to every day and still teaches me things. The nice thing about this industry is that everyone is looking out for one another and the amount of free content available on the internet is easily enough to get you started.

If you’re new to search and have arrived here looking for simple ways to ensure that your website become fairly well ranked then you cant go wrong by ensuring that all of your title, description and image alt tags are filled in, by making sure the site is full with good, unique, keyword rich content and by getting as many links to your site over a natural period of time (no more than 6 per month) with anchor text that is related to your site. If you would like more information on the basics of search