Search Engine Optimization: Easy or Difficult?

There’s a ton of information out on the web on how to optimize a web site. Unfortunately, 99.9% of websites still lack any optimization. I don’t classify myself as an SEO expert, though I believe I have a thorough understanding of the elements involved in ‘rolling out the red carpet’ for search engines.

When my friends ask for advice, I give them the basics:

Register your site with Google Webmasters to ensure it’s being indexed and doesn’t have issues. This will point out enhancements you should do – like utilizing sitemaps and robots files.
Research key phrases that searchers utilize to look for products and services that you provide. One example is a friend who runs a text messaging company… but lacked the term mobile marketing in his site’s content. This isn’t an exception – it’s pretty common!
Understanding where to utilize keywords… from the domain name, URL or post slug, page title, h1 tag, subheadings, bolded text, etc. as well as ensuring keywords are used multiple times within the content.
Recognizing that strong keyword-rich links back to your site will dramatically increase the ranking of your site for those keywords. A great backlink strategy can simply be participating in conversations and comments across other industry blogs.

Perhaps the most important element is simply writing great content and writing it often. You can’t win a raffle if you don’t buy a ticket. The same goes for search engines – you can’t rank for a search engine result if you don’t have any content that’s relevant to the search. Buy more tickets and your chances of being found dramatically increase. That math is pretty simple.

Some industries and keywords are so competitive that it does require a lot of investment – in expertise, time, content and backlinking strategies. If you want more in-depth tinkering, I’d recommend joining SEOmoz.

At minimum, read through SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors to fully understand the impact that simple page elements can have on your search engine ranking. There are more SEO articles there as well!

http://tv.factor77.com Jared O’Toole

Solid tips. I find SEO very confusing and it annoys me because I know how important it is. I’m slowly learning and getting better at it. But the one thing I have found is that even though I know my overall SEO is probably pretty bad just putting out content helps so much.

Write often and using your keywords. It will take time but its great for google.
http://atniz.com Atniz

I think you have covered all the major topics that need to consider in SEO. There are many companies and SEO experts are still have no idea about this topic. I suggest using google adwords external keyword tool in selecting proper keyword.
http://www.atlantarex.com Doug Marranci

Seo is complicated, however if your site is legitimate and you always think about relevance, it really works. It is also important to see (thru stats or google wemaster tools) what terms people are really searching for. I am amazed at what verbose terms some people put into their searches.

Watching searches to weed out and eliminate things that bring people to you site who don’t need to be there is a good way of increasing your relevance as well…

Putting your opinion on blogs like this one is a great way also!
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Anonymous

IF you ask this before, I will gladly answer it yes but now it’s not because of many google tools that filter every link of the website that can be found in search engine and also because of the update of google. SEO become so tough nowadays that makes SEO experts become more resourceful and tricky, that is also a good effect.

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Search Engine Optimization: Easy or Difficult?

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