How to SEO Optimize Your Website

How to SEO Optimize Your Website
By Caterina Christakos

Today you not only need to know how to build a website but how to SEO optimize it. For all of you newbies, this means to optimize it for the search engines.

So how do we go about doing this? Well we start with keyword research. There are sites that you can go to for free like Google AdWords tools, paid keyword sites like wordtracker or you can purchase software to do the research for you. All of these methods are acceptable.

Here is the information that you need to know:

1) What are the exact keyword phrases that people are typing into the search engines to find your type of site?

2) How many sites have this word in their website domain name?

3) How many have it in their title tags?

4) How many have it in their meta tags?

5) How many have it in their alt tags?

You are basically looking to see a demand for your products and how much competition there is out there for those keywords and customers.

Now you will need a list of top keywords and these will go in your meta tags. Their are two primary metatags that you must include a keyword tag and a description tag with your main keyword and associated words included in it. These tags are located in the code at the top of your webpages.

Each web page should have different keywords. This is very important and most people get this part wrong. You will be penalized if every page has the same targeted words. You need to have your primary keyword in your website domain name. It should also be in the head tag, title tags and alt tags.

A major factor in higher rankings in the search engines is knowing the words and keyword phrases that people are looking for and knowing if your competition is using them correctly in designing their site. If you do just the five steps above, you will start outranking even some of the older sites.

These are the first steps. Next you need to make sure to include a contact us page, and about us page, a privacy page and a sitemap. You will submit the sitemap to the search engines and they will start to naturally spider all the pages of your website through this sitemap.

Now as far as content, you need from 500- 750 words per page and this should be original content. Include your main keyword, as well as related keywords in your content.

Finally search engines like Google, want to see back links to your site. A back link is a link from another site that has similar content. You can generate back links for free by writing articles and submitting them online to the article directories. Just sign up for free accounts, set up an author profile and begin submitting articles. At the end of each article there will be an author resource box. Here you will write two to three sentences about yourself and your site and direct them to your site with the URL. Each article that is accepted will automatically give you a back link. Sometimes these are picked up quickly and other times more slowly. Eventually though, Google will spider them and give you credit.

Those are the major things that you have to do to SEO Optimize your website. You can add to this pile with social networking sites and bookmarking but the above is definitely a good start.

Caterina Christakos is a published author and reviewer. Read her latest reviews of discount vegas show tickets and cheap vegas shows.

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