Basics of SEO

In this post I will discuss the bread and the butter of the SEO optimization.

What does SEO mean?

Search Engine Optimization is the science of how to make your web site and pages appear on top positions (usually first and second pages) on Google and other search engines.

What do you need to start SEO?

You obviously need to have Website or page you want to optimize. You also need to be diligent and patient, and to spend time doing SEO optimization. Register your web site with Google Web Master Tools and Google Analytics to keep your progress and measure your success in SEO.

SEO basics

There are two types of SEO optimization – internal and external SEO. In future topics I will go deep inside both types but now you just need to know that:

• Internal SEO means – adding title, tags like “description” and “keywords” to your pages and also optimizing the text to match the keywords and key phrases you want to optimize your pages for.
• External SEO means – promoting your website and pages as much as possible on the Internet by adding your site to catalogs, directories and all search engines. It also means that you need to create as much “do-follow” backlinks as possible pointing to your website by the right keyword or key phrase.

SEO tools

There are many SEO tools out there and some of them are really advanced like SEOmoz – and when you are more experienced with SEO optimization it would be beneficial for you to sign up with them. What you really need to start doing some SEO is to measure your site traffic and data with Google Analytics. To do this you need to sign up with Google Analytics and then paste a small tracking code into your pages. Also sign up with Google Web Master Tools to see if there are some errors preventing the robots index your pages properly. I am going to write more on how to use GA and GWT in another article.