How to Make Sense of SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) refers to the techniques for increasing search engine traffic for your site. There are many different strategies to utilize, some are easier than others. Briefly, SEO increases your presence on search engines which increases your traffic numbers. The goal for all SEO is to get your website to appear as number one for searches.

A good first step is to make sure your blog is already optimized correctly. Make sure you use appropriate meta keys and meta descriptions so that search engines can spider your website more effectively. Once this is done you do not have to look at it again. If you write about food, write a description, a title and some keywords targeting your subject area. Your meta title and description will also be shown in search results so make sure it is relevant.

Furthermore, make sure you write good, original content. Copy and pasting your content from different sources will mean you get penalized by search engines. Search engines are now highly developed and smart at offering users the most relevant content.

Once you have optimized your website correctly and written good, original content, the next stage is to build links to your site. The number of inbound links your website has is how search engines determine how good your website is. I.e., if your website has many more links than another, search engines will rank you higher and you will get more traffic. Writing good quality, keyword driven content will result in this process happening organically but it may take a while for search engines to discover you. To speed it up you may want to try some of the following techniques.

Firstly, submit content to article directories. Sometimes you may find it challenging for the articles to be accepted because they have to be reviewed by human reviewers. However, for every article you can get accepted, you also get a couple of links. You may see SEO as a game - trying to get quality links from good sources.

Secondly, you are also able to build links to your website through blog comments. Some blog owners and forum admins allow dofollow links. Dofollow is the colloquial name given to links that search engines will take notice of, in contrast to nofollow links. Nofollow was created because people used to pay for links to their website or spam lots of links. Search engines ignore nofollow links and you get no SEO benefit. Spend some time finding blogs and forums that allow you to link to your site? This will benefit the SEO of your site, increase your online presence and will allow you to network with your fellow bloggers within the blogosphere. Please note that the comments ought to be genuine. In the majority of cases, writing something self-promotional (e.g.: "why not visit my home page?") will not get approved and you will have wasted time and effort. You should try to be productive.

Furthermore, you may want to use online book marking tools to bookmark to your content. You should not spam your website too much as admins for the sites will most likely block your website. But similar to directories, if you bookmark your website then you will get a link from a good quality website. If a website is well established, search engines give you more SEO benefits from getting a link from there. In other words, having a link from a popular social book marking site is worth much more SEO-wise compared to a link from a small, unheard of website.

One last tip is to submit your site to online directories. They can be time consuming to setup but if you get a link from a directory it will improve your search engine rankings. Many directories have high page rankings. Although note that there are usually various options for submission. There are normally many different payment options. The three options tend to be: paid, free with reciprocal links and free without reciprocal links. Paying for links can be quite expensive but you will get fast tracked into the directory. Many of the higher ranked directories only offer paid for submissions. If you go for a free link then it can take months to get accepted. Reciprocal links are not necessarily beneficial for your SEO (these aren't given credence like one-way links).

The hints above should help your search engine rankings and improve your traffic. However you should also definitely be using services to monitor and report your SEO efforts and Internet traffic. This way you will be able to see what has the most benefit and what you can focus more on.