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SEO basics are often shrouded in mystery, yet SEO is the vehicle that brings people and the search engines to your website. It’s knowledge every webmaster must know and it’s not that hard to learn.

Newbies are too often led to believe that it is difficult for the average person to grasp a good understanding of SEO, so they avoid SEO like the plague. This is unfortunate because the application of SEO techniques is what will get your site quickly noticed by the search engines and is one of the best ways to help you build traffic.

SEO is really not that difficult.

Those selling SEO programs in the internet marketing world make out that it’s very difficult and cumbersome for the average person or newbie starting out, but it’s not. It just takes a little time and effort to study and apply. Once you have a little knowledge of the SEO basics under your belt, the rest is easy. All you need are a few foundational SEO techniques to begin with to ensure you are going in the right direction. That’s it. Easy.

In fact, the hardest thing I’ve found around SEO is trying to get people to see the light and understand how easy it is to learn. Even knowing a few foundational strategies is of considerable benefit. It’s harder to get people to stop believing the confusing and false claims that SEO is too difficult for them to learn, than it is to actually learn and apply the knowledge.

Online marketers are smart people.

Google’s Webmaster Tools is loaded with information, guidelines and resources for you to become proficient at SEO basics. Go there first and return often to read and absorb the guidelines. It’s free, valuable information available for everyone study. Some of the masters of SEO today have reached high levels of expertise just by continually and persistently studying, implementing and following these Guidelines. Their study is ongoing as the rules change and they want to keep abreast of the latest guidelines.

13 SEO basics every Webmaster should know.

1.  The top three most important search engines to submit your website to are Google, Bing and Yahoo.

2.  You should have a Google account. Register your site with Google Webmaster Tools, Bing’s Webmaster Centre and Yahoo’s Site Explorer. Don’t be overly concerned about the many other search engines.

3.  Focus on SEO basics that determine your rankings with the search engines. When you research your niche market extensively you will discover specific, target keywords for your domain name, posts and pages that you will be adding to the site.

4.  Make sure all your titles have your targeted keywords.

5.  Keep your content relevant to the keywords in your heading. Unique content is essential. Post information that is interesting, informative and of real value for visitors. This shows Google that you are providing value. Number one with Google is providing what searchers want.

6.  Keep adding fresh, unique content to your website to help build higher rankings with Google. Google loves great content; and, it will have visitors returning to your site to check out new information. This is a really important SEO basics strategy.

7.  Generating a sitemap for your website is imperative. A popular one is Google XML Sitemaps. A sitemap helps the search engines find your website pages easily and index your blog. Site navigation must be easy for both robots and visitors.

8.  H1 is important. Heading tags should be totally relevant to your content and show the robots exactly what it’s all about.

9.  For a solid impression with the search engine robots, have your main keyword or keyword phrase at the beginning of the title, description and list of keywords.

10.  Make sure all of your images are compressed right down so they load fast but are still very clear, clean and resized to the correct dimensions. Image description should have relevant, specific keywords.

11.  Internal and external linking is essential to your site being ranked by the search engines. Get Do Follow links count as votes for your website and help you move up the search engine rankings.

12.  There many link building strategies to use. Be sure to get a lot of different links from different platforms to make your link building look natural to the search engines and give your site a real boost.

13.  Fix all broken links on your website that are generating error reports so you are not penalized in any way by Google.

Follow these SEO basics and you will be surprised at how quickly your search engine rankings will improve and your traffic build.

Wishing You Every Success Always,

Link building is one of the best methods for getting your website noticed, loved and ranked by Google’s search engines; and, some of the best strategies for link building are the pointers you find and follow from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

When you build a website, links do not just naturally come to you, nor do they randomly find you. You must strategize keeping the above guidelines in mind and implementing some very specific, yet easy tactics.

How do you get noticed on the internet?

The Google Bot is a very interesting little machine that roams the internet looking for the most popular websites and for who’s linking to who. It’s fun to look at it as a bit of a “who’s who”.

Google’s created a popularity contest.

Popularity is key. The most visited and most liked sites rank the highest.  So, if your website is hidden, you’ll never be number one in Google for any keyword. However, if you hang out with other people and they communicate with you and link to your website, you will always be rewarded.

You can reach number one in the popularity contest when you have a number of people physically linking to your website and pointing to you.

Google loves words but it cannot really see what your content is all about.

Remember, it’s an algorithm, a computer program that doesn’t know what you’re saying. It does recognize patterns though and the maze or web of link building moving in and out of your website.

So, how can it tell who should rank number one? If there’s a lot of websites pointing and linking to you, creating a web of traffic to and from your site, you will be the better site above all others with just a few links.

Your goal is to get ranked by Google. Higher ranking means more traffic which equates to increased business. This means you have to commit to continuously work on link building. It’s really that important.

Keyword specific rank depends on keyword specific links. The site with the highest recommendations around a particular keyword or subject stands the highest opportunity to rank for that topic.

Content is ranked by what you write your keywords around. Write your content and structure your pages to target keywords; the best strategy when creating content is to target the website pages around one or two keywords at the most.

The quality of links are crucial to link building.

Links alone are not enough. As well as popularity, the following list is also very, very important in Google’s eyes and plays a critical role ranking.

1. Link Age and Longevity - has the linking site been around a while; is it an established, aged site? Old is never a popular topic unless we’re talking about cheese, booze or websites. In Google’s eyes, older is better.

2. Link Relevance - is the site connected to your niche; does it cover a similar or related topic?

3. Link Authority - are you getting links from higher trafficked, authority sites that are continuously ranking in Google and have a very strong link profile for your topic? If they’ve been around as a strong resource, they will have tons of visitors.

4. Link Reputation - is the linking site a trusted site in Google’s eyes and has it been with google for a very long time, continues to get a lot of traffic and provide a lot of value to its visitors? Does it have keyword based links pointing to it?

5. Link Growth Rate - how frequently are you adding new links to your site; is link building happening quickly or is it occurring gradually over time? Don’t be in a frenzy or flurry to build links, do it in a natural and consistent way so you avoid being penalized by Google.

6. Link Focus - are you focused within your niche instead of getting links from everywhere? Weight loss and SEO, although two of my favorite topics, are not a perfect match for trading links.

7.  Link Anchor Text - is your anchor text keyword relevant; keyword specific rank is dependent on keyword specific links.

Using the list above as a guideline, check to see which items you have implemented in your link building strategies for better ranking. From the list, it’s easy to see what is missing and needs to be applied; it’s also a good, basic list to work from to gain more visibility and win your rightful standing in the Google popularity contest.

Wishing You Every Success Always in Your Link Building,