Search Engine Optimization :: The Basics And Why Websites Need It

We all know that the most targeted traffic we can get for our websites is from search engines. If you have a little patience and time to set websites the right way you can have a great source of excellent traffic and, best of all, you get it for free.

I will outline first in this article the basics that you have to know to get started with the optimization the right way and, if you read it carefully, you will find out how to be one step ahead the majority.

If you want to have a complete optimized site you have to take care of both on-site and off-site optimization. I will first outline the basics of on-site optimization.

Title Of The Page
The title of the page is one of the most important elements of on-site optimization. Your title must contain your main keyphrase of the page,also make sure that the title describes exactly what the page is about.

Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag usually consists of 160 to 180 characters including spaces. You have to make sure that it describes what the page is about and, because it will appear as a description of your page in serps, you have to write it in a way to make the readers interested in your site. But also don't forget to include the main keyphrases in it.

Meta Keywords Tag
For some meta enabled search engines, the meta keywords tag used to be one of the most important factor after title and description. In the meta description tag include the keywords and keyphrases from your title, description and some other important keywords but try not to exceed 20 words.

Heading Tag
Each page should contain at least one heading tag (). You have to place it at the top of the page and should contain your primary keywords/keyphrases. Make sure that all the heading tags are relevant to the content of the page.

Alt Tag
When you place your cursor over an image a text will popup. This text is the alt text. Try not to stuff keywords or keyphrases in it. Make sure it will describe the image and will include your main keywords/keyphrases.

Content Of The Page
Along with the title, the content weights heavily for all major search engines. You will have to write it to grab users attention and include all your keywords and keyphrases in it in a balanced way. A good thing you can do for your site is to add at least a new page each week to give users a reason to visit your site again.

If you will build all your pages accordingly to all this basic tips, from the off-site optimization point of view, your pages will be optimized the way they should.

Although some engines still pay attention to the on-site optimization, what you need to do to achieve high rankings is a great link building campaign, also known as off-site optimization.

We all know the importance of inbound links for high rankings, but search engines algorithms evolved so much that it's not only important the number of links. Algorithms will take in consideration many other factors such as if the link your site receive it's an one way link or reciprocal link.

Almost all webmasters have only campaigns to build as many reciprocal links, which is wrong, because search engines recognizes them and gives them very little importance.

If you want to be one big step ahead of your competition you have to build as many one way links as you can. One way links have a very big impact on rankings. The algos will analyze the page from which you receive the link too. The best links you can create are from pages that are themselves optimized for your keywords/keyphrases.

The best and easy way to do this is writing and submitting optimized topical articles to articles banks over the Internet. Along with your article, you will include a short bio about yourself where you can place your website URL.

There are many places, like goarticles.com , where you can submit your articles in order to create many one way links with only one article. If you will write and submit one article per week you will have a great link building campaign for your site.

Because 42% to 86% of websites are found through search engines and there are over 300 million searches carried out per day, every day your website needs a good search engine optimization. If you will apply all the things I've outlined in this article, you just can't fail.