Internet Marketing Techniques - Basic SEO Tips

In the big bad world of SEO (search engine optimization) you can greatly increase your websites influence by utilizing just a few seo tactics. Optimizing your site doesn't have to be a daunting task outsourced for hundreds or thousands of dollars. With a little patience and time you can build a better website.

In this article we will look at three key components to a solid SEO foundation for your site. As with any type of business or relationship you will need to build your foundation very strong if you want to survive the turbulence of life. I believe in sticking to the fundamentals and slowly building out from there, so I think we will start with META tags.

META tags are html tags that refer to key information directed at the search engine spiders to help them decipher your site. Now I know that in the past 1 1/2 to 2 years META tags have lost most of their weight with the search engines, however that doesn't mean they don't see them. It simply means that it is no longer considered a "core" part of what they are looking at. Here are 3 quick examples of meta tags in case your not sure what I am discussing, there are many more META tags. These tags should be inside .

meta name="description" content="a description of your site"

meta name="keywords" content="your,keywords,separated,by,commas"

meta name="robots or spiders" content="follow all or no follow"

META tags are located in the "head" section of your site before the "/head" tag. Even if they do not carry alot of weight in search engine placement they are still valuable tools to let the search engines know what your site is about...if it is not abused by keyword stuffing.

Another key component of a solid SEO strategy, and possibly the most important, is keywords. The key to having good keywords is thorough keyword research. This can be a daunting task. The easiest way to get started is to write down every word AND phrase you would use to find your site. Now do a simple search on google for your top ten keywords (phrases). Did your site show up? Take this time to look at your competitions websites as well.

The big trick to keywords is simply this...Build a page with 2 of your keywords and write your pages content in such a manner that you can use these 2 keywords very prominently in the text. You want to be sure that it "sounds right" to humans. Include these two keywords in your text at a rate of about 5 to 7% (5 to 7 keywords to every 100 words). This has proven over time to be a very acceptable keyword density. You should throw in a couple of your "lower" keywords if it fits in nicely.

Our final participant in this article could very well give keywords a run for it's money in the matter of importance to SEO basics. Five simple letters that could very well take your site to the next level...LINKS

Links are what the spiders are following. From page to page they crawl along following links like they are a trail of breadcrumbs. Links can describe your site to the search engine spiders through text. Of course you get the benefit of humans being able to follow them to your site as well. The more links you have coming to your site the better. This helps google establish your sites overall prominence in your niche. Links get "weighted" differently based on just a few key points...

1. link text-incorporating some keywords in your link text is the best way

2. linking site-if the linking site has Pagerank or authority that is good

3. any link-any type of link is better than none at all

All links pointing to your site carries some weight of importance no matter what site it comes from...(no link farms). Just remember this when thinking about links...NO LINKS=NO INTERNET. Links to "other" info from your info is what makes it all keep moving forward.

So to wrap up...we covered META tags which is primarily work you do once, keywords which should be visited 2 or 3 times annually, and finally links which is work that is NEVER done. You should build links DAILY. I can't stress how important they can be to the success of your site. So happy SEO'ing and till next time...

Thanks and remember...Always strive to improve and success will follow.