Google Traffic

Google SEO 101

The world of SEO sounds complex.

And it's true, it certainly can be.

You could spends years reading all the blogs and books on the topics, and yet not get below the surface level of the material.

There are a few Google SEO 101 topics to get a basic feel for at the beginning.

-Understand what exactly your searchers want

There are a variety of research tools available that will help you find keywords that are searched often and related to your business.

The keyword tool offered by Google AdWords is a great start.

-Build content that answers the question of those keywords

Every search engine wants content that it can read through, so you need to write posts, articles, and words about the words that apply to what you're doing and put them on your site.

Don't just stuff a bunch of keywords onto a page, and you'll just get a penalty for doing so.

Make sure the keyword you are targeting is in the body of the page a few times and in the headline, put it in the first sentence as well.

Above all, you need to answer the implied question of the keyword so that the searcher finds value in what you write.

-Get rid of any pictures or PDF files

The engines can only really read and understand HTML.

These are clear words in the page, and separately the code that makes them look good.

Search engines are evolving to read files, but for right now, the only page we certainly know is readable are HTML pages.

-Get all the geeky stuff down pat

Put your keywords in the title of the page, the words that show up in the bar at the top of the screen, and also in the meta description that all pages have, so the search engines can read them.

-Build links to these pages

Search engines want to rank pages that are linked to by many other sites.

Find related sites that you can write guest posts for, or look for directories where you can list yourself.

Stay away from link farms though, as search engines do not like these programs and may penalize you if you get involved with them.