Search Engine Optimization for Dummies Part 1 – Knowing the Basics

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is really not for dummies, but for people smart enough to realize none of us knows everything!

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If you have a website online, or even just a blog, then you have likely at least once heard about the concept of search engine optimization or SEO. You are aware from what you hear that it is essential to doing things online, but you’ve probably wondered what exactly search engine optimization is, what it does for you, and why it is so critical. Keep reading “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies Part 1” for answers to many of your initial SEO questions.

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1. What is it?

The first question is, “What exactly is search engine optimization?”

There are several very important steps, strategies and tactics that go into SEO, but in a nutshell, it’s a discipline that you follow to raise your website’s ranking in the search engine results listings for anyone searching for your site’s content-related keywords. If your blog is about horseback riding, then you would want to be the first website listed on Google when someone searches for “horseback riding.” This is search engine optimization at its core: doing the things that you need to rank high in the search results, which leads to an increase in readership, traffic, revenue and sales.

2. Keywords

You’ve probably heard a lot about keywords, especially as they relate to search engine optimization.

Keywords are basically the most important part of the vocabulary used on your website or blog that describe what it is all about. You generally want to focus on up to five primary keywords to optimize for, and then another dozen or so variations for secondary keywords. The keywords for this article could be “search engine optimization”, or “search engine optimization basics” as a long-tail variant.

Of course, your keywords should be all throughout your website’s content, but don’t get carried away.  As a general rule, more is not better, because modern search engines are smart enough to notice this. Try for a density of one to five percent of your total post for your keywords.  Two percent is considered minimum, but that is not a good reason to force them into the text.  Remember, the most important thing about your content is that it will make sense and be interesting for human readers.

3. Doing SEO

There are right ways and wrong ways to do your SEO. Right ways include making your website very easy to navigate, including having a good sitemap that will make it simple for the search engine spiders to find all your individual pages. Of course, these aren’t real spiders, but instead search algorithms or virtual robots, often just called “bots,” that randomly surf the internet for websites not already in their database.

These bots also look at, or “re-index” existing sites looking for fresh content, so it’s very important to keep creating fresh, unique content.

Wrong ways to accomplish search engine optimization are known as “black hat methods.” These vary constantly, so do a search for it if you want to know more. The reason these don’t last long is because the search engines regularly update their algorithms to weed out such sites.  With the major steps made in AI (artificial intelligence) in recent years, it’s getting harder and harder to play these games. You might gain some temporary benefit from these unethical practices, but their effectiveness is short-lived in most cases.  Worse, they could get your site banned (delisted) permanently.

4. Keep Learning

“Search Engine Optimization for Dummies Part 1” is just a start.  SEO isn’t something you just do once and forget.  It is always evolving and there’s always more to learn.  Even the top experts in the field are constantly learning.

At the same time, search engine optimization is only difficult if you make it so. Having read this article, you are now familiar enough with the subject to get started. Now you have enough of an understanding of the terminology to be able to keep up with other articles that go into more detail.  They will give you more tips you can add to your strategy as individual actions.  Step by step, you will build your overall SEO strategy for your website.

5. It IS Work!

“Search Engine Optimization for Dummies” would not be doing you fair service without pointing out that doing SEO IS work.  You can’t just buy some cheap software, fill in your details and hit “Start.”  (In fact, numerous unscrupulous online “marketers” have made a fortune selling such fluff-ware.)

There is a way to get results without having to do it yourself, but it will cost you.  There are experts you can hire who will do a great job. Just be sure to check their credentials before hiring anyone. An experienced and effective SEO consultant is going to have a portfolio of sites previously optimized and can show you the before and after rankings and traffic patterns for the sites they’ve worked on.

6. Beware

Even so-called experts with a great looking portfolio can turn out to be unethical cheats.  A very

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common scam is to promise to get you to the top of page one for your keywords, often within a week or two. Beware!  Such a claim almost always means they aren’t all that reputable.

A common trick done by these cheaters is to convince you to let them choose the right keywords for you.  They will then choose keywords that are either not used by anyone else or very seldom used.  They sometimes go a step further and make sure the longtail keywords they choose include the town where you live, so that only people in your town who search for the full longtail keyword, including your town, will ever find you.  You will almost certainly be at the top of the results for that search, only because there’s no one else competing with you!  But you’ll never get any traffic, either.

That’s why “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies Part 1” was written:  before you can ever hope to make use of search engine optimization, you have to know exactly what it is. Now you know both what SEO is and how important it is, but also the pitfalls to avoid.

All that is left for you to do now is to start!

Let us know what you’re doing for your search engine optimization in the comments. Remember to leave us a link!