In this article I will describe the complete progress of optimizing a website, starting from scratch. After reading this, you should be able to do it yourself and get high ranking on search engine.
Research your market
The first step about SEO is to find out what your target audience usually uses to do their search. For example, if you are in health industry and focusing on weight loss, you need to find out what kind of words people usually use to do their searching. You can find that information by using Google keyword tool. This is a keyword tools developed officially by Google to let people find out what search queries Google are received everyday. The key here is to find one main keyword that is relevant to your market, yet it is not very competitive in search engine. Beside main keyword, you should also find 25 relevant keywords for content creation purpose, which will be discussed later on.
Create a website
After having the main keyword, the next step is to create a website that has content about this keyword. The ideal situation is that your domain name should contain your targeted keyword also. Remember don’t get too fancy on the website. Flash animation should also be avoided in your website because it is very difficult for search engine to know the content of your flash. You are strongly recommended to use existing content management system to facilitate the creation of website. This step should probably take the least time to complete.
Create contents
The next step is to create content. It can be an article talking about the main targeted keyword, or a video that demonstrate how stuff works, or how problem should be solved. At this stage you will use those 25 keywords you found in the first step to create 25 pieces of content, one keyword for one article. Each keyword should be part of the article title, and being mentioned 2 – 3 times in the article. After completing this step, you site is optimized to some extend already.
Getting links to website
After you launch your website, usually it will not get traffic immediately. You need to tell the world, especially search engine, the existence of your website. You do this by several ways.
You submit your site to search engine. This is the easiest, effortless and free method that people usually use. However, it is also the most inefficient way to allow search engine to find your site.
Using social bookmarking site to bookmark your website. This is another free and quite efficient method to get traffic and being added by search engine.
Post your website link on popular forum: Probably one of the most efficient way to get instant and targeted traffic to your website. It can also allow search engine to add your site fast. The drawback is that the traffic flow may not last for long time.
Publishing article: This is another very efficient, no cost and long lasting method to get traffic and being found by search engine. When people want more information after reading your article, they can find you through the link in the resource box at the end of the article.
Remember, getting links to your website is a non-stop progress. You are facing a lot of competition every minute on the Internet. If you do not get links to your website for a short period of time, chances are you have already being surpassed by other competitors already.
If you think that you are too busy to do research, prepare contents, create website and get links, you can always find other people to do that for you. You only need to discuss with them about your requirements and they will usually provide good solution to you.