An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

So you want to increase traffic to your site. In the long run, as I’m sure you know, the cheapest way to achieve this is through organic search results on Google, meaning the top results that show up on the left side of the screen, as opposed to payment results. ‘AdWords’ results appearing on the top right of the screen.

I recently saw a very interesting study done on the eye movements of internet users as they scan the Google results page for information. I have attached a link to this study at the bottom of this article so you can see for yourself what a difference being in the top 3 results makes, and if you can make it to the top position, the number one result and can stay there above your competition, well then you probably won’t have to pay for advertising ever again!

Let me tell you a little about myself. I run a magnotherapy company that sells magnetic bracelets to help with arthritis, circulation problems, and other pain relief. It’s not the biggest market out there, but not without its competition. I now know that our product is probably the best there is, as it was developed by the inventor of the world’s only clinically proven bracelet and the current model represents a significant improvement on the previous design, but it’s hard to attract attention to our site because only It’s been live a couple of months. So what course of action is open to me?

After doing a lot of research on SEO, I can draw two main conclusions. Firstly, that there is no quick fix, and secondly, no one really knows the best way to do it!

So what can we do? The first thing to do is learn and understand a bit of theory. Google doesn’t really reveal how the order it displays results works, and it changes the criteria all the time, so it’s wise not to try to get too specific. But the basic principle is this: the more links there are to your site, the better it will work, the higher the quality of those links, the better it will work. So SEO is mostly about link building.

But what constitutes a ‘quality’ link? This is largely based on Google’s “page rank” system, where web pages are ranked from 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. The higher the page rank of the page that contains your link, the higher the quality of the link. You want to make sure you have something in your browser that can tell you the rank of the page you’re on so you have an idea of ​​how good the links you’re building are. There is one of these included in the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The first thing to look at is web directories. These are sites that organize a list of sites into categories to make them easier to navigate, although more often than not it’s more of a system that allows people to get more links to your site. Search Google for a high ranking directory listing and apply to the highest ranking sites, but don’t forget to check the page rank yourself as data changes quickly as some listings will unfairly promote their own sites.
Be careful to avoid what are called ‘link farms’, these are raw site listings, blatantly created with the express intent of nothing more than getting links, and are seen by Google as a covert attempt to rig their system. The worst case scenario for your participation in these sites is the removal of your site from Google. Game over.

Business directories are also a handy place to get links and usually allow you to paste in a web address.
The other technique used mainly to get links is to write and publish articles for article submission sites and include a link back to your site. Now, in theory, these sites provide amateur journalism to magazines, websites, and other outlets, but in practice they’re pretty much just another way to get links.

Once again, check the page rank of the sites you are submitting your articles to. What should you write your articles about? Well, Google takes into account the relevance of the material on the page your link is coming from to the page you are linking to. For example, I would have a better link to a page/article that contains important keywords for my site, such as magnetic bracelets, arthritis, and pain relief, than one about something irrelevant. On the other hand, more people will read an article I write about sex, shopping, or soccer, so it pays to find a balance and try a few different things.

Think about your target audience. I can recommend a program that makes posting articles much easier: go to download.com and download the free m8 clipboard. Search Engine Optimization can be a daunting task for the novice and any attempt to research the subject is invariably met with an abundance of technical jargon. Here is everything you need to know, explained in a simple and straightforward way.

You can also try posting some links on forums, but most of these are controlled by administrators who remove links to commercial sites.

Bottom line, it’s boring, time consuming, and you don’t even know if what you’re doing is working until the links appear on the site you posted (a long time for popular web directories like dmoz) and then Google finds those links. , which could take a couple of months on top of that, but ultimately if you put in the hours you should reap the rewards. (Wait).