1. Add content to your website everyday
Content is the single most important thing any website owner can add to drive targeted traffic to their website.
A page of good keyword optimized content will do more for you than five links from Google PR6 websites.
Answer your website's email, market with a newsletter, and participate daily on the Internet as much as you can, such as forums and blogs.
The Internet is a popularity party; the more popular your website, the higher in the results pages you will soon find it.
Make sure you are writing keyword enriched content for your website.
Keyword enriched means using your keyword term about three to four times per page of content.
Since most pages will only be able to rank on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for two keyword terms, concentrate on writing about the two terms that match the content theme and your traffic goals.
Check your keywords here.
Search engine spiders cannot store much more than that per page. If your content is over 1000 words, try to add a few hundred more words and then split it into two pages.
Each page could be based on one of your keywords.
Remember that content is king, and Google loves content. You can never have too much content.
The problem is that many people have to little content on their sites.
Consider where you will use your content. Some is best used on your website, of course; however you can also use content to give away as articles with links back to your site.
If your site is climbing the search engine charts, you know that your copy and code are winners.
2 Statistical Monitoring and Web Analysis
You need some sort of analysis software to track your visitors' habits when they come to your website, or you will need to learn how to use the tools provided by your Web host.
These statistics tell you valuable information which can help you optimize your website for your users, which is what search engine optimization is meant to be when it is reduced to its basic core.
You will also need a way to monitor your website's keyword ranking results in the various search engine and directory results pages.
With these reports you can see which pages need tweaking in order to increase the ranking results.
5. Site Design and Usability
This is probably the single largest inhibitor to most sites ranking well on the search engines.
Beautiful looking Web pages constructed from a couple hundred little images, or that nice Flash-based website, are very pleasing to the eye -- however, nether will do very well in most competitive categories in the search engines.
The site with all the images will take forever to load, and the flash sites can't be crawled by the search spiders very well.
Google loves speed! Their spiders measure how long it takes to return results for your search query, and it is usually done in fractions of a second.
Your website must also load this quickly for your users.
Separate the content of your site from its presentation using cascading style sheets (CSS) where possible.
This page is an example of CSS and loads super quick with clean coding.
Often search engine bots stop reading after 50 lines, and for many sites those lines could be all code.
When considering what users like, simple wins over bells and whistles. Keep a simplistic approach to the design.
Make sure to use lots of white space and definitive calls to action for your users.
6. Sensible Website Structure and navigation
Be sure to set up your website in a sensible manner, with folders named for your keyword terms.
These folders should include relevant files and file names that relate to your chosen keyword term.
Your site's navigation and ease of use are factors that will also help you win or lose in the Internet-based business world.
Your website needs clear and concise calls to action, to draw the visitor further into your site. A site with 100 visitors a day that all stay on the home page will be out of business before it has a chance to start.
Search engine optimization uses techniques specifically for gaining high ranking in the search engines.
Too often website form overpowers website function.
You get a good looking website that no one knows exists. I talk about this in Purchasing a website This is woefully common on the internet.
High ranking should be the goal of every website, particularly if you wish to generate an income off it.
However these tricks and hints are not often employed by web site designers, and search engine optimization remains an esoteric activity, when in fact its easy for anyone to implement
The internet holds an abundance of help in this area. However I recommend this site Search Engine Forums with good people and helpful tips.
This excellent article is summarized from Clint Dixon on seochat.com. These techniques can be performed on a new or existing website.
3. Submit your site to search engines
After the site is online and working completely, you should start to submit it to the search engines and directories.When considering your submission to Google, you might want to get a link to your site from a site being indexed by Googlebot already.
Some observers speculate that allowing Google to find you through a link is better than submitting your site to Google. Make sure to submit manually to DMOZ.
If you have the money, pay for inclusion into Yahoo.com's Directory listings.
4. Basic Search Engine Optimization
This point covers the basic search engine optimization of your website's pages.Use you primary keyword term and two secondary terms at least once each in the following areas:
- title tag,
- meta description tag,
- meta keywords tag,
- URL,
- folder name,
- file name,
- and one time each in the image alt tags of the top three images on your page,
- three to four times in the page content at the top,
- once in the middle and close to the bottom of the last paragraph of content.
Use keyword terms as links to other pages on your site or to other well-ranked authority sites in your industry.
Use it in your head line tag, once in bold and once in italic font. You can even go so far as to underline the keyword terms one time on each page.
Don't get hung up on the PageRank
For many people getting a higher PageRank (as seen on the Google bar) is a mark of success. However the Google representative notes that:
"We have a bank of machines that computes PageRank continuously, but we only export new visible PageRanks every 3-4 months or so."
So take little notice of changes in your PageRank, or in trying to reach a certain PageRank level. Just focus on making good pages.