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Quick Guide to SEO for Beginners

Alana | May 9, 2009 | Views: 886 |

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SEO Questions and Answers

Answers to some of the most common questions beginners ask about SEO

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. A method used by website owners to help rank their websites in search engines for particular search terms.

What does SEO really mean?

There are two types of SEO, these are, on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-site SEO means optimizing your site/page for search engines like Google. Off-site SEO is how you promote your site on the web. In other words, Off-site SEO = Links.

Why do I need to use SEO?

Search engines deliver targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is what every online marketer, writer, blogger and webmaster should aim for because targeted traffic equals income. People use the internet to purchase goods and find information, roughly 60% of all searches come through Google. Google delivers the sites that are most relevent. A well optimized site that ranks high for their desired keywords can recieve a large amount of traffic every day for as long as it is ranked high, even if the site is not updated regularly.

This means that if your site is listed high in search engines, your content, affiliate products and advertisements are exposed to traffic everyday, even if you are on holiday your site will still be getting traffic and making profit.

Is SEO hard to learn?

No, SEO can be learned by anyone. How successfull you are depends on how much time and research you are willing to put in. The benefits of ranking well for a profitible search term far out weigh the time invested.

Who uses SEO?

You may be surprised to learn that not every website is optimized for SEO, in fact the majority of website owners know nothing or very little about search engine optimization, which is good news for anyone willing to invest a little time in optimizing their site.

What is white hat and black hat?

White hat SEO is the accepted uses of search engine optimization, black hat SEO is the methods used to manipulate the search engine rankings to rank better, these include cloaking, link farms, doorway pages and many more. Unless you want to be penalised by google and maybe have your site removed entirely from googles index, dont use black hat SEO.

Do I need to hire a professional SEO consultant?

No, although hiring a professional SEO will save you time, there is no secret (as many would like you to believe) to SEO, anybody can learn how to use SEO effectively.

What should I do first?

The first thing anyone should do when starting out is research, keywords, search volume and profitibility of your chosen keywords and so on. Find out as much as you can before you set up your website or blog or in the case of articles research your keywords.

Where can I learn more about SEO for beginners?

These posts explain more about Search Engine Optimization, keywords and on site SEO

On-site SEO for Beginners and SEO Keywords

Tags: SEO for beginners; Search engine optimization for beginners; on-site SEO; What is SEO; Is SEO hard to learn;

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Comments

Lilfix

May 11, 2009 9:45pm

Thank you for explaining SEO to us beginners...we need all the help we can get... ;)

papa0s0

May 12, 2009 8:00pm

Any thought on some of the SEO softwares out there for us beginners, such as seo elite or Lotus Jump?

Alana

May 13, 2009 4:48am

Hi and thanks for your comment

The only tool I use at the moment is one for keyword research, a free program that I have found to be excellent, there is a paid version too but most people won't need it as much of the information you can find for yourself. Check out market samuari.
It is a keyword research tool that gives you information on daily search volume, seo competition, title and URL competition and a lot more, well worth downloading and very easy to use

I have used some SEO plugins for firefox but I found they interfered with my browser so I don't use them anymore.

For beginners the best thing to start with is keyword research and onsite optimization followed by building a few backlinks, once you have done all this and you are starting to see results you can start investigating the competition and watching your stats, but by starting off with the basics and preparing your content you will have a much better idea of what tools would come in usefull later on if any, many are just not necessary

I hope to write an article on building backlinks in the next day or so..

Hope this helps
If you have a site or something you want to optimize drop the URL and I'll have a look at it if you want

Thanks

papa0s0

May 13, 2009 1:36pm

Im working on an animal website [www.animaldanger.com] if you want to have a look. I look forward to your coming article on building backlinks. Thanks!

Alana

May 13, 2009 5:14pm

Hi papa0s0

I like your site, a few things you could add if you want that might help, if you want you contact me via the blog in my profile and Ill send you an email.

Should have the new article out later tonight
thanks