While this sounds like a simple process, it’s actually a culmination of lots of little things that you do right in order to get your website optimized.  The bottom line of website optimization is nothing more than getting your site listed within the first pages of a SERP or Search Engine Results Page.

Regardless of what industry you’re in, chances are you’re up against hundreds of thousands if not millions of competitors and at first glance it can seem rather daunting when you’re trying to compete against these other websites.

However, there are some fairly easy processes that you can follow in order to get your web pages properly optimized.  While this is only a fraction of what you can learn in the Bonehead SEO Course, it will help your web pages get moving in the right direction.

Here are just a few tips to help you along the way:

Keywords

By far, the most important first step you need to take is to use those keywords and phrases that people are searching on right now within a search engine.  While you might be tempted to just “guess” at what people are searching on in your industry, don’t.  You want the actual phrases that lots of people are using to find your product or service.

One way to go about this is to use a service such as Wordtracker.  Wordtracker offers a free version as well as a full-fledged paid version (with a 7-day-free-trial).  While you will get more results as well as more details on the keywords you’re researching with the paid version, the free version works just fine if you’re on a tight budget.

Simply visit Wordtracker and enter in a word or phrase that describes the kind of business that you’re in.  What Wordtracker will return to you is a list of those phrases that people are using right now online that include your topic.

It’s these phrases that you want to focus on within your website.

The Title

Once you’ve decided upon a phrase that you’ll be targeting on a web page, you’ll next want to use that phrase in your page’s title.  The title of the page is an extremely important factor in how search engines rank that web page.

If for instance you were targeting the keyword phrase of “website optimization” then you’d want to use “website optimization” in your title tag.

The Heading

Next, you’ll want to use this same phrase in a heading on your web page.  The heading will be one of the first things that a site visitor (and the search engines) will see so you want to be sure it’s contained within a header tag at the top of the page.  Again, use the keywords you chose for the web page within the header.

The Body Text

As you might imagine, the body text of the web page should incorporate the keyword phrase you have chosen for that page.  Use the phrase where necessary but whatever you do, do not “keyword stuff” your web page.

Keyword stuffing means that you use the same phrase you’re optimizing that page for multiple amounts of times.  This often makes the content sound unnatural and the search engines will pick up the fact that you are attempting to trick them by using your keyword multiple times throughout the text.

Instead, just write naturally and incorporate words and phrases related to but not identical to the main keyword phrase you’re working with.

In our example of the keyword phrase “website optimization”, I might use related words such as “website seo”, “seo”, “search engine optimization”, “ranking”, and “conversion.”

Just remember that when you do start optimizing your web pages that you make use of your main keyword phrase you’ve chosen in the appropriate spots on your web page and have also included related words and phrases throughout the content.

This will help get your web pages moving in the right direction.

The nuts and bolts of SEO is the process of getting your website to the top of a search engine results page for your keywords of choice that can drive targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic being website visitors who are actually interested in your stuff and aren’t just out “browsing”.

Your keywords of choice are those words and phrases that people are typing into a search engine to find information on your website’s topic.

While that sounds pretty cut-and-dried, there are a hundred tiny details that go into getting a website in that prime location.  So let’s talk about what some of these tiny little details are exactly.

First, there’s two parts to SEO; on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the process of using your keywords that you have chosen for one of your web pages in strategic places throughout that page.  Note that I said “one of your web pages” not your “web site”.  Each web page within your entire website is ranked differently.  Each web page should be optimized for one or two keywords specifically related to the website topic.

So for instance if you were a store that sold tools, you would have a page optimized for hammers, another page optimized for saws, another page optimized for nails, and so on. All of the pages being part of the same “Tools” website.

Off-Page Optimization is the process of getting links pointing to your web pages.  A lot of people don’t consider off-page optimization part of SEO.  I completely disagree.  The point of optimizing your website for the search engines encompasses all factors.  What you do on your own site as well as what you do to promote that site since the promotion of that site will help you get better search engine rankings.

This off-page optimization is the most time-consuming task of SEO.  It’s the process of getting links to your site, yes, but they have to be the right kind of links; in the right neighborhoods not to mention those links have to have the ability to be seen by thousands of eyeballs that are interested in the information you’re providing. They must be located on pages related to your niche, they must have the right keyword anchor text and so, so much more.

So for those who were interested in what SEO was exactly, there you have it, in the most condensed form I could come up with.  SEO continues to change on a regular basis.  There’s always new strategies, new ideas, new search engine shakeups.  That’s why SEO is so important to the average website.  It’s an ever-evolving process that continues to change as the Internet grows.