5 Search Engine Optimization Strategies for Newbies

Search engine optimization is a lot easier than you think. Although you need to gather a certain amount of information about your site, preferably before you build your site, once you have the right information, you can quickly and easily build a search engine optimized website that will get you traffic.

Below are five tips for optimizing and submitting your site to the search engines:

1. Know your market.

This step is absolutely crucial. You need to know exactly who you are marketing your business to. If you don't, you can't drive targeted traffic to your site.

The difference between targeted and untargeted traffic is glaring. Targeted traffic comes from those who are looking for your products and services. If you know exactly who you are marketing to, you'll optimize your site for that market.

2. Target the right keywords.

Target the wrong keywords and no one will find you. That's why it is really useless to use marketing tools like doorway pages.

The first thing you need to do is understand what your visitors are searching for.

The keyword terms you may want to optimize for, and what your potential customers are actually searching for, can be different.

Tools like Good Keywords, http://www.goodkeywords.com, can help you find out what others are searching for. The more times that a keyword or keyword term is searched for the better. To determine if you have a lucrative term, do a search in the search engines for the term. Make sure that you search for the exact term.

The more times a term is searched for, and the fewer the sites in the search engines, the more lucrative the term.

3. Learn search engine optimization.

When I first started marketing online, I read all of the guru stuff about buying banners, advertising, etc. The problem was that I just starting out. I was trying to make money, not give away everything that I had.

After becoming a search engine optimization marketer, I felt betrayed. Most of these people didn't talk about search engine optimization because they didn't do it. They simply took offline marketing techniques and adapted them to the internet.

Search engine optimization is one of those rare marketing techniques that has no corresponding offline marketing technique.

It's an online technique. Period. If you want to be successful at it, then you need to learn how to do it. It's not that hard.

One tool that can help you is Web CEO, http://www.webceo.com. This free software works for both PC and Mac. It includes all of the tools you need to optimize your site, and it's free. It even includes step by step documentation to teach you search engine optimization: what works, what you need to know, and steps you can take to improve your rankings.

Read the documentation for this software, and you'll know the most important things you need to know about optimizing your site for the search engines.

4. Optimize your site for the search engines.

Once you've learned the basics of search engine optimization, then it's time to optimize your site for the search engines.

Start by selecting your keywords. You can use the Good Keywords software to help you.

You should optimize for no more than three keyword terms per page.

Once you have your keywords, plug your site into Web CEO. Remember, you are optimizing pages, not your site.

Analyze your site and see what changes you need to make. Once you've done that, you can edit and reload or upload your site to the internet.

5. Submit your site to the search engines.

There's some disagreement on whether or not you should submit your site to the search engines, or whether you should just wait for the search engine spiders to find you.

I stand in the camp that says submit. The reason is that these search engines don't always update the way they should, and although they claim that they will find your site, they may not.

I know this because I had one site that had never been found by MSN eventhough it was linked to all of my other sites and all of my other sites were fully included in MSN.

There are only five places that I recommend you submit, and you should do this manually. Although Web CEO has a submission tool, it's better to submit your site manually.

Below is my list of where to submit your site:

Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/continue=/addurl
MSN/Inktomi - http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm (Includes Inktomi)
MSN - http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Yahoo - http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
Alexa - http://pages.alexa.com/help/webmasters/index.html
Exactseek - http://www.exactseek.com/add.html

These sites cover most of the internet. Before you submit, there are a few things you should know:

1. Alexa is part of Google search. You will get better results submitting here first. This site also allows you to include a thumbnail of your site. You will also get indexed faster.

2. Read the information on each site for getting included. The best way to learn how to market in any search engine is to read the information offered by the site. You'll pick up valuable free tips directly from the source.

3. Once you've submitted your site, forget about it. Concentrate on building quality content and links to your site.

Once you've built a site of around 100 pages, start another one on a topic you are passionate about. Continue adding content to the site or sites you've already built. Keep repeating this process, and you'll achieve success in the search engines: targeted traffic, more sales, and a reputation for providing quality content.