by Thu Nguyen

Created on: August 13, 2010

Everyone wants to have a voice on the net but the few who master it have considered putting in the time to learn search engine optimization (SEO) online. Whether it’s making money, building an e-mail list or sharing great content, it starts with some basic know-how. The first place it will begin is within your site’s overall coding.

There are special plugins which can be help you with this. Especially WordPress users, the

All-In-One SEO Pack can insert the three main areas of concentration which identifies you on search engines clearly - title, description, meta keywords.

* Title *

No matter how good your content is, if you don’t have a title which explains thoroughly what your article is about in a clear and concise manner, users who are searching online may not click through. In fact, you want to think like a user who’s doing the search and give them the answer which they’re searching for.

As you’re writing your content, including the keyword again at least twice is good practice to help the search engine spiders crawl your article through the ranks. While the title itself is the shortest part of your content, you’ll be surprise to know that it’s where 80% of the click-through will be made. That’s because most users online read through scanning so if the title is something which does not give them reason to read more, it will be easily passed by.

* Description *

Search engines by default will gather the first few lines of your content and display it as the description for users. It may be a good idea to describe within one sentence or two what the content will provide. Not only that, giving the user an incentive to read further will help the search engines rank you higher. Thus, you’re telling them what the content is without giving it away.

This is helpful for searches which are made by readers who frequently scans to find the information they want. Overall, it works for both the users and search engines because when you provide the content which appeals to both, it is considered more valuable than the keywords which you optimize with next. Consider it as killing two birds with one stone.

* Meta-Keywords *

Your site itself carries on it’s own keywords. Besides the individual pages which are interspersed within, the purpose of your content, name of the owner or relevant topics must be visible. This is kind of a double-blade sword as most consultants will look behind your page at the source and when they find the relevant keywords, they will want to compete with you. So there is no way to overcome this but to claim your keywords and the earlier you do it the better.

You will find that there are many ways to go about doing keyword research online but the most prominent source which all search engine optimizing enthusiast will agree on is Google’s Keyword Tool. Whether it’s finding out what competition you’re up after or building a list for your next research, when you’re building content, knowing what keywords to capitalize on and writing content around it provides genuine search results.

Overall, the quality of the article are more valuable when it gives the user what they want or satisfies them in some particular way. The ultimate SEO factor of them all is feedback. Incoming comments and sharing of the content starts the linking process which spreads out your influence among many other sites online. The importance of SEO and the quality of your online success will then be measured by popularity and not code. Until then, optimizing your site through the title, description and meta-keywords are good practices to start.

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