by Thu Nguyen

Created on: September 18, 2010   Last Updated: September 20, 2010

SEO, otherwise known as the acronym for search engine optimization, is a term that has quickly evolved mainstream as website making became more prominent. This is particularly true for hobbyists who want to increase the chances for their own sites to be seen without consulting an expensive professional. So as the need carried on to learn more about ranking well in search engines, through documentation and free reports, what users learned is SEO isn't hard at all. With a little practice, the basics of SEO can be done by anyone young and old. Furthermore it is best defined through the three C's - coding, content and communication.

CODING

Every website has three prominent areas which the search engines will want to crawl over:

- the title
- keywords
- meta description

It is suggested that only a few keywords are used to enhance the content you put out. These words should also be presented in the title with a maximum of 2-3 times more inside each article. If there happens to be anymore, the risk of your site turning towards a spam site is probable. Overall, you don’t want to encounter something called ‘keyword stuffing’.

So the importance of SEO lies in presenting these coded areas clearly. Especially within the description when your content is searched for, you want to present to the reader a couple of sentences on what the information is about. If no description is presented, the first few sentences of the article will be seen. This will risk you of a potential click-through as it isn’t attractive to find a search bringing back fragments of the content with a lot of ellipses.

CONTENT

No matter how much argument there is about quality over quantity, when your site is updated frequently, as in the case with blogs, there is more of a chance for better rankings. This normally helps down the line when you feel that monetizing the content is something to branch towards. Not only is this great for you as a business owner, but also for your advertisers who will see if the activity on your site is negotiable. Thus, quantity matters here, at least once a day when it comes to content.

On the other hand, the quality of what you provide will be more dependent on your readers. What they like will be visible in the comments or feedback. This leads us to our next point - communication.

COMMUNICATION

Now that you have set up the title, keywords and description of your site as well as for each content, social marketing it outside the site will be the next step. During this process, having social accounts on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and so on can help project your content to new readers.

At first, it will start with your inner circle of friends and family but as retweets, likes and more shares are promoted through these networks, the connections will eventually increase. Your chances then for being seen can become viral. Furthermore, your site at this moment may experience a surge in traffic.

Overall, SEO is not rocket science. It starts with basic steps that begins inside the website towards the content and finally promoting it outside to other networks. In a sense, it’s almost relevant to real life. So without instilling any buzz to your flagship, a site would be as good as nothing.

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