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While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) may sound like some kind of advanced calculus problem, it's really just a fancy term for "getting the search engines to like your website".

The bulk of the SEO challenge, is to get the large search engines such as Google and Yahoo to believe that your website has a lot of relevant content, and that it's also recognized by the public. Getting them to believe that, means you've really got to have it!

Let's talk about "content" first. If you want your site selling home-made cookies to show up in the engines, you need to have a lot of separate, high quality pages with info about home-made cookies.

Having just one page with the word "home-made cookies" typed repeatedly, will not help you as much as multiple pages, with multiple topics about home-made cookies. Additionally, having a large quantity of related pages like, "Recipes for Home-Made Cookies" and "Gift Ideas For Home-Made Cookies", will increase your site's relevance to the search engines.

Using a variety of descriptive language in your content is also very important. If you also use phrases like "goodies, baking, treats, desserts, and low fat", you're a lot more likely to draw search results than if you just use the phrase "home-made cookies".

After making sure you have sufficient content, being recognized by the web-surfing public is extremely important. Your popularity helps assure search engines that you're worth being listed towards their top of their search results. The most practical way for companies like Google to track your site's popularity, is by tracking how many other sites link to yours.

It's crucial that a link to your website get onto as many different other sites as possible. But, before you start bombarding the net with your web address, you need to realize that all sites aren't created equal. To get listed on some unknown blogger's site, does not affect your ranking as much as being listed on one of the top 10,000 sites on the net.

Check out Alexa.com, which lists the most trafficked websites on the web. By working through the list and figuring out how to get a link to your site on each of these, your search engine rankings will begin to climb. Some of the sites, like MySpace and Facebook allow you to easily create a personal profile, which includes a link to your company's page.

Lastly, you need to continue this process of adding content and in-bound links for as long as you have your website. Newer content and links rate higher with the search engines than old and stale info.

As you master these basics, and have the time and resources to take your optimization to the next level, you'll want to pick up a good book on search engine optimization. I'd recommend the "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, 2nd edition". It provides bite-sized lessons that you can incorporate as you have time.

Learn more about this author, Ken Clark.
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