Search Engine Optimization Tips: When It Comes To Search Engine Optimization, Only A Few Tips Matter

Many people today want search engine optimization tips to help them to cut through the clutter of all the bogus information out there and get their sites to the top. Nowadays, there are many people on the internet claming to be search engine experts.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of them know very little about what it really takes to get a site to the top of the search engines. Hopefully the following information will help to debunk some myths about the search engine and help you get your site ranked as quickly as possible.

First of all, here is a brief explanation of what search engine optimization is, and why it is so important for your site. There are essentially two basic ways to generate traffic on the internet-pay per click and free organic search engine traffic. There are obviously more than this, but these are by far the most popular, so I will focus on these for this article.

Pay per click results are the results you see that show up on the right side when doing a search in any of the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, or MSN. These people are paying a specific amount every time somebody clicks on the link to their site.

The listings on the left are known as the free results, or the organic listings. These people have gotten to the top because the search engine deem their page as one of the top ten most relevant web pages for that particular keyword search.

So what are the most important factors the search engines look for in ranking each site? Keep in mind, while on page factors are certainly crucial, such as Title tags, header tags, good keyword density throughout the page, etc, by far the most important factors are off page. These are how many links are pointing to your website, and more specifically, one way links.

You see, in the older days of the search engines, you used to be able to get ranked simply by doing almost exclusively reciprocal linking, where you link to a site and they point back to you. However, almost every major search engine expert agrees these carry far less weight than they used to; no, they won’t hurt you, but I certainly wouldn’t waste my time going out and getting these.

The only ones that really matter nowadays are one way links-other sites pointing to your site without the benefit of a link back. This is akin to them voting for your site and the more votes you have, the more important your site is to the search engines.

Of course, remember that, depending on how competitive the keyword you are targeting, you might not need any links at all pointing to your site; simple on page factors will be enough. However, the more competitive the keyword you plan on targeting, the more links you will need pointing to your site if you want to rank. It’s just that simple.