Letter to Danielle - SEO 101 by webeno #1

Danielle,

Basically you can devide SEO into 2 main groups: on-site and off-site SEO

On-Site SEO

If a website developper knows something about that there are some basic things they can do on the website for better SEO: 12 Basic On-Site SEO Tactics (Click Here!)

Off-Site SEO

To raise the ranking of a site, probably the most important thing is BACKLINKS - this means, you have to have as many links TO YOUR website from OTHER sites as possible; the more you have, the better it is. Of course some sites may be blocked for exaggerating, that's why we have to place them on websites, that are well known and already did the SEO work for you. Of course, the more relevant the site is to the profile of your website, the better it is.

If you know something about HTML or are at least a little bit interested, the basic code for placing a link on a website (look for menus like "Edit HTML" or "add HTML widget"):
(click in the box to highlight the code for copy)<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/">The name of my website</a>

So let me list you some well SEO optimized websites where you should register and setup a blog, site, post, whatever the services that particular website is providing (you'll understand as soon as you register):

- Blogs
Blogger.com - maybe the best known blogging site (existing google account holders don't even have to register); create a blog, and upload some posts (should be at least 2-3, otherwise it might be blocked as being a spam blog - happened to me already) - important: find as many places as possible to place a link to your site.
WordPress.com - they definitely compete with Blogger, they're both actually the biggies, kind of sharing the first place we could say.
TypePad - i haven't created any blogs here yet but I can see this blogging site many times.
Zimbio.com - you can link your blog to this website and it will post it here automatically anytime you add a new post to your blog.

- Web 2.0 - sites where you can create a page with basically any kind of subject (and add your links ;)
hubpages.com
squidoo.com
... (there are much more, these 2 are the ones I used)

- articles
one of the best methods: it's basically writing an article for an online magazine. Look for the word 'ezine' in google, the first is the most known / relevant, but there are, again, many-many.

- video
probably the best: create a short and if possible somewhat fun or funny video and post it on YouTube (the biggest!), MetaCafe (i didn't hear about it before, but we never had as many watchers for any of our videos than there!), Vids.MySpace.com, Video.Yahoo.com, DailyMotion.

- forums
try to look for forums that relate to your website, register on the forums and post replies or start threads and add your link into your signature or, wherever possible, to your profile .

- social networks & bookmarks:
facebook (create a group or a page and promote your website for free), myspace, twitter, digg, delicious, LinkedIN, Propeller, StumbleUpon... (you can find a pretty complete list if you go HERE and on the top right corner in the 'Bookmarks & Mehr' box you click on 'Mehr').

Would you place just one link on these websites, your ranking would be flying high. note: you may not necessarily find your website in first, but if there's a video or an article result that links to your website, that's at the end only doing good for whatever you're promoting.

Wish you all the best!

webeno