SEO is shorthand for search engine optimization. This is how you tell the search engines what your site is all about so they show your website in the results when people search. While the ranges of SEO techniques are beyond the scope of this article, there are a few things that you should definitely be paying attention to.
Keywords are your main point to being optimizing your website. This is the exact phrase that people will type into a search bar. Your goal will be to be the first site that pops up in the results for the keyword phrases you are targeting. Once you have determined which keywords to focus on, you need to put them where the search engines are sure to see them.
Your keyword phrase should be in your site’s title, first of all – the closer to the beginning, the better. You will also need to use it throughout the content but don’t go overboard. Years ago, webmasters were jamming keywords in every other word and that is now frowned on and known as keyword stuffing. The search engines can see through that and your rankings will go down if you try this today. A good range would be from 1% to 3% keyword density. In other words, for every 100 words of content, your keyword phrase should be used 1 to 3 times.
Backlinks are a large part of SEO today. This is when another site links to your site. Each link is like another vote for the relevance of your site. Backlinks from related, high authority websites are given more weight in this voting system so that should always be your main focus when obtaining backlinks.