Search engine optimization (SEO) is a very important part of building a successful niche site. You likely already do some SEO without even realizing it. Especially if you are using self-hosted WordPress as your platform.  Here is a brief overview of SEO and how it works.

Two Types of SEO

There are two types of SEO. On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. On page SEO is any SEO that you use within your website or blog. Off page SEO refers to any SEO you use outside of your website or blog such as social media, guest blogging, article marketing and link building. Most of your SEO is going to occur right on your site in the form of keywords used on your website or blog.

What are Keywords?

These are search terms that your audience is most likely to use to locate your information. Most of the time people type in two to three words to find the information about the topic they are looking for information about. These are called “long tail” keywords. These are the type of keywords you should focus on.

Where should keywords go?

On your site, keywords should be in the titles of each page and blog posts if you have a blog.  You should also use keywords within the text of the copy on your pages. They should also go on any links on your site, in the title bar, as header text, sub headings, and anchor text. You also want to use keywords in the meta tag description area.    When someone searches for a keyword a nice description appears.

How many keywords should I use?

Try not to use more than two or three different keywords per page of your website and don’t use the same keywords for every page. When you do keyword research try to come up with at least 100 keywords and keyword phrases in which you can focus. Within the copy of your blog, try not to use the keywords more than 2 percent of the time, anything more will be considered keyword stuffing by Google Search.

Off Page SEO

Some people believe that off page SEO is more important than on page SEO. This is an argument for another time. For now, as a beginner, you want to focus on the content you have right on your own website or blog. After you’ve perfected that then you can start focusing on off page SEO in terms of using social media marketing, article marketing, and link building.

Link building is very important in terms of your search results because if you have plenty of high quality links going to your site, from other people sharing your information on social media your ranking will go up. Pay close attention to who links to you as well as who you link out to. Google tries to match these links to ensure that your site is what you say it’s about. You want others linking into your site to agree with your description so that Google wants to return search results that include your website or blog.

In upcoming posts,  you will learn more about SEO and some tools to automate your SEO.