SEO stands for search engine optimization these are some basic guide lines for getting noticed by search engines for organic search which means the results of the search are not by means of paid advertising but are occurring naturally. SEO can be tricky and this is just basic info for getting started most of SEO is common sense. The list below is basic and agreed on by all of the SEO community. This article is for a basic small business website written in a language such as HTML / CSS .
When you have finished all of your research and have a design planed out here are some basic guidelines to go by
1. Get a URL / website address that are easy for people to remember and tells what you are about. If you are selling leather hand bags then leather handbags.com is surely taken you have to be creative but have your key word in your URL as of this writing LEATHERHANDBAGSFORU.COM is available on godaddy for 9.95 a year.
2. Use of a good title for your home page this is what will show up in the search results. For example instead of a page title like products have a page title like genuine leather handbags.Your file name can be different from the title on your page.
3. Submit your site to the 3 major search engines and directories for a list of directories do a search for them using your key word there are also local directories.
4. Good Links from other websites quality over quantity here you want links. Submitting your site to directories if you are just starting out will help. Reciprocal links will help but one way links are better getting one way links are more difficult a fast way would be to buy them but now Google has decided it is unfair and may get you knocked off of Google. One solution is to post comments on high quality blog sites including a link to your site. Writing articles with your page link.
5. Use your Meta tags key words tag which tells the search engines what is on your page.
Description tag which tells what your site is about this also shows up in the search results just under your title.
6. Always have a site map site maps show all of your pages to search engines. Have a HTML sitemap for your vistors and an XML site map for indexing purposes .Use HTML for H1 and H2 these are your heading tags keep your css in separate file.
7. Content Rules the more the better. Search engines like websites which provide information if your site is an information site keep it up to date with fresh content. If your site is an E-Commerce site have some free information and tips.
8. Remember you are building a website for your visitors so no flash intro keep flash out all together large companies can get away with it but when your just starting I recommend a clean fast loading pages.
9. Learn some basic HTML and CSS use of CSS provides clean fast loading of pages if you don’t know anything about design you can use a template provided by most hosting companies you can often find free ones you will just have to tweak them to your style. If your website is e-commerce or requires special programming you will have to hire a designer/ programmer first again research what you want then it’s much easier to relay that information to a programmer.