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The goal of every webmaster is to achieve the best traffic levels possible for their website. The best way to do this is with search engine optimization. This is the process of optimizing your web pages for search engines to help them rank better in search results. This article is designed to help you teach that process starting from the ground up; including both on-page and off-page optimization. Let me be straight forward in that this article does not contain every single thing you can do. The concept of over optimization is real and you do not want to make your web pages so search engine friendly so that they appear weak to actual human visitors.

On-Page Optimization (This should be in a H2 heading tag)

The concept of on-page optimization is simple and straight forward. This is the actual process of making your web pages search engine friendly and helping them achieve the best results possible. This is also the easiest part of search engine optimization since it is usually only done one time and to make things as easy as possible should be done during the initial creation of the website. Let us begin to dive deeper into search engine optimization.

Title Tags (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

The title tag is located in the document head element; this is basically the title of your web page and will appear in search engine results and will appear at the top of the visitors web browser. You really want to try and keep this both friendly to search engines and to visitors. A title tag stuffed with keywords will not perform well in actual search result click conversions because it is not human friendly. The method this author is going to recommend is the keyword slash informational method. Let us say we have a web page related to cat food and that sells cans of food. The primary keyword we want to rank for is cat food. Below is an example of an optimal title tag for both search engines and visitors.

Cat Food - Learn About & Buy Cat Food Online

The above title tag is straight forward and contains the main keyword twice, once in the very beginning and once at the very end. It also tells a human exactly what the web page is about and what it contains. Do not worry about adding in too much information into the title tag; this can be done with the meta description tag that is described below.

Meta Description Tags (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

The meta description tag is located in the document head element; and this is basically the generally description of the web page. This should cater to both search engines and human visitors. Using the same example about cat food you will find below an example of a proper meta description.

Cat Food R Us is the premier leader in online cat food sales and providing consumers with information regarding different brands of cat food.

As you can see above the meta description is short, sweet and to the point. It contains our primary keyword twice and tells humans exactly what is located on the web page. Always try to keep your meta description around 150 characters or less.

Heading Tags (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

Heading tags are placed in the body element; and they are used to structure specific sections of content. This is easy to describe much like chapters do in a book; since they are used to describe the specific chapter they provide direct information about the content following them. Now, there are a few different heading tags, h1 all the way to h6. Most of the time you will never need to beyond the h3 heading tag, however in some cases it may be applicable. The below example is how heading tags are used to structure content and how they are useful to visitors and search engines

< h1>Cat Food Information< /h1>

Content on Basic Information on Cat Food

< h2>Main ingredients in Cat Food< /h2>

Content About the Different Ingredients in Cat Food

< h3>About Taurine in Cat Food< /h3>

Content About the ingredient Taurine in Cat Food

< h2> Major Brands of Cat Food< /h2>

Content About the Different Brands of Cat Food

< h3>About the Pet Paws Brand< /h3>

Content About the Brand Pet Paws

As you can see above the whole concept of heading tags is to structure your content; this helps search engines know what specific snippets of content are related to, it also gives humans a good idea of what that specific content is about. Proper use of heading tags is crucial in on-page search engine optimization and is also the most abused. Make sure to use it properly as followed in this article.

Internal Linking (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

The concept of internal linking is quite simple; this is the process of internally linking your web pages to one another. This helps search engines index all your web pages and also helps visitors find different sections of your website. Of course you will have a navigational menu located somewhere on your web page. However, it is also a good idea to add internal links directly into your content. Not only does this help search engines learn more about what your web page is about and correlates to, it also helps readers find sections of your website easily. Do not forget to also use proper anchor text. Consider using the primary keyword you are trying to rank for followed by home or homepage instead of using home from the anchor text of your homepage

Image Optimization (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

Many webmasters fail to properly optimize their images and lose out on traffic from Google Image searches. This is done via the actual image file name and 'alt' attribute. Below is an example of how to properly optimize an image that is of a cat eating Whiskies cat food.

'File name: cat-eating-whiskies-cat-food.jpg'

'Alt Attribute: A black and white cat eating whiskies cat food in a bowl'.

Actual HTML: < img src="/images/ cat-eating-whiskies-cat-food.jpg" alt=" A black and white cat eating whiskies cat food in a bowl. ">

It is generally a good idea to add content around or near the image related directly to it. This is generally done by wrapping text around an image or adding a caption below the image.

Special HTML Text (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

It is a good idea to use bold and italicize HTML codes around some of your primary keywords on your web page. Make sure not to abuse this and only do it once or twice; the best way to do this is to have it done like you are trying to emphasis something to the reader. You will find this will also get readers to pay special attention to a specific area of content.

Off-Page Optimization (This should be in a H2 heading tag)

The concept of off-page optimization is very simple; this is the process of building back links. This article will go over a few of the many different methods of building back links. Some are better than others and they are in no specific order. This is just a generalization to help you figure out the best methods to build back links.

Writing & Submitting Articles (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

Article writing is the process of writing articles and submitting them to article directories. This is a great way to build relevant unique back links and also bring relevant traffic to your website. The BEST way to maximize the efficiency of writing articles is to write a unique article each time; DO NOT submit the same article to multiple article directories. Content scrappers and article re-publishers will do this for you. Also, make sure to inject as many links as allowed by the article directory. However, do not link to your homepage only; for each link available link to a different web page. You will be wasting links if you do them all to the same web page; also it looks more natural to have links to all your web pages. Do not forget to use proper anchor text; primarily the best method with anchor text is to use the exact keyword or keyword phrase you are trying to rank for. Just make sure to change up the anchor text from time to time; this is done easily by aiming for other relevant keywords.

Blog Commenting (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

Blog commenting is quite simple. This is the process of commenting on blogs and leaving a back link to your website. You want to only comment on blog posts that are relevant to your website and a good way to find blog posts is via the Google Blog Search website. Just type in keyword or keyword phrases to find blog posts related to them. When leaving blog comments you want to leave a useful comment or it will be flagged as spam and deleted. I suggest always commenting with 2 to 3 sentences and putting your back link in the content rather via the name and website text fields. Some blogs do not allow in-content links and you will have to settle with the name and website text fields. This is a good initial method to build back links, however it should not be your primary method.

Link Exchange (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

A link exchange is when two webmasters are able to exchange links between their websites. You can find websites to exchange links with by doing a simple Google Search on the keyword or keyword phrase you are trying to rank for. This will give more value to the link exchange itself since that site already ranks for that keyword. Try not to go overboard with link exchanges; I would not exchange links with more than 100 sites if possible, and then only with sites which are related with my site theme. Remember to always use proper anchor text when exchanging links.

Back link Building Summary (This should be in a H3 heading tag)

The three above methods to build back links are far from all the options available. You can also consider doing forum signatures, social bookmarking, free blog networking and so forth. You can do a few Google Searches on "back link building", "back ink building methods" and so on to find other alternate ways to build back links.