You’ve heard a lot about it, search engine optimization, or SEO.  It’s the concept of tactfully changing your website or blog so that search engines are more likely to put it at the top of their results page when users search for keywords that describe it.  At Bailey Gardiner, we often take on clients’ websites to optimize them for search.  We do everything from analyzing current analytics to niche keyword research to making the changes and requesting inbound links.  While this is a job that can be best done by an expert (and quite truthfully simply requires a lot of time), I wanted to share with you how you can get started on doing SEO on your own.

These tips are most applicable for those with a blog or a website that offers consistently updated content.

Find keywords and take them seriously

Research the best keywords to use (try WordTracker) and incorporate them heavily but without being obvious to the user.  Include them in your URL, your headlines, your hyperlinks and throughout your text.  If your site is full of the same keyword the user enters in their Google search, your site will come up towards the top of the results.  It’s the most basic element of SEO and you will go nowhere without it.

Add content

If you don’t seem to have a place to naturally include those keywords that best describe the niche of your site, then make one.  Consider FAQ’s, Q&As, user reviews and a newsroom.

Submit your content to others’ sites

Offer to guest blog or submit a bylined article.  An inbound link to your site from a credible and same-industry blog or from a respected news source will count with more “points” towards your SEO than a link from a small or unknown site.

Link to yourself

Linking to your own internal pages helps steer the search engines throughout your site.  If you have one page that performs especially well but doesn’t show up often in search results, link to that one often from your own site to give it a boost.

Digg it

Links to your site tell search engines that others value your site.  When you put new content on your blog or website, immediately digg it.  That means going to http://digg.com creating a profile and digging your content.  Remember, this is a social media site so its best to digg others’ content too, but at the very least, it’s putting your content out for the public and sharing it without you having to do all the work.

Bookmark it

This is yet another way to bring inbound links. There are a lot of social bookmarking sites out there but one of the most popular is http://delicious.com.  It allows you to make a list of your favorite sites and share it. This tells search engines that someone values your website.  Each inbound link counts as “points” toward your SEO.

Share it with your networks

My guess was that you weren’t already on Digg or delicious.  My guess is that you are on Facebook, email and perhaps Twitter.  Your content should be shared with those networks as well, with the hope that those links will soar through the social media sphere leading back to your content again and again.

These are a few of the basic steps you can take to get started.  Know that there is a lot more to it and it’s an industry that is constantly changing so to really make a jump from page 10 to page one of Google may not be simply attainable on your own.

For more info on how to do SEO, start with the Google Webmaster Central, where you can download a helpful starter’s guide.