What is SEO? Well, it is short for “Search Engine Optimization.” The intention is to optimize your website so that search engines rank your website a lot higher in result pages for particular keywords or phrases. There are many different aspects to the optimization process classed as either “on-page” or “off-page” SEO.

On Page SEO – This form of SEO is still encouraged by the likes of Google despite their aim to punish any “over optimized” websites. The fact is you want to be able to tell Google and other search engines that your website is related to certain topics through utilizing the keywords you want to rank for.

The use of the keywords in Titles, headlines and within the content itself is important. H1, H2 and H3 tags should be used with keywords included, and you should at least look to include keywords within article to show that the content is associated with that topic. Google’s crawlers do tend to look beyond these keywords and phrases to find what your website is related to but you would be wise to include a keyword in at least a 1% density, meaning 5 keywords for everyone 500 words.

This sort of SEO should not be overdone however as Google has started a new algorithm called Penguin which penalizes websites which “over optimize” their websites through adding keywords to content which is completely un-related.

Off Page SEO – This use to be done through link building but these techniques are becoming more and more outdated because of Google’s Panda algorithm updates. Link building such as through article marketing, blog comments, forum profiles and through blog networks has all been hit hard by Google as they try to make their search engine more helpful to users.

They are trying to encourage a greater user experience and therefore are not looking for websites, which artificially increase their rankings through such methods and have no other relevant or valuable content to offer. They are looking towards more natural link building methods as ranking indicators.

You are best advised to start finding other websites in your niche market to write guest posts for. These type of links are highly valued for SEO purposes. In addition, social links such as Facebook shares, Twitter retweets and social bookmarks are becoming more significant in organic search results. The Panda algorithm is looking for such indicators of relevant, quality content and these social factors demonstrate you are adding value because people are sharing your content and think it is worth reading.

It is then very important to actually write, insightful, interesting content to get such social links. Your SEO will improve immeasurably if you take this advice on board and implement a content marketing strategy as well as the other methods outlined above. SEO is changing massively and you don’t want to miss out by using techniques which only damage your website rather than improve. Utilize these SEO secrets and become the dominant player in your niche market!