If you’re just starting out with SEO, there are some tips that are good to learn early in the game. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It should not be confused with SEM which is Search Engine Marketing. We’ll be looking at SEO, while paid professionals deal with SEM (a combination of SEO and paid placements).

The reason you’ll want to learn about SEO is that it can help your website become more visible. If somebody searches for something in their favorite search engine, and you have a website on that topic, ultimately you want your website to be one of the top choices they are shown. The benefit of having higher rankings in the search engines is gaining more traffic. The more traffic you have, the better chance you have of converting that traffic into sales, or gain more visibility.

If you’re considering creating a website, you’ll want to think about what you’ll be promoting. Is the market oversaturated, or do you offer something different? Now that you’ve got an idea about what you want your website to be about, you’ll need to choose a domain name. This next decision is important. Do you want your site to be a known brand? If you believe your site will be brandable, then you’ll want to choose a domain name that is catchy and matches your brand idea. If you’re not sure if your site is  brandable, or it will be an informational site, then you’ll want to consider using your keywords in your domain name.

Once you’ve chosen a domain name, and secured web hosting, you’ll start to create your website. Some SEO tips you’ll want to include in your new website page are simple things like title tags or heading tags. You’ll include these tags so that search engines know what your page is about. It’s a way to give the search engines clues. You’ll also want to add a description in your meta tags.

Your main home page or index page will be the entry way to your website. It’s important to use your chosen keywords through out your website, and especially on your home page. Again, these are clues for the search engines to understand what your page is about.

When you’re involved in using SEO on your pages, it’s easy to forget that your actual visitors will be people, not search engines. It’s easy to get carried away, and try to do everything you can for search engines. For your website to be appealing, you must offer good, unique content for people, not for the search engines.

Once you get the basics of search engine optimization down, you can move onto to promotion of your website and other more advanced techniques to help you with search engine optimization.