The Basics of SEO

New to SEO? Here's 10 simple SEO strategies you can apply to help improve your site ranking:

1. Learn the Basics
Read and learn from various sources. Books, forums, blogs, anything that teaches fundamentals of search engine optimization gives you idea how and where to start. Optimizing a website for search engines requires understanding, time and patience. It is not something you can learn overnight. When you're new to search engine optimization, applying the basic principles is the key. Start by giving priority to the page(s) that are most important to you then go from there. As you go along and learning more, you will then notice that your site is moving up the rankings.

2. The Meta Tags
What's in the Meta Tags and why they are important? Meta Tags are simple lines of codes at the top of your web page programming that gives information to the search engines about a particular page of your site. They are the title, keyword, robot and description tags on each of your websites page.

3. SiteMap
Creating and updating a sitemap is another important factor. It helps search engines navigate or crawl easily to your entire site. If you do not know how to manually create a sitemap, references on sitemap builder software are all over the internet. Ones created, submit your sitemap to major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

4. HTML Navigation
Most navigational items are in the form of java script. To make sure that they will be optimized, create your navigation in an HTML format to enhance internal links throughout your website.

5. All Images in ALT text
Your images? alt text is spidered by search engines. If you're not including your keywords in alt text, you're missing out on a huge opportunity for improved search engine result placements. Label all of your images properly.

6. Website must be Clean Coded
When optimizing a webs page, keep in mind that crawlers are looking at your source codes. Make sure that when programming your web pages, it makes all the difference when codes are W3C compliant. Before promoting, make sure you run your code through W3C validator.

7. Keywords in the Page Content
Search engines checks your website and web pages for relevant keywords. Make it point if you can to use keywords with a density between two and eight percent being ideal. Google prefers your page to be at the lower end of this scale and Yahoo the other way around.

8. The Use of Flash
Avoid using flash if you can. Flash looks good for presentation but not search engine friendly. If cannot be avoided, use it in moderation or cautiously and only when your site has already been properly optimized with all the basics mentioned above.

9. Search Engine and Directory Submission
Submitting to major search engines and directories really makes a lot of difference. It gains popularity rather quickly than without. Try Google, Yahoo, DMOZ, MSN and other major and second tiered search engines and directories.

10. Link Building
When your site is new, consider exchanging links with other sites relevant to your products or services. When enough links are built, then start creating one-way links campaign to your sites using social networking, article submission and other means. Search engines are weighing your site's value based on how many websites are linking to you.