Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site.

These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics and help you reach your online goals.

Title Tag – The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to ‘on-page optimization’; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google.

Meta Description Tag – The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will show up in all the search engines so you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively. It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words . Make sure to include your keywords but don’t spam – don’t repeat your keywords more than twice, using variations is helpful.

Keep in mind, successful webmasters make their descriptions stand out from the crowd and entice the surfer to click their link. It is also the first contact with your potential visitor or prospect so make a good first impression.

Anchor Tag or URL – The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or from site to site. This tag should have your title or the main keywords from your page title to be the most effective.

Anchor text is also important to know, these are the underlined, clickable text or words in a link. <*A HREF=”url”> anchor text <*/A>

Backlinks - One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality links from relevant related quality sites. The search engines, especially Google, counts each link as a “vote” for your site or content. Many experts suggest you include your main keywords in the anchor text of these inbound links in order to rank high.

Check – Indexed Pages – If is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.

Just type into Google Search: site:yourURL. Another way to look at your pages in Google is to type in “http://yoursite” and “www.yoursite” with the quotation marks to see the exact number of listings for each.

LTSEO or Lindsay-Turner Search Engine Optimization is one such service that offers premium yet affordable SEO service.  The great thing about the LTSEO is that they offer customized and flexible SEO services.  LTSEO offers services that are affordable yet never next in line compared to other search engine optimization services out in the market.  The following are the services being offered by LTSEO:

Search Engine Optimisation – the primary service that LTSEO offers, their pricing methods have different levels but it does not mean that they are differing qualities.  It entails the amount of time they spend on your business and the quantity of work that needs to be done to get your website on the top results of search engine results.

Strategic Search Engine Optimisation – this is the part of LTSEO’s service wherein they build your business website from the ground up.  It is an ongoing relationship and process between the client and LTSEO.  LTSEO maintains the website of the client to keep it updated and competitive in the ever-changing world of SEO.

Website Optimisation – LTSEO takes pride in being one of the best yet affordable in this area of expertise.  They work on your website within 10 days to see if your website is working well on the following factors: site set-up, title tags, meta tags, keyword density, URL structure, internal link structure, outbound link structure, content structure, and geographic validity.  LTSEO works on these areas and improve them if the need arises.

Strategic Website Optimisation – this service is where LTSEO will work on your company’s website to align it with your long term business goal so that your website can help achieve that vision.

Conversion Site Design – LTSEO will get your website to go through their link to conversion analysis page to determine whether it is built for highly targeted and higher conversion rate.  It involves LTSEO working on your website’s design, layout, and architecture, content (LTSEO will refer your website to good copywriters that they personally recommend), implementation (conversion analysis and tracking are involved), and of course an on-going modification.

Conversion Analysis – you get to discuss the actions that you need to take and what are the things makes a site convert and what doe not with one of the founders of LTSEO.  It can be either by phone or in person.  It will include a systematized report on what strategies you need to implement and a step by step guide on how to execute them.

Google Site Reporting – what LTSEO basically does in this aspect is that they provide monthly updates on your website’s performance.  This is perhaps one of the most affordable in the industry compared to similar services..

Google Maps Optimisation – this is where LTSEO will work on optimising your local web presence at Google Map’s business locator.  It is great for offline businesses that have existing websites and wants to get their business be visible online.  It is a great and affordable service that any offline and online local business must have.

Reputation Management – is specifically for public figures and large companies that want to maintain  very good and credible image online.  LTSEO will manage your social mediums and search results for your name and/or business, and they base it on your personality and business culture.

So what are the benefits of using organic SEO instead of other orthodox SEO methodologies?  Well for one people are out for good content and information.  There is always an unavoidable assumption by people that when you pay for your placement at search engines, then there is a high probability that your content is mediocre to stale.  A lot of people think that when they look for information at search engines, the one that appears naturally on its own means that the search engines recognizes the relevancy of its content.  Another benefit of it is that the search results are longer lasting.  This goes hand in hand with the first benefit.  If your site contains relevant information that a lot of people are searching for, then your site will naturally come out as often as possible.  Also it will urge other websites to link to your site because of your good content, thus further increasing your longevity in search engine results.

So how is organic SEO different from other SEO methodologies?  There is really no big difference when it comes to organic SEO and white hat techniques.  For the most part though white hat techniques involve paid listings, submission to article directories, bookmarking directories, and website and article directories, most often than not these sites require a fee for you to use their services.  That alone is already a contradiction to organic SEO.  But then again there are methods of white hat techniques that are similar to organic SEO such as back linking content optimisation.

That was white hat techniques back there.  Now how about black hat methods?  Most of the time black hat methods use artificial and back-handed techniques to increase or heighten their search engine results.  Some of these are multiple sites, cloaking your actual content thus making it look as if your site has the relevant content the user is searching for but the actual content is not there, redirecting users to your site, more like link stealing.  These methodologies are developed to achieve quick results but with a rather short life span.

How can you achieve natural or organic SEO?  It is actually simple and most often than not you may have already gone through some of these without ever realizing that you are using organic SEO methods.  One is optimising your content.  By this I don’t mean overstuffing your content with keywords, it really does not matter how many keywords you put into your content, it is a matter of how you use it within your content.  Then what will naturally occur afterwards is that your content will be recognized by other sites and they would want to link to you.  When search engines see that a lot of websites are linking to your site, then they will recognize that your site is important due to its relevancy.  Another method is by including meta tags.  Search engine still recognize this methodology and is in fact a big factor in ranking your site at search results.  You have to know the rules of correctly using meta tags though in order to achieve this.

There you have it.  Full optimisation of your site and good and relevant content is still the basis behind organic SEO methods.  It is just like letting everything fall into pieces without worrying yourself about the costs of getting your site ranked high in search engine results.

Unethical or black hat methods involve spamming, spam-dexing, redirecting search results to websites, and cloaking to cover the true content of the site.  Ethical or white hat SEO methods are generally given thumbs up by search engines and are basically everything that that conforms to search engine guidelines.  Added to that ethical methods involve not only following search engine guidelines but also but also ensures that the content a search engine indexes and ranks is what the user will see as well.  Ethical SEO tend to produce longer lasting results and lasts for a longer period of time, while black hat methods thrive only from the fact that they haven’t been caught yet and could anytime be caught and get banned temporarily or permanently by search engines.

Many SEO services miss the point when it comes to providing good SEO results for their clients.  Many SEO companies offer quick results that guarantee higher rankings, and most often than not these companies employ black hat tactics that short cut their way to achieving higher rankings.  However these methods are never meant to last because sooner or later it will be discovered and the worst thing that could happen to your website is being banned all together.

Ethical or white hat SEO services basically practice the fundamentals of search engine optimization.  They use strategies that can are effective even on the long run and also keeps in mind the trustworthiness and credibility of the client’s online business.  With that being said a lot of third party companies out there look out for the well-being of the online entrepreneur through checking which SEO services employ white hat or ethical SEO tactics.  These are reputation management services or sites that review the website’s online credibility and overall trustworthiness.  Once they see that a website employs ethical SEO strategies, and then it will be an added point to the website and business all together.  Ethical SEO services think about these things and act upon them.

If you have a business and a website that you want to get indexed by search engines then you will have to be really careful in knowing what SEO services are offering your website and business.  You have to make sure that they are employing nothing but only ethical search engine optimization strategies.  Of course you want your website to be known as a good website, so it is best that you employ the services of an ethical SEO service.

Here are some of the things that you should remember when using meta tags:

Keep it short and simple (or stupid for some).  Search engines have the tendency to take note of sites that place too much faith on the ever-present meta tag.  That is why most of them would treat such websites with caution.  Keep the number of repeated meta tags to a maximum of three.

Title tags are perhaps one of the most important factors in meta tags most especially when used correctly.  Same as writing your content, you have to write your title tag for your audience or users first and search engines come only second.  It is important to consider the favour of search engines when it comes to this but you also have to consider if the title tag motivates your audience to click through it.  If not then you might want to optimize it well.  It can help if you think about site branding and navigation issues to help you create your title tag.

If you copy your competitor’s tag, it does not follow that you will do well with your own website.  You have to remember that it is not the number of tags that count; it is the understanding of meta tags and the intricacies that come with it in relation to search engine optimization.  It is highly recommended that you use a minimal set of meta tags namely the title, description, and keywords.

Repeating of tags is not necessary.  It may have been the fad before, but it certainly is not today.  You gain nothing from doing this.

You have to keep in mind that your meta tags should be within the borders of your webpage’s theme.  Otherwise, you are just putting in a lot of non-sense into your web pages.  Search engines also treat such sites with caution since the content does not actually jive with the meta tags present.  Thus lowering your rankings.

Description tags are still important and search engines such as Google place value in it, even considering it as a factor for your search engine rankings.  If your description tags are so compelling that it basically gives your audience the run-down of your sites unique content or business, then this will get you more click-through and more audience.

The Essentials:

* Title tag must contain 5 – 10 words including the company name and relevant keywords.

* Description tag: must contain 15 – 20 words which includes concise summary of the page and strategic keywords.

* Keyword tag is placed at the top of your pages and should contain 10 – 20 keywords per page.

*  Meta keyword tags should be used according to relevancy per page.  Meta keyword phrases should not exceed 744 characters.

Let us look at some key SEO techniques that can give you higher SERPs.

Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Don’t make them guess what’s at the other end with links that say “click here” or other non-descriptive words. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase.

The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn’t be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. (This is where that target audience analysis comes in handy!) Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn’t going to cut it, and it just looks silly.

Title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with every search engine. Whatever keyword phrases you’ve written your copy around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it’s on, while also using the keyword phrases people might be using at a search engine to find your stuff.

Other sites linking to yours is a critical component of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your site’s overall link popularity. You can go out and request hundreds or thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone want to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it without your even asking. It’s fine to trade links; just make sure you are providing your site visitors with only the highest quality of related sites. When you link to lousy sites, keep in mind what this says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines.

If you’ve done the above correctly, youwill start to see an increase in targeted search engine visitors to your site fairly quickly. Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions. (You can sign up for a free trial of ClickTracks, which easily tracks and measures those things that truly matter.) It certainly won’t hurt to add new content to your site if it will really make your site more useful, but don’t simply add a load of fluff just for the sake of adding something. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines really give a hoot!

The key to link building is rooted to engaging content, in a niche where you feel you have the best competitive advantage. An engaging content does not only make your readers happy, but it also adds synergy to your website through increased participation, community, and appreciation of your work.

Aggregating Content

One way to generate engaging content is by aggregating posts from other websites of a certain niche. This is called “curating the internet”. These entails including the most interesting blog posts, articles, videos, threads, and PDF from other websites and organize them for your readers to easily see.

Although there is not much original content coming from you when you do this, you can still create a high-quality and engaging website with good research and organizing incoming content into meaningful categories.

Curating the internet is also important for SEO as you start to branch out to specific niches. There is a LOT of niches online that can be broken down and aggregated. Just imagine the volume of obscure searches that can stand alone as a separate aggregated website. It does not matter how many potential readers are there. What is important is that the niche is interesting enough for a good number of readers to bookmark.

An ideal aggregate website contains more hundreds of sources from tens and hundreds of different sources. Make sure to listen to feedback when you create these websites so you know what direction you will take.

There are several ways to create an aggregate website. You can create a rating setup like Digg or Reddit, or go simple as blogging the links and resources.

The greatest prerequisite for these websites is that amount of interest of the webmaster to engage these resources and weed out what is interesting for the reader. A personal/editorial comment or two will also make your content more original.

The way we use these tools is actually one of the biggest divides among SEO enthusiasts. On one hand there are people who rely too much on these tools that formulate the work process based on their potential and limitations. These are also people that are boxed into the tools that we use. As a result, heaps analysis and judgment are being left off.

On the other hand, there are people that treat tools as things that will enhance the process that they have already laid out. These are the people seek more answers despite the limits of the tools, and find way to get the answers by combining these tools, and going above and beyond their use.

All SEO professionals rely on these tools. No question about it. No one works without it. However there are people that can be more successful using only a couple of tools than people who use a plethora of them.

Let us take Page Rankings for example. A lot of us who are just starting out really on page rankings to know the value of a link. Page Rankings are simple, well-referenced, and it seems like lot of people are buying into it. But if you only rely on Page Ranks, you will be missing out other variables like authority and trust. Websites with the same PR value may seem equal to the novice, but experienced SEO will look around for other indicators like traffic, domain name suffix, number of backlinks and a lot more. This is what a professional with years of experience can bring to the table.

Ultimately, you must go beyond what is immediately in front of you, lest you fall into the trap of the competition with other people doing the same thing.