Search Engine Optimization is a tricky “art form” that a majority of “web designers” or “web masters” don’t truly understand.  There’s constant changes with Google’s algorithm, new shiny objects being promoted every day telling you that you can press a button and your site will rank #1, where does the madness stop?  Or better yet, where does your madness as an SEO begin?

Most importantly, search engines recognize RELEVANCE to the keywords that you wish to rank for.  If you construct your page half-decently and provide content on your site that your target audience actually wants to read, it doesn’t really take THAT much SEO wizardry for your page to rank – that is if you aren’t competing against thousands of other sites trying to rank for the same market niche.

Having said that, learn how to do proper keyword research, look for pockets of traffic that are thematically related to the kind of traffic you are seeking, and provide some backlinks from relevant sites using properly formatted anchor text.  Long story short, if you want to rank, find authoritative high PR sources that are RELATED to your market, and get some links – more quality and related backlinks – the better… That’s a fundamental requirement to appear in search – if not the ONLY requirement.  All the other hocus pocus out there about link wheels and web 2.0 backlinks and keyword density etc etc, they all contribute to your ranking but seriously – if you find a high PR site that is related to your market, and you get a proper keyword anchor text link back to your site – you’ll probably rank for the keyword you’re going after on just one or two links alone (of course depending on your competitors and how many authoritative links they have).  Now what keywords should you go after?  That’s a whole different story in itself, so stay tuned and we’ll get into that in an upcoming post.