How to Optimize a website

 ** UPDATED OCT 2014**

Search engine optimization can be a daunting process if you don't know what you are doing. It is very easy to upset the major search engines by doing too much too quickly so the first rule is..... less is more. Do everything in a measured, gradual manner and you will stay within Googles best practice guidelines.

For example if you add 1000 links overnight then your site will not get very far, however if Google sees your site add 80 links one month and 50 the next followed by 93 the month after that you will start to see results for your efforts.

To begin though you need to optimize you home page so that Google,Yahoo and BING  can read the page and understand what your site is all about. This requires a little homework on your part. First you need to establish your market, then see what traffic exists for your market for specific keywords, using Google keyword tool, then you need to focus your site towards those keywords. For example there is no point optimizing your real estate site for the keyword "Brick House" if there are only a few searches a month for the term. Instead look for the most popular terms with the most traffic, for that is where the money lives. Use a tool like the Google keyword planner to search for your traffic.

Once you have two or three terms or words with good levels of search traffic (12,000 per month minimum) then you are ready to focus your site towards those terms.

Tomorrow I will show you how to optimize your page.

Dave Holland is CEO of Deeho SEO one of the top ranked optimization companies.