So i'm going to learn seo.....?

[Jell]

I am just interested to know what i'm getting myself into.
I'm going to learn seo from books but can you give me a list of what i've got ahead of me so i can get a better idea.
No Thanks-I would just like an answer to the question.
No spam please
And i just realised that i have looked at that site already-no thanks!

[terry benedict]

ok first what is seo?

[Nick]

SEO is a very widely debated subject, the problem with it is that the rules keep changing and unless you work for the Google "College of we are going to mess with you" you will never get it to an exact science. There are many resources around some free, some not. Best way to learn is read what you can and test your conclusions.Some SEO tactics that were perfect 2 years ago no longer work, the algorithms keep changing to prevent abuse and in Googles supposed ethic they change to keep crap content from ranking in search engines.

If people are going to post affiliate links please have the decency to cloak them, and to the first answer, read the question section.

[Janeth D]

It’s a difficult thing to learn from books because by the time the books hit the self’s most of what they are talking about is old news. In fact, I read the other day that the algorithm is typically updated and changed about 10 times every week.

The best way to learn is to hit the forms and billed a website for affiliate marketing and see if you can make some money.

[Rosemary P]

There's a lot of hype around SEO but it isn't necessarily the difficult subject that those who are selling their services would have you believe.

There's a lot of practical and free help out there and some basic things that you can do to make your site more visible to the search engines.

Good content helps. Sites that inform visitors and guide them to the answers they're looking for are preferred.

Make sure your keywords and meta tags are relevant to what your visitors are searching for. The more specific they are, the better the search results you'll have. For example, London Restaurant will bring up thousands of results, Chinese Restaurant in London will reduce that so that you're site is higher up the rankings, Chinese Restaurant in EC2, London, will make it tighter and probably a lot closer to what the surfer is looking for.

Go onto Google and read all their help for Webmasters. There's a lot of useful information on there and they guide you through using site maps to have your site indexed better by Google.

There is more to SEO than just what I've outlined, but these are some starting points. It depends on what your site is about or, whether you're thinking about writing websites and want to know how to optimise them for your clients.

Good luck!

[guitarists]

SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Optimizing a website in accordance to the search engine guidelines, so as to increase the traffic to the site, and letting the site show up in top positions in the search engines.
The outcome of seo so, obviously would be an increase in the number of visitors to the site leading to enhancement in the business online.
SEO, now the concept is very large, like
there are various kinds of it like, the white hat, black hat, blue hat, yellow hat, red hat, green hat.
Few kinds may give you instant results like the black hat seo, but it is quite unethical and there are lot of chances for the website being banned by the search engines.
White hat is ethical and safe.
There are lot many things about seo, which you can know at http://www.outsourcingforseo.com/

[Tusshar]

In SEO we do:
oneway linking
reciprocal linking
blogs,article,social bookmarking and forum submission.

I had done SEO for the site http://www.keywordspy.com

[Norine]

Hi, I hope you understand what is to do or not to do:


Top 10 SEO Mistakes

1. Targetting the wrong keywords
This is a mistake many people make and what is worse – even experienced SEO experts make it. People choose keywords that in their mind are descriptive of their website but the average users just may not search them. For instance, if you have a relationship site, you might discover that “relationship guide” does not work for you, even though it has the “relationship” keyword, while “dating advice” works like a charm. Choosing the right keywords can make or break your SEO campaign. Even if you are very resourceful, you can't think on your own of all the great keywords but a good keyword suggestion tool, for instance, the Website Keyword Suggestion tool will help you find keywords that are good for your site.

2. Ignoring the Title tag
Leaving the <title> tag empty is also very common. This is one of the most important places to have a keyword, because not only does it help you in optimization but the text in your <title> tag shows in the search results as your page title.

3. A Flash website without a html alternative
Flash might be attractive but not to search engines and users. If you really insist that your site is Flash-based and you want search engines to love it, provide an html version. Here are some more tips for optimizing Flash sites. Search engines don't like Flash sites for a reason – a spider can't read Flash content and therefore can't index it.

4. JavaScript Menus
Using JavaScript for navigation is not bad as long as you understand that search engines do not read JavaScript and build your web pages accordingly. So if you have JavaScript menus you can't do without, you should consider build a sitemap (or putting the links in a noscript tag) so that all your links will be crawlable.

5. Lack of consistency and maintenance
Our friend Rob from Blackwood Productions often encounters clients, who believe that once you optimize a site, it is done foreve. If you want to be successful, you need to permanently optimize your site, keep an eye on the competition and – changes in the ranking algorithms of search engines.

6. Concentrating too much on meta tags
A lot of people seem to think SEO is about getting your meta keywords and description correct! In fact, meta tags are becoming (if not already) a thing of the past. You can create your meta keywords and descriptions but don't except to rank well only because of this.

7. Using only Images for Headings
Many people think that an image looks better than text for headings and menus. Yes, an image can make your site look more distinctive but in terms of SEO images for headings and menus are a big mistake because h2, h2, etc. tags and menu links are important SEO items. If you are afraid that your h1 h2, etc. tags look horrible, try modifying them in a stylesheet.

8. Ignoring URLs
Many people underestimate how important a good URL is. Dynamic page names are still very frequent and no keywords in the URL is more a rule than an exception. Yes, it is possible to rank high even without keywords in the URL but all being equal, if you have keywords in the URL (the domain itself, or file names, which are part of the URL), this gives you additional advantage over your competitors. Keywords in URLs are more important for MSN and Yahoo! but even with Google their relative weight is high, so there is no excuse for having keywordless URLs.

9. Backlink spamming
It is a common delusion that it more backlinks are ALWAYS better and because of this web masters resort to link farms, forum/newgroup spam etc., which ultimately could lead to getting their site banned. In fact, what you need are quality backlinks. Here are some more information on The Importance of Backlinks

10. Lack of keywords in the content
Once you focus on your keywords, modify your content and put the keywords wherever it makes sense. It is even better to make them bold or highlight them.