What SEO does is to enable you to lift the chances of your website being indexed by the search engines. But when done really effectively it also gives you a chance of having your URL on Google's first page, when a potential visitor enters one of your keywords into their search bar. Your aim should be to get to number one ? to be at the top of the first Google results page.

When first beginning to consider SEO for your website, you have to consider the two separate, but essential elements of the optimization process.

On page optimization - Off page optimization (this is rated as slightly more important by the major search engines) On page covers the following:

?A well constructed sitemap (this really helps in getting a good ranking)

?Your page title which must reflect the page content ? three titles separated by a ?|? are a good idea

?Anchor texts not only in your first headline, but throughout your pages

?Your keywords, which are vital and should also be reflected in your page title

?Well thought out ?h1? and ?h2? html tags, again probably closely reflecting your keywords

?Outbound links to high ranking sites (this is gaining strongly in importance, especially with Google, who are also beginning to value one-way links far more than reciprocal links ? because of recent growth of automatic reciprocal link builders)

?Videos (most of the major search engines value relevant video imaging and audio links quite highly)

?Images i.e. alternative descriptions of images

Off page covers these facets:

?The number of website pages which link to your site (on a one way basis, i.e. not requiring a reciprocal link ? see above)

?The Google page rank (PR) of the website linking to you

?The page title of the website linking to your site

?The anchor text used in the link to your site

?The number and type of links on the website linking to yours (so-called authority sites are especially important, if you can get them ? egg those with .eddo / .ac / or .go in their domain name

?Which websites link to yours (those with a high Google page ranking are the most desirable)

?The number of outbound links on the website linking to yours (if they already have a high Google PR, the fact of this will reflect very well on the website at the outbound lin