Questions about SEO???

In order of how I believe the process should go for anyone doing it alone (in my opinion)

1. Learn about SEO.
If you dont mind trawling through sites and forums all the information you need is pretty much available for free. Failing that, there are a few SEO books that will take you through it step by step. Then its a case of being completely in tune with all things SEO - Reading and more reading.

2. Get the right Keywords.
If you are in a competitive market, it is important to pick realistic and attainable Keywords. Too broad and you will be fighting a losing battle, too specific and you wont get the traffic. www.goodkeywords.com that is a great little (free) tool for giving you keyword suggestions along with search figures - which helps see if a particular keyword is worth your time.

3. Get your On Page Optimisation right.
Although less weight is on actual on page factors nowadays in SEO, its always a good start to know how to correctly optimise your content, and get it right from the start.

4. Get your URL out there.
Intially forums such as these are good (include your URL in your signature) aswell as free directories and paid directories. The most notable directories are www.dmoz.org and http://dir.yahoo.com. The latter is $299 (£150) to list with and the former is free, but will take you some time to get listed with these. But, as these are considered "authority" sites - the one-way links will be worth their weight in Gold.

5. Links Links Links.
No factor is more important in SEO. Link building is a vast subject - but in VERY brief terms (as this whole post was intended to be!) One Way inbound links from High Page Rank sites in your niche are best, although most SEOs are in agreement that about a 50/50 split between reciprocal and one way inbound links is okay.

Get your keywords in your anchor tags, and put in the man hours to get the links in!

6. Keep at it!
Put in the work, and you WILL get results.

I must re-stress that you need to do the research in SEO. Its an amazingly large subject but understanding it all is crucial to your success in your DIY efforts!

I am new to this forum, so thought I would get my two penneth in...

Hello to all

Liam

Good post, Liam. I definitely agree that you need to do your research about SEO, and would add that you need to keep doing it. Watch dates on any articles you read - SEO information often becomes outdated very quickly. Subscribe to blogs (SEOmoz is my favourite) and read forums to keep up on the most current information.

Another tip - don't do anything stupid and watch out for quick fixes. Things like keyword spamming, buying or selling links, and getting associated with spammy sites can seriously hurt your site.

I would suggest you build lots of quality and targeted backlinks using your desired keywords as anchor texts. Both on-page(keywords, meta, etc.) and off-page(inbound link building) should be dome religiously Even if you already reach the first page of google.

The topic of SEO is really important because even if you have the best website in the world and have spent thousands of dollars building it, you need to be found on the web and in search engines to have customers. SEO is largely related to the efforts like adding links to websites for having better rankings.

Liam is right, linkjuice is infinitely more important these days than any on site factors, but you should have the on site factors done as well because they contribute to it somewhat and you never know what will actually make a difference.

just follow what liam said regarding on-page and off-page optimization. Actually you don't have to worry about your site's ranking if you optimized you site properly. Just avoid things that can damage your reputation link link farm, duplicate content and keyword stuffing.

This long explanation is easy to understand and should help those who wonder about Seach Engine Optimization and how it works. Hope it will be useful!
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/search-engine-optimization.htm,

The SEO is not doing hard It is on practices basis. Read articles about seo. And used forum if you have want to know answer about any thing.

Having websites placed among the top Google rankings is very good but needs a lot of work such as knowing what SEO is about. The way websites are designed and content pages are created, links are created and the pages optimized are all very important.

But something else which is out of people's control is the matter of time. It will take some time before a website can get to the top.

The best comment I have ever heard about SEO is " Companies that contact you, and charge you for SEO most likely found you on a search engine already" Read every forum and article you can, and be very careful dealing with companies that say they can get you to the first page in Google, and the other majors. I have heard many clients complain about being taken by such companies. Do your own homework and maybe have someone look at your site to make sure that it is search engine friendly, and use all of the free sources out there to establish the proper keywords. SEO is a trick and takes lots and lots of time and patience.