First of all, search engine optimization (SEO) is a very broad term. It may be overwhelming if you are new to the term, but relax because it’s quite easy to understand it. What’s difficult is to implement it. Easy or hard, it has to be done in the online article publishing business if you want to be successful, be read and make money on the side with affiliate programs offered on a revenue sharing site you are writing on.

This article explains basics of search engine optimization and the important thing is that you have to create your web content with SEO in mind. Before I give you the basic definition of search engine optimization, you need to know the basic concept of a search engine.

Search Engines

Search engine is a piece of software which finds and collects information about web pages. Normally, the collected information is:

• a skeleton of keywords and phrases indicating what is contained on the web page,
• URL- web page location,
• links into and out of the page.

When a user enters a search term in the search box on his computer and clicks the search button, the search engine retrieves links to web pages that appear relevant to that search.

The aim of every article writer is to be found and read on the web, which isn’t easy considering that more than a few billion web pages exist on the internet, almost all topics are covered, and competition is huge. Huge may be a too little word for the size of competing web pages.

To be easily found and read, links to your content should appear at the very top of search engine result pages (first page) because people tend to look at the first results and very rarely or never look at other result pages. Would you enter a term and check what’s on page #45 to see whether the information you are looking for is there somewhere?

I thought so.

Search Engine Optimization in Metaphor

Imagine these result pages as a music chart and you are a new singer with a new album and a great single. Your family and friends know you’re great and that listening to your song is worth-while, fun and wonderful, but the wider audience has no idea who you are or what kind of single you produced because it’s too busy listening to Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Adele or some other happy star. The fact that you can be as just as good has no worth if you can’t climb the chart and beat your competition. Sounds scary, right? Well, these happy start have a team working on promotion and marketing to get them there where they shine and to keep the light shining as bright as it can shine. And you? Yes, it’s just you alone against the world (hope your pants are dry LOL).

Don’t worry, although search engine optimization means climbing your way up on the ‘web chart’your new article entry may be that golden ‘single’to make you money. This depends on how willing you are to learn and how much time you plan to take to implement what you’ve learned. Implementing your SEO strategy won’t make you millions (unless big dreams do come true), but it can generate enough revenue stream to make you a happy dwarf planet. So, if you are not aiming to become the new Michael Jackson and enjoy $$$$$$, and you are ready to learn and take SEO seriously enough to make the best of it in your own boundaries, you may well be on your way to earn $ or $$ or even $$$.

Search Engine Optimization In A Nutshell

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process of setting up your web pages so that they rank well for particular keywords within the organic (natural) search results of major search engines such as, Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The process involves:

1. selecting a topic and doing a keyword research on that topic

2. using the right keywords in the right places in the right density on your web page

3. linking your websites internally (on the same website)

4. including outbound links in your articles

5. backlinking

• Keyword Research

All the keywords don’t have the same value in online advertising. The value of a keyword is called CPC (cost-per-click). Certain keywords may have the CPC value higher than 10$ and certain keywords may have 0,05$ value.

One of the most popular free keyword tools on the web is the Google Keyword Tool. If you sign in using your AdWords account, you’ll be able to see what are the most searched for keywords, what’s the amount of advertising competition bidding on those keywords and what’s their CPC value.

This information should help you to use keywords on the topic you want to write about prudently; try using primary and secondary keywords, include them in the title, first sentence of your article or journal, at least twice in the body of the text and in the ending paragraph.

• Links

Besides good-quality content, it’s important to have a nice balance of links pointing to your web pages and going out from your web pages. Those going out are called outbound or external links and are much easier to handle than links pointing to your web pages, also known as backlinks.

All the links in your article have to be relevant to the topic and provide additional information. If you created an anchored link using the word revenue sharing and inserted a link pointing to a web page about dogs, that’s going to very bad in terms of SEO.

Outbound links

Your outbound links must always point to trustworthy sites and web pages so be sure to link to authority pages which comply with the Google Terms of Service.

Backlinks

The most important type of links are backlinks because they drive traffic to your web pages and with enough traffic, you have the chance to earn ad income. You can work on that yourself by sharing links to your content on social networks and social media sites, but in time, you should hope to get natural backlinks – created when other sites link to your web page naturally. This will happen if you have really good content on your web page – content worth reading and sharing. Therefore, get your hopes up only if the quality of your content is up to standards. Other than that, there’s a fine art about backlinking and it requires reading articles on that topic only.

Internal links

Internal links are much more important than you may think. Implementing good internal linking helps improve user experience, makes navigation easier, lowers your bounce rate (stops people from leaving web pages and ending up on external sites) and makes your visitors stay longer on site because they follow links deeper and deeper into your content. Relevant internal links with a couple of authority outbound links represent a sweet link juice for web crawlers (search engine programs crawling from one web page to another, following all the links and determining the relevance of the pages).

Learn more:

Getting Your Articles On The Top of Search Engine Result Pages

Search Engine Optimization For Beginners

So, this is search engine optimization explained in a nutshell. If you have questions or would like to add a comment about SEO, please do so in the comments section below.