But enough about the research, how do you start to rank?

1. Use key phrases multiple times in your content
2. Use internal site links to that page using your term
3. Get links for quality external sites to your page
4. Use basic HTML formats like H1′s and title tags to emphasize phrase

When you are writing your article/page/blog make sure you are aware of what you are looking to be ranked for and use it a few times in the body. Also make sure you use it in the title and header of the article. It’s important that Google knows that the content is the primary reason for sending some one to this page. One of the most important things to understand is that you should not over stuff the phrase onto the page. If you use it every other word, the search engine will throw it out knowing that it’s simply being put there for ranking. While there’s debate of the % the phrase should be used it can be anywhere from 3% – 7% of the content. I tend to lean towards the lower side to prevent spamming penalties.

When you are creating your webpage you can feel free to link to your own pages using key phrases to pass it along to other pages. So if you want to rank for “best noodles in vegas” create a link on your home page that points to that article with that term as the clickable text. Also repeat this on other authority web sites. One way to find them is simply go to Google and type the term in and see who comes up. Contact them and see if you can get a link exchange with them. Some will want to charge you, but be weary as Google’s getting smarter about purchased links!

I mentioned headers and titles but wanted to stress how important these are to Google. With everything on the web being pretty, it’s important to realize Google is a color blind dog, they don’t care what the biscuit looks like, they only care if it tastes good. A trick I was once taught was to remove the style sheet and see what the page looks like to Google and the other engines. If you use an H1 the text is the largest on the page and is therefore more important to the read (stands out). Same goes for Google. But only use 1 per page. If you feel you need more start using H2, H3 etc. The higher the number the more you can have on the page. The title which should be one of the first pieces of HTML will define part of how you show up on Google as will the meta description. Use these as they also add weight to your page for those terms.

Is this all you need to do for SEO? Of course not, but it’s a great start for a first timer and is a base understanding. Feel free to leave a comment, I’ll try to answer anything I get.