What are the most important elements in SEO?

You want to increase traffic to your site but are not sure where to start.

Here are a few tips:

Content
As I mentioned before, content is king. But it is even more important that you have relevant content on your website. Do not have duplicate content. It needs to be updated regularly, so it is a good idea to have a content management system in place. You need to be able to go back to site and amend the anchor text, insert new links, make sure the current links are still active. Put the keywords in the title tag and also the domain name. For example I want to increase traffic to this site and therefore one of the steps I have made is to have the domain name seojoblogs.

Links
Use trusted sites to link too. If you link to a spam site or a link farm, you will not begin to rank higher. You will need to start is by using less competitive words and writing content with those words in mind. For example you may want to put a h1, h2 tag using the exact match of key phrase. Build links to the page and see if you hit that page with the keywords.

Inbound links are also important. People think it is important just to have inbound links to the home page, but you need links to the tier two and tier three pages. At least 50% of links should go to the other pages on your site.

Never give up
SEO is an ongoing job. If you want to achieve high ranks, you will need to see what your competitors are doing, research keywords. You also need to make sure there are calls to action on each page. For example, allow users to sign up for RSS feeds, incentivise them to make a purchase. You want these customers to come back.

The benefit about SEO is that you are able see measurable increases in web traffic. The more you optimise the better chance you have of gaining market share in your area. You may need to add new links to your site, add new pages or even new sub headings within the page. What you mustn’t do is leave your site. A static website is sure to fall down the rankings in all search engines.

Links

The importance of links.

It is very important to have good quality links coming to the site.  Links are essential in SEO, bots and crawlers check the incoming and outgoing links to our site.  The crawlers rank how important this links are and if they are relevant to your site.
There are lots of directories and blog articles where the website can be submitted to. With genuine content, you will be able to generate links with other website and blohs. If you link to other sites then they will link back to us and our page rank number will increase.

Link Building methods
Links should be built from a variety of places
-    Web directories such as dmoz.org or business.come
-    Seo press releases
-    Blogs and blog comments
-    Any other of your other websites (eg parent company)
-    Social booking like de.licio.us, Digg
-    Niche websites in our area
-    Affiliates

•    Search Engine and Directory Submissions
This is an important step in link building process.
You should not submit to all search engines, this is a timely and costly process (some require a submission fee).  Alternatively, you could submit the site to webdirectories – global and local depending on your target audience.
You should submit your site to the Yahoo directory and the open directory http://www.dmoz.org/. Once submitted, the search engines should fine your site within 2 or 3 months.
Alternative free directories
www.splut.com (directory of UK websites)
www.thefreewebsitedirectory.com
www.worldwidewub.org
www.wowdirectory.com
•    Online press releases
Press releases can also be an effective way of promoting your website and increasing traffic and awareness of the site. This is also a good way to build inbound links to the online community.
•    Blogging
Blogging is a very important way to upload fresh content to the website
It also provides an area where you or your company can communite with its customers.  There are a lot of free blogging software.  One that I am using now is wordpress!!
•    Social media
This is a growing factor in helping promote websites, facebook, linked in and social bookmarketing sites such as de.li.cious, digg and stumbleupon. These sites can help in building back links, articles about your site and as a result increasing traffic to the site.
•    Internal Site Linking

This is also an important aspect of link building but is often overlooked.  Internal keyword navigation is an important party of search engine algorithm.  Some sites may have very few internal links.
•    Link scouting
It is important to research sites that could provide a potential link to your website.  This means a lot of work should be done into the competitor link campaign and web searches to find potential sites for us.

I bet you didn’t think I could write some much about link building!