Do you think SEO is complicated?

According to Aaron Wall, the author of “The SEO Book”, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extension of traditional marketing and it’s involved 9 main steps:

1. Market Research
This is to search the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) to see what type of websites are ranking for the search terms (keywords) related to you target market.

2. Keyword Research
Find out the popular and long tail keywords related to your target market by:

• checking your web analytics or server logs to see which keyword people was used to reach your website.
• looking at competitor’s websites page content to see what keywords they are targeting.
• joining forums and community sites to see what issues are frequently raised.

3. Page Optimization
This is mainly to create your web page with descriptive page title and use meta description tags to include multiple keywords relevant to the page title. The page content should use heading tags to separate the content into logical sections to improve readability and scanability.

4. Site Structure
Create pages contain your important keywords relevant to your site theme and create navigation structure based on:

• the market value.
• the logical breaks in market segmentation.
• the importance of ranking in building credibility and improving conversion rates.

and make sure

• important categories or pages are linked sitewide.
• link to every page on your site from at least one other page on your site.
• use consistent anchor text in your navigation.
• include link to other content pages within the content area of your website.

5. Link Building
Building quality links to your pages or links from other site. Relevancy is the key to a quality link.

Here are a few tips to ensure quality link building:

• submit your site to general directories like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
• submit your site to relevant niche directories.
• if you have a local site submit to relevant local sites.
• get links from industry hub sites.
• create content people want to link at.
• try to link to your most relevant page when getting links (don’t point all the links at your home page)
• don’t be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources.

6. Brand Building
Brand related keywords are valuable because they are highly targeted and best converting. A high volume of brand related search traffic may also be seen as a sign of quality by major search engines.

If you build a strong brand, people will search for more information about your brand and other websites will say about your brand thus improving your lead quality and conversion rates.

7. Viral Marketing
The beautiful thing about viral marketing is that creating one popular compelling idea can lead to thousands and thousands of unrequested links. In SEO, this refer to Link Baiting which people create content based around popular issues to generate lead. You can find out what are the popular issues to your topic from social bookmarking sites like Digg or Del.icio.us.

8. Adjusting
How do you know your site is generating more leads, higher quality leads, or more sales? Always look at your server logs and using analytics program to track traffic trends and what keywords lead to conversion.

If you see more websites asking questions or talking about you is consider a good sign that you are on the right track. It may take a few weeks or a couple years to establish a strong market position, depending on your marketplace competition.

9. Staying Up to Date
Tracking your site ranking changes using keyword ranking checker and keep up with how the market is changing using the following resources:

• SEO Chat
• Search Engine Watch
• Matt Cutts Blog

and for more up to date and in depth SEO techniques, visit SEO Training directly from Aaron Wall..