I’d like to share a few thoughts about search engine optimization and all the enthusiasm regarding this matter that I consider excessive. Many SEO aspects and spam techniques share the same traits. If you are a beginner, you have to be utterly careful with optimizing your web sites because a single error may result in having them penalized or even banned. Even if you are quite experienced with SEO, you can never predict how search engines’ algorithms will look like tomorrow, next week or in a few moths. This is the reason why some webmasters say that the best optimization is no optimization at all.

SEO has become a standalone professional field. Webmasters concerned with SEO tend to buy specialized software, buy and exchange links, submit their web sites to thousands of online catalogs and implement every SEO advice they come across, but they don’t realize one simple thing: optimizing an empty and badly designed web site is just like building muscles with steroids. You may achieve some rapid improvement, but it will never have a long lasting effect. Much better approach would be focusing on genuine content, design and social publicity. These SEO aspects are more time consuming but the long term advantage you’ll get is obvious. Let me share a few basic and efficient tips.

Carefully choose your domain name
Do not use names just because you like the way they sound. Make your domain names more similar to the actual search queries.

Produce genuine content
You’ve heard many suggestions about proper keyword density. I personally do not trust these formulas. My advice is to keep your content natural. Do not pack it with keywords. Just include them as often as your subject requires. Otherwise your text will look like spam to both search engines and surfers.

Update you content frequently
Make sure you update your web sites at least every week. You do not need to publish a novel every time. A few small updates would be sufficient. Once you’ve reached the level when you have constant traffic or you do not have time to make updates yourself, make your visitors work for you. Provide them with an option to comment your content but make sure you protect yourself from spam. Implement captcha and word filters.

Comment on blog entries
Find popular blogs with entries thematically similar to your content. Post informative comments. Bloggers are actively searching for new subjects. If you have interesting content, some of the bloggers will mention your web sites in their future posts. There is a good chance you’ll get links from highly ranked web sites with your keywords in the anchor text.

Use ALT tags
Many webmasters tend to ignore ALT tags. Do add them to all of your images. Make sure you are not including any irrelevant keywords in your ALTs. Just describe your images in short and informative way.

Make your Meta Description short and informative
Keep your Meta description short. Using one or two keywords from your domain name in the meta description is a good idea.

Do not use Meta Keywords
Just skip this Meta tag. Trust my experience.

Take care of design
Design is significant component of so-called social optimization. If people like your web site they will be coming back. Many webmasters still underestimate the importance of design.

Consider social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is free and simple promotional tool. Take a look at www.addthis.com.