search Before I begin, I'll tell you up front that I'm not a search engine optimization (SEO) expert of any kind. I've tested everything I'll be telling you to do and I've spent more than six months experimenting to find out what works and what doesn't. My blog now ranks on the first page of Google's and Yahoo's search engine result pages (SERPS), and is starting to rank well on the others, for hundreds of keywords, some with extremely short tails and even a few single-word keywords. Don't worry, I'll explain what all of it means as we go along.


Introduction to the Untwisted Vortex (UV) SEO Series

In this series of articles, I'm going to give away information that I could probably make money with if I sold it as an e-book or something. Since I'm not an expert and because the SEO landscape changes from time to time, I'd feel pretty bad if I made a costly mistake on your behalf.

I'll be going through the step-by-step methods of SEO that any website can use, not just blogs. Nevertheless, I'll be leaning toward blogs because the search engines like them a lot more than static websites. I'll start with onsite SEO and finish with offsite SEO, hoping not to get sidetracked along the way.

Onsite SEO vs. Offsite SEO

You've probably seen these phrases tossed around without really understanding what they mean. Onsite SEO refers to the things that you can do with your site to make it as attractive to search engines as possible. Offsite SEO refers to the things that you can do to increase the link authority of your site, from outside your site, which will make it even more attractive to search engines.

Offsite SEO enhances onsite SEO, if you're actually practicing onsite SEO, but can't replace it. Offsite SEO is practically worthless if you don't practice onsite SEO. Once you start practicing onsite SEO, it starts to become a second nature to you.

If you practice onsite SEO, low competition keywords require little or no offsite SEO in order to rank high in the SERPS. High competition keywords require a lot more offsite SEO. Doing it the right way as opposed to the fast way, will cause your keywords to rank high in the SERPS and stay there.

Social Website Traffic vs. Search Engine Website Traffic

Before I move onto part two of the series, I want to make it abundantly clear that if your sole goal is to have a socially popular site, then you're wasting your time if you spend time practicing SEO. Your time will be much better spent by interacting at the various and numerous social networks.

My own personal experience has proven that you don't have to be involved with social networking to be socially popular. If you practice SEO for your site, while providing valuable content, contacts originating from the SERPS will provide you with more socialization than you can keep up with.

Coming in Part Two

I'll begin with some basic techniques of onsite SEO in part two of the series. I should be able to cover everything you need to know about your website addresses, things you may not have even thought about.

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