Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and search ranking can be a beast to tackle. I typically tell clients that there is no magic pill you can take to just mysteriously show up on the first page of Google.

1) Keyword Research – You will need to find out more on how people are searching on Google for your information. A good start is Googles Keyword Research Tool to see what terms are being searched on a specific basis. Some resources listed below.

2) Keyword Rich Domain – Once you find out what terms people are searching for, you will need to obtain a web address. That is also known as a “domain name”. Good places to find a domain are GoDaddy (thanks Danika), Fatcow, and Bluehost to name a few. I would shoot for a .Com address verse all others because it is the most preferred and recognized ending to a web address. Example would be www.KEYWORDHere.com.

3) The Right Platform: WordPress – Such as my site, it is built on WordPress. It allows the flexibility and creativity to build the world in an easy fashion without knowing HTML & PHP coding. Understanding some will help you greatly. WordPress is SEO friendly and typically optimized for search engines like the giant Google.

4) Permalinks – One of the first things you will need to do is change your URL structure for optimized Permalink SEO strategy. You will find this on your menu in your WordPress dashboard under “settings” ? “permalinks” ? then select the structure. An idea SEO friendly URL would be /%postname%/.  You could go also go with /%category%/%postname%/. Selecting a keyword friendly category could go a long ways too.

5) SEO Plugin – This is where WordPress gets awesome. You have the world at your fingertips. You have several SEO plugins to choose from that help set up the necessary things for your site. The All In One SEO and YOAST plugins are just a couple that would do the trick for you in making sure you site is search engine optimized!

6) Quality Content – A good rule of thumb to remember is write for your readers and not for Google. They say content is king! Ideally you want to add new content to your site once a week but if super serious you should aim for 3 times a week. To put it simply, just add new content to your website. It is tough so do what you can because life throws curve balls at us.

7) Social Media – I can’t help but to think about this Youtube song by Your Favorite Martian titled “Grandma Got a Facbook”. Hilarious stuff! Make sure you share all your content online with Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. This can help boost traffic to your site if used properly.

8 ) Backlinks – Sounds like a bicycle chain doesn’t it? While things in the SEO circles are constantly changing, high quality backlinks to your site count. That is if someone links to your site of a similar if not same topic site, that gives you link juice. Think of the slogan “Milk does a body good”. Now replace that with “Backlinks does a website good”. Relevancy when linking goes a long way.