SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a set of tools that web designers and content writers use to elevate their websites in search engine rankings. If you’ve never heard of it before, don’t worry. It’s easy to learn. But there’s one important thing you should know when you’re starting out: There are two types of SEO. There’s the SEO of a few years ago, which is now all but useless, and then there’s the SEO of today.

What’s the difference? The SEO of a few years ago was almost entirely focused upon keyword optimization. Keyword optimization is where website owners track down the most commonly searched for terms that relate to their sites, and then they distribute these phrases regularly throughout the site. This, in addition to the number of page hits, used to be what search engines based their rankings on.

Nowadays, while keywords are still important, the focus is less on keywords and more on usefulness. After all, search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all want to be genuinely helpful services for directing web users to the things they search for, so it’s in the search engines’ interests to rule out the websites that consist of nothing more than keywords surrounded by filler.

That’s why search engines are increasingly basing their page ranks on metrics such as relevance and backlinks. Backlinks are inbound links from other sites to yours. The more times you are backlinked, and the more people reach your site that way, the better success you’ll have.

In today’s SEO, a lot of the focus is on getting people to click over to your site from other places on the web. One popular method for this is article marketing, which is when website owners post articles at various places throughout the web. The best article marketing practice is to create content that is truly useful, interesting, and engaging to your target customers, so that they click the link in the “About the Author” section of your article, thus adding to your backlink total. On the other hand, if your article is poorly written and not helpful, no one will be inspired to click your link.

More recently, people are beginning to use similar tactics in video marketing and image marketing. With these methods, website owners post videos or images that link back to their sites. These are more difficult than article marketing, though, as there are fewer outlets for these marketing methods. 

Increasingly, search engines are finding ways to automatically measure the quality of website content. They do this by looking for overuse of keywords and by detecting things like dead links. They may also penalize you for over-promotion or for trying to link to your site from other sites that are poorly ranked or low-quality. Any of these things can potentially lower your search rank. In extreme cases, search engines have been known to completely remove certain sites from their listings. That’s why you have to be careful.

If your new to SEO, start experimenting with these tactics. Read up on Google’s, Yahoo’s, and Bing’s own tips for SEO. Research some very relevant but not overused keywords and place them on your site. Put them especially in the page titles, and then only once or twice in your page content. Then, start working on legitimate ways to get your site linked from high-quality sites throughout the web. Of course, the best way to do this is to make sure your site has plenty of fresh, well-written content that people can find useful. In short, make your web site for users, not search engines.