The main advice is to do everything for your visitors, make website content unique and interesting, simple navigation etc. and strong offsite optimization and google will love it.
Practice, practice and practice. There is no magic bullets for SEO. Every website is different and requires something unique. You need to know the basic techniques and know how to combine them for each web site's SEO. There isn't a fixed recipe to follow. After you have optimized a few sites, you will get a hang of SEO. SEO is always a "work in progress" or "learning in progress".
Read everything that you can get your hands on.It takes time to learn the basics even.... Good SEO blogs:Seomoz,mattcutts,searchengineland....
Focus on some keywords and go after them. Have a specific goal. Read SEO newsletters and blogs. They help A LOT!
I have a quick tip for you look at your keyword density on your post, then look at the keyword density on the first page in google and try and hit the same number. Search google for keyword density and free tools will popup for this. The you know that you are optimizing your page for the keyword you are after.
Can't agree more with dealeris - focus on your visitors. Their best interest is your best interest, and there are no shortcuts! Aim to provide great information to your visitors, and give them a good experience, and you'll see that you would start to rank higher in the SERPs. I write about SEO tips for beginners - you can check out blogseoexpert.com (apologies for self promotion, but this would be really relevant for SEO beginners)
Try these tips : - Use Title (8 word max). - Use Meta Description (20 word max) - Update.... Update.... and Update... Content (regurarly) - Backlink from site have same topic with your site.
Back links, content, title tags, back links, content, back links, back links, content, back links repeat every day
It's all about the links. Great content and onsite SEO only gets you to the starting line. Links is how you run the race. Biggest mistake I see people making is using their website name in their title tags. Title tags should be for keywords, unless your keywords are in your name. Also, don't forget to use alt tags and title tags. I don't care what some SEO experts say about content, without links your website will never rank for any important keywords. And the myth that building great content will be link bait itself is only if you're posting the cure for cancer. How can people find your great content if you don't rank? You'll spend a fortune on ppc advertising before you get enough "natural" links from relevant high pr sites (that use your anchor text in the link).
You gotta test different avenues. Then wait a couple weeks and see if Google moves you up. You'll learn if you keep on testing different keywords and backlinks.
Hey good to see you are looking for advice Starting out the best suggestion I can give you is go to ezine articles and begin reading up on articles about article marketing. You can also go head and make a free account and start writing articles. I have gain a lot of experience from writing articles that are keyword focus. It all takes time but you will eventually begin to learn and grasp the concepts. I have an ezine articles account you can find me there by my name and take a look at my articles I do them on a daily basis be determined and don't stop learning!
I think if you was to sum it up in one word it would be "importance". How important is your site to the field? As I understand it that is what we are trying to do with all of the keyword, links, and so on. We are trying to prove our importance to Google for a specific subject.
It's all about competitive intelligence. Look at the sites that are now ranking in the top 10 for the terms you want to rank for. Look at their content, the age of the domains, their backlinks, etc. That's what you have to beat. If their page is old (older than 3 years or so) then you'll have to really build out the site and links exponentially for Google to consider your site more relevant. Relevant links, relevant content, assess and re-attack. It's all about strategy and the willingness to adapt.