Search Efforts

What is exactly is SEO and how can I do it my self?

How to I make my SEO rating go up and how do I get on the 1st page of Google and Yahoo searches? I built my site (www.freerealestateclassifieds.net) but I'm not getting the traffic I want. Besides AdWords what else can I do?

Public Comments

1. webtracker is an OK analytics tool. you should give that one a try, it's the one we use at work.
2. You need to know about 1. Onpage SEO 2. Offpage SEO 3. Competitor Analysis 4. Content Building 5. Link Building (also part of Offpage SEO). For content, you must look into RSS to html scripts or tickers. The most troublesome part is the link building. You have to write articles, submit links to hundreds of related webpages. The .edu websites are great if you manage to post a link to them. Maintain and checking of the links are another tiring thing. I've gone through all the BS just to get page rank 1. But recently I have found a software with helps a lot in terms of saving effort. http://www.pigcheers.com/seo Hope it helps you. It cost some money so its entirely up to you.
3. Well it can get complicated but the first thing you want to do is make sure your website is built correctly in order to take advantage of your efforts. Below are a couple of links that will hopefully help explain http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 http://www.webmarketingsource.com/analyzer.html The first link will go over some basic site requirements and or suggestions. The second link will show you how your website generaly looks in the eyes of a search engine while not completly accurate it gives you a good place to start and offers suggestions on how to improve your website from a search marketing stand point. It is also very important that you set up site maps XML HTML This will help in getting your website indexed faster. Secondly you will want to really take some time in choosing keywords ("Keyword" basically anything you type into a search bar) Dont go after keywords that are overbroad bieng specific helps a ton from my experiance. Once you have selected the targeted keywords and or keyphrases you would like to obtiain i would generate content on your website that relflects the keywords your trying to rank on, and probly the last thing to do is to get the word out on the internet to others by submiting it to search engines and gathering inbound links to your site. Go to the webmarketingsource.com link to check your link status and your competitors link status. I see alot of people generate links in alot of different ways some of the more popular are. Blogs Forums Developing other sites to point back to themselves link trading But there are alot of penalties if your not careful so really take a look at the first link "google". There is also search engine submission software packages you can buy im not sure how well they work but they do seem to help some cases. Hope this helps
4. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization .Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. You can do it yourself by using software , SEO Elite is the best one in the market .