When it comes to website optimization for search engine optimization, beginners tend to believe that it's a task that is monumental to undertake. While this may have a grain of truth, in all honesty, website optimization is much simpler than that.

Website optimization has one golden rule: make your website friendly for your readers, while making it equally friendly for the search engines.

How to do that? There are three keys.

The first and foremost key to a fully-optimized website is a site that is ideal for your readers and visitors. Your website has to be navigable, gives your visitors the exact information they need, and most of all, your website has to be pleasing to the eye. In summary, your website has to be informative and aesthetically pleasing.

The second key is to use keywords and use them in good measure throughout your website's content. This ensures that search engines will find your website, as associated with the keywords you've chosen to target. Do not overdo this, however, as search engines now have an anti-keyword spam policy. Make sure that you would just use keywords at the optimal density throughout your pages. While the optimal keyword density is disputed throughout SEO circles, the general rule is to not overwhelm your website content with keywords. Most people push for 3-5%, some go for 6-8%, and it's safe to work within these stats. Otherwise, your efforts would be counterproductive, as Google has strict measures against websites that are tagged as keyword spammers.

And the last, but definitely not the least, key to a fully-optimized website, are external links. Google ranks the websites to display in its results primarily through the number of links that lead to the sites in question, among other factors. So make sure that you have a good number of other websites linking to your website. Social bookmarking like Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon are great tools, as with social network broadcasts like Twitter.com. Make sure that you keep linking to your site over time, as links get incremental value on Google. As a note, link exchanges no longer work with Google, because their current algorithm now favors one-sided linking: meaning that other sites would be linking towards your site alone, and not that you would link back to them in return.

Optimizing your website for search engine domination isn't brain surgery. With knowledge, effort and patience, you'll get your website up on Google's #1 in no time!