Hearing the acronym SEO is not new for most Internet marketers.

 In fact, it is one of the unwritten protocols that must be learned and kept in mind by every aspiring Internet marketer. Thus, if you are unfamiliar with SEO, you will experience difficulty in terms of achieving your Internet marketing business objectives.

Before discussing SEO to Internet marketing beginners, let us first tackle search engines. If you are familiar with Yahoo, Google, or MSN, these are some of the widely used search engines on the Internet.

If you are looking for any information on the Internet, search engines will always be your first and probably your sole option. You will just type several words that are related to the information you are looking for on the search box, and when you click the "search button", you will be redirected to a page that contains listings of websites containing the words that you type on the search box.

Because of the popularity of search engines to Internet users, Internet marketers consider it as one of the primary tools in getting online buyers. Thus, it paved the way to the birth of SEO as an essential attribute on Internet marketing.

The acronym stands for search engine optimization, which is the art of producing web pages that will have high rankings on related search engine results. It is accomplished through optimization of several sections or elements in the HTML coding of every web page. Search engines specifically interpret such sections, and the latter will rank the former according to its level of optimization.

There are various methods and opinions on how a certain webpage should be optimized. Such methods and opinions will heavily dependent on the type website you have, its contents, the purpose of its existence, and the existing competition.

When speaking about general SEO, it heavily depends on the proper use of certain keywords and/or key phrases that are used to describe your website's content.

Probably you will wonder how these keywords affect the SEO performance of your Internet marketing website. When you search for needed information using several words, you will notice that such words are "highlighted" when search results are displayed.

The words that you type on the search box serves as the "keywords" that is utilized by webmasters in optimizing their websites. Although it may not be of importance to an Internet user, but it is as good as "gold" for Internet marketers who want their site to be shown on the top pages of every related search engine result.

Keywords that are used in SEO have standard placements on a website. For instance, such keywords must appear on the title section of your webpage's source code. Moreover, it must appear on the META description section wherein the page is described in an accurate manner by repeating the selected keywords. The META section often contains the keywords that are used to describe your site's content and its product or service.

If you will carefully analyze the previous discussion, you will notice that the performance of the site's SEO heavily depends on the keywords that you are using.

Thus, the main keywords or key phrases must appear on the first 2 paragraphs of the content of every page, and then scatter it throughout the rest of the page. In scattering your main keywords, make sure that it will be an integral part of the content itself. It must appear as if it is among the original content of the page.

In addition, the last paragraph of each page must be keyword-rich. One of the unwritten rules involving keyword placement is that the keywords density of your page must be between 5 to 15 percent. Although it is advised that you maximize the use of your keywords, avoid using it excessively. A content with keyword density above the standard will not help on the optimization of your website.

Another consideration in SEO performance of your site is the placement of relative back links, or hyperlinks directing to external sites. It is relatively important since search engine spiders navigate through links. In addition, the text of your page relating to external links may also contain keywords.

If you are one of the aspiring Internet marketers who want to take the challenge of earning on the Internet, do not ever forget the acronym that will lead you to the success of your Internet marketing career-SEO.

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 spots of the major search engines. That amounts to a lot of competition! I say if you can't get listed at the top, indirectly get to the top.

How do you do this? Look up the top 20 web sites on the major search engines under the keywords and phrases people would find your web site. The key would be to then advertise on those web sites. The most expensive way would be to buy ad space on those web sites. If you don't want to spend any money, you could use the ten strategies below.

These strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link at the end of your messages.

2. Ask the web site owner if they would like a free ebook to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad in the free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link at the end of the article. If they publish it, you'll indirectly be at the top of the search engines.

4. Write an excellent article review of their web site, products or services. Then publish the review on your web site. E-mail the web site owner and tell him or her about it. They may link to your web site so their visitors read it.

5. Ask the owner of the web site if they would want to trade advertising. If you don't get as much traffic as they do, you could throw in some extra incentives.

6. Propose a cross promotion deal with the web site. You both could promote each others products or services together in one package deal. This means a mention and link back to your web site.

7. Give the web site a testimonial for their product or service. Include a little text link for your web site with the testimonial. You never know; it could end up on their ad copy.

8. Post your advertisement on their free classified ad section on their web site. You want to be sure you have an attractive headline so they will read your ad.

9. Post your text link on their free-for-all links page. You want to go back and post your link regularly so it stays towards the top.

10. Sign their guest books. You could leave a short compliment about their web site on their guest book. Just include your signature file and link at the end of your message.