SEO is constantly changing but some basic things are always the same. Here is my list of basic search optimization tips that always were effective for me.

1. Content is the most effective linkbuilding tool

Your posts should be interesting, useful and unique. You can get tons of quality backlinks from hundreds and thousands of sites absolutely for free only by writing posts. Otherwise your visitors will not subscribe to your RSS feed, Twitter or Facebook updates and they will never come back or even remember your site or blog. Writing useful texts takes a lot of time but it worth it.

2. Update your website on a regular basis

You can experiment with updating your blog and find which way works for you. For example I feel comfortable to write posts on my blogs about 2-3 times a week.

3. Write posts only when you are motivated

That’s my golden rule. I write blog posts only when a feel that motivation for doing that. If I don’t have motivation I don’t write anything. It’s much better to do something else - go for a walk, read websites or magazines, watch movie, listen to the music, etc.

4. Use relevant keyword in meta tags, title and first sentence of blog post

When writing a blog post always use relevant keywords in it’s first sentence and title. Also use it in meta tags such as title, description and keywords. That way your post will become relevant to your keywords and you’ll get better rankings in search engines.

5. Use relevant keywords for your pictures

Pictures can give you additional traffic from search engines if you’ll optimize them in a right way. I use relevant keywords for file names (for example, I use “google-analytics-keywords.jpg” instead of “img9803.jpg”) and alt and title attributes in  img tag.

6. Make sure to pay attention to internal linking

Try to not concentrate only on external links, because internal links are also very important. I use couple internal links to my other posts in every article. That allows my visitors to spend more time on my blog and to read more posts. Also internal links are useful for search engine bots to crawl my blog.

7. Share your posts in social networks

Please do not forget to share every article right after you publish it. That way you can get more visitors and social links to your new posts. My favorite social networks for sharing are Twitter, Facebook and Google+. I also use Google Buzz.

8. Use long tail keywords for your website optimization

Long tail keywords are very useful in competitive niches. You can additional visitors from search engines if you will use keywords that are 4-6 words in length. It’s possible to take advantage of a competitive niche by using long tail keywords. You can also read my article Why Long-Tail Keywords are Extremely Useful for SEO.

9. Use a sitemap on your site

Sitemap helps search engines to crawl all pages of your website or blog. If you have sitemap make sure to add it to Google Webmaster Tools. If you are not sure about it just go ahead and add sitemap.xml after your site URL. Most of modern content management systems have sitemap modules that are built-in or you can find special plugins for creating sitemap on your site.

10. Pay attention to your keyword density

Make sure that you pay attention to keyword density on your pages, but do not overdo it. The best way to figure out which keyword density is ideal for your page is to search your particular keyword and to analyze density on top pages in Google.

Mike Shakin

Dessert of a day - funny video about cool dog doing a lot of tricks: