If you are new to internet marketing and you are seriously thinking about running some form of an internet based business, either from home on your own, with a business partner in an office or even with an investor, then you should be focusing on many areas.  Aside from products or services your focus should be driven towards marketing and generating new leads or sales.

With any new web based business the idea of marketing your website can be a very daunting task, there are literally thousands of ways in which you can market your business online, but where the hell do you start?

Well let’s assume for a moment that you have your website up and running, your products are all set to be sold and your payment processor is waiting for the first order, how do you generate traffic and start building a constant stream of visitors, that return and buy from you again at a later stage?  Quite simply you need to scrub up on some basic Search Engine Optimisation skills or (SEO) for short.  You see SEO comes across like a science or an art that needs to be perfected before you start seeing very decent results, which is true in some cases and to a certain degree but for a start-up this is not your aim.

Your aim as a new seller is to get to grips with the two big areas of SEO which you will here a lot about on forums, blogs and websites, then you need to master the basics.

On-Page SEO Factors

The first area is what is known as ‘on-page’ SEO which basically means every critical element that helps you rank accordingly on the search engines and allows you to pose as the most relevant source of information.  In other words what you add to your web pages best determines how relevant you are to your market and in turn allows Google, Yahoo, MSN etc to rank you based on that relevancy and trust you build with them.

The most important on-page factors that you need to make sure are included on all web pages on your site are as follows:

• Title Tag - You will see this being used in the search engine results pages and can see it at the top of your browser in the title bar.  The idea behind this tag is that you should use it for drawing in clicks (traffic) by writing compelling headlines for it, as it is not used so much for ranking purposes these days.

• Meta Tags - Used back in the day to support keyword spamming they are no longer needed for SEO purposes but more for ad purposes.  There are two types of meta tags, the first one is called the “description” tag and you will need to use this for notifying others what your page is about within 255 characters or less.  The second type is the “keywords” tag which should have your related keywords for that particular page.

• H1, H2 and H3 Styles - These tags are old school HTML markups which are better known as page title tags.  They are used to distinguish what piece of the text on the page is a title, sub title etc.  They also carry on up to H6 which is almost never used.

• Bolded, Italic and Underlined - In order to stand out more to the search engines you must scream relevancy by decorating your words with the use of the bolded, italic and underline functions.

• Contextual Links - With a growing interest of links these days, more than ever you should certainly link important keywords to pages you wish to rank for but in the most natural way possible, for example if you link from within the context of one page full of content about “mountain bikes” to another related page about “mountain bike wheels” then you will increase the internal power of the overall site structure.

• ALT Tags - These are used to name your images on each page but with relevant descriptions in order for web users with sight problems to read your page with audio software, which says your image description out loud.  Once upon a time, keyword spammers used this feature for stuffing words into the images because search engines actually took notice of them for some time.

• Keyword Density - For your page to follow simple rules that Google, Yahoo and MSN set you need to adhere to the density rule, which is basically not to overuse your targeted keyword phrase or term for that page.  The recommended percentage is 3% to 5% which means you need to keep any keyword below this figure in order to stay safe.

• Keyword Occurrence - Sometimes mistaken for “density” occurrence is fast becoming an in demand factor that is used to determine which search engine proven synonyms are related to your target phrase and also which other words are related but also being used on other websites.

Off-Page SEO Factors

• Back Links - Still vital to the success of your website back links pose a significant impact on the rankings of your site in the SERPs.  The reason being is that link are counted as votes which help the search engines decide whether you are important to your market.  The relevancy of your incoming links are the most critical nowadays, as before websites would use links from any website they could find.

• Anchor Text - The quality of your links matter, so you need to make sure that you are using the best phrases that also include long tails, but contain your target term.  For example if you are targeting “rock climbing” then you need to have a link pointing to your site saying “rock climbing tips” as this uses your main key term and also looks more natural.

• Deep Linking - Using the same method above with “anchor text links” but make sure you are linking back to every page on your site and not just the home page, as this will boost each pages quality in terms of page rank etc.

• Social Acceptance & Popularity - As we see a rise in social media websites your focus should be on socialising online with your business.  Search engines such as Google are placing much more emphases on these sites now as it all adds to the popularity of your website.

So What’s The Difference Then?

The big defying difference between these two majorly important factors is that on-page is used for showing how relevant you are to your market and off-page is used for showing how relevant and popular you are within your market which actually translates into traffic and eventually sales depending on your website.