[Get to Rank 3 on Google Now] - SEO Jump Start for Newbies

I've been studying the latest SEO tips and I've had quite a bit of success with many of the methods in circulation lately.
I thought it'd be useful to compile a list of the most helpful tips I've used lately and outline a method to uses them effectively.


I've been ranking for a medium-high difficulty keyword (90k exact match) starting from 100+ position and I'm now rank 3 on Google.

1. Relative SEO.
Much of SEO actually relies on having a very well optimized website and inner pages. Don't think you can just spam backlinks and your site will be on the first page.
Research the Competition. You don't even need to do keyword research yet.
You can buy software or even use Google Keyword tool. Just understand your competition in the following areas:

1. Page speeds
2. Keyword saturation on main page + inner pages
3. Backlinks. Some sites you're just not going to beat. If they have too many high authority backlinks, don't waste your time thinking you'll beat them. Just take a look at the keywords they're ranked for and consider alternative (less competitive keywords). Check other competitors the same way to get a general idea of what rank your site is going to be.

2. Make a list
Highly competitive keywords(3-5) and low competition keywords(5-10)
This is always useful to know what words to rank and the competition of these words. Many keywords tend to fluctuate over time. Be sure to research keywords regularly.



3. On page SEO.
On page SEO is one of the few things that will 100% guarantee a better a better SERP. Plus it shouldn't cost you any money, just a bit of time and effort

1. Page Speed - Make you page load faster (even if its only 0.02 seconds faster) by reducing image sizes, adding a caching system (gzip), improving JS code, and using htaccess to do a number of things such as add a page expiration time when loading.
2. Vary keywords in the inner pages on your money site. Don't keep recycling the same high competition keywords that you have on the home page. Try some low competition keywords instead.
3. Add image titles "<title></title>" and alts "<alt></alt>" to every image.
4. -Add titles to every link to yoru inner sites. The titles should consist of your keywords and a variance in the alt. You may say alt won't do anything on text links. I haven't seen it hurt my rankings so why not add it. You never know what can make Google like your site just a little more.

4. Web 2.0 properties

1. For starters, I like to create 1-2 of my own Wordpress Blogs (web 2.0 properties) for the keyword i'm trying to rank for.
2. To do this, grab 1-2 domain names that are EMD (preferably .com, .org, or .net). They don't need any age or rank.
3. Now go to godaddy and find expiring domain names (any domain will work). The older the better.
4. Grab one and set up wordpress (always use wordpress when adding articles) a 500 word article on the old (aged) domain with your keywords.
5. Now, you want to set up a 301 redirect to your the new domain you just registered which tells Google, you've been around for ages, but you've decided to move to a new domain name. This transfers the age to your new domain name.
6. Add 5x500 word articles to your new domain name with varied keywords and link to your money site.
7. It's important to host these new domains on different hosts. You want different c-class ips so Google doesn't see all these sites coming from one place. I purchased hosting from hostgator (month to month hosting) and 3ix.org ($12 for 12 months is a good deal). Still testing uptime for 3ix (it is poor reviews, but it may just be trolls).
8. Add other (20 or so) Web 2.0 properties with well spun articles (make sure they're readable, or just spend a few bucks paying for someone to write them). Submit to Ezine, wordpress, hubpages, squidoo etc.
9. In each 2.0 property, you can add 1-2 links to your money site and one link to one of your other 2.0 properties (randomly).

5. Back linking.
The 'hard' part is done. No more backbreaking (fingerbreaking?) manual labor and time to build some backlinks.

You have a few options when it comes to backlinks.
1. You can manually create links and purchase backlinks from other users.
2. You can hire an SEO firm or outsource the SEO

If you're new I recommend hiring an SEO firm or even finding a service on WarriorForum. There are many great SEO services that will work very well if you have completed the first 4 steps in this process.

If you plan to create manual links, I recommend building web 2.0 links in a link wheel style and adding tier 2-tier 3 links to add link juice.

Hope this wasn't too much to read. The idea was for this to be simple, yet comprehensive.
Hope this has been helpful or worth the read.

Only give thanks if this guide has helped you.