In this day and age SEO is the chasis to the car, it's the foundations to the building and the soles on the shoe. It should come first and the website you are building or redesigning should draw it's structure from it.

It is still difficult for some businesses to understand why SEO is so important. You don't know the business your missing by not having a properly optimized site.

You can't build a new house until the foundations are laid. So with SEO you need to start with keyword research and analysis to understand how the site should be structured. It doesn't hurt to have a content plan but allow your content plan to adapt to the results of your SEO research.

Search Engine Optimization analysis will tell you what your potential clients are looking for which in turn allows you to target them accordingly with effective landing page and copy writing.

This is part of the SEO Waterfall© I am working on. This SEO post is for beginners so all you experienced folks should naff off now before you make snorting noises.

5 SEO Basic Tips:

1: Page titles - does the page title of each page in your site say what the page is about?
(The page title is what you see printed at the top of your browser window. This page title will be Five basic SEO tips for Beginners | mark parrott)

2: URL - Does the URL of the page include descriptive words which explain what the page is about?
This page URL is http://www.markparrott.com/blog/five-basic-seo-tips-beginners

3: Titles - Does the main page Title summarise what the page is about and also include the descriptive words used in Step 1 & 2?

4: Content - Does the content in the page stay on topic. Does is include words that help define and explain what the page is about.

5: Don't forget your Tags - In the page meta data (in the code which makes up the page) make sure you include Title and Description tags.

I got my Mr Wong email update this morning. Not normally something I read but today I thought I would throw caution to the wind and click on the enticing subject line, diving in to expose me to all sorts of Wongness.

Today I did discover something new and remotely interesting. A new Beta service called PixelPipe which announces it can post your content to nearly any network or blog online. What caught my eye initially was that they tout alot of networks, including such big hitters as Facebook, Flickr and my personal favourite, Drupal.

As any informed blogger or SEO guru will tell you, having unique content on your website is more than just a little important these days. Ensuring Google (and other search engines, lest we forget) see you as a credible and unique source of information for the content you write is one of the last things on the web worth really protecting. After spending quality time writing and optimising your content it gives you the wookies if people steal it.

NB: There are a lot of ways people can get your content and use it for evil. One is the simple copy and paste. Two is using a scrapper to 'scrape' your information from your site automagically. Three is taking RSS feeds and importing them as posts on their own sites without including a link to original. And there are a few more no doubt.