Getting your website to rank in the search engines is both an art and a science. Most experts agree that to get your page to rank, there are a few core steps that matter the most. Follow this checklist to get your SEO (search engine optimization) campaign kicked off to a solid start.

Keyword Selection

This is the most important step. Choosing what keywords you’re trying to rank for is one of the most important decisions you could make in your business. Choose it right and you’ll make it much easier to rank and get traffic to your website.

Choose wrong and you’ll either be fighting an uphill battle in terms of competition, or you’ll just not get the traffic you want.

Here are three things to consider when choosing keywords:

* Traffic – Does this keyword get enough traffic to make it worth it to target this keyword?

* Competition – How many other people are targeting this keyword?

* Quality – If you can rank for this keyword, will it attract the kind of people you want?

If you can choose keywords that get decent traffic, have competition that you can overcome and attract the kind of people who would pay for your product, then you’re on a very good track.

On-Site Optimization

On-site optimization basically means making it easy for Google to figure out what your website and your web pages are about.

The most important thing is your title tag. More than anything on your page, your title tag determines what Google thinks your page is about. Make sure your keywords are in your title tag, preferably close to the beginning of the tag.

The second most important tag is your H1 tag. This is your headline tag. Google also looks at this to determine what your site is about.

That’s about all that matters as far as on-page SEO goes. In the past, things like meta tags, HTML validation, keyword density and so on all mattered a lot more. Today on-page optimization is much more simplified.

Getting Backlinks

At the heart and soul of any SEO campaign is backlinks. Backlinks are what drives web pages up and down on Google.

There are many techniques to getting backlinks. At the most basic level, it’s creating very good content and promoting that content. Here are a few ways to get backlinks:

* Getting in the press
* Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Pulse
* Social News – Digg, Reddit, etc.
* Link baiting – Creating interesting content with the express intent of getting linked back to
* Making pages on Medium, Hubpages, Thrive Global, etc.

If you follow this checklist, you’ll do better than “average” internet marketers. Make sure you’re targeting the right keywords, optimize your website well and then spend the majority of your time and resources on getting backlinks.

Want help figuring out what needs fixing and improving on your website? Check out My Web SEO and get your free Website Audit and Analysis.