Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be at the top of your Web publishing priority list. If Web surfers can’t find your site, they can’t read it, use it or share it with others. Below are recommendations and links to articles that detail how-to optimize your website.

I think everyone should sit down with Google’s webmaster guidelines and just read it all. It will only take a couple hours, but the time is well worth it. Make sure you subscribe to the official search engine blogs.

Tips on ranking in Google: Don’t try to rank for a huge phrase at first–pick a smaller niche and get to be known as an expert there, and then build your way out and up. Controversial posts are sure to build links, but too many controversial posts may undermine your credibility. I think you attract more links with a conversational style, humor, and doing your own research to produce new insights or tidbits of info. In my opinion, just commenting on other blogs isn’t as useful. There are a lot of ways to build a reputation, from having a great blog to producing a unique service to speaking at conferences. A single creative idea that catches fire in the blogosphere or digg.com is probably more useful than just chasing/buying/trading links. Original information or research is great bait to attract links. - Matt Cutts, senior Google engineer.

This article is offered as a resource to help individuals, organizations and companies inexperienced with search engine optimization learn the basics of how the service and process operates. It is our goal to improve your ability to drive search traffic to your site and debunk major myths about SEO. We share this knowledge to help businesses, government, educational and non-profit organizations benefit from being listed in the major search engines.

Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization [SEOmoz]

Links to SEO Goodness

SEO Made Easy

Checklist of 20 Things to do when starting a blog

General Web Publishing Articles from Lifehacker.com

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