It’s almost the end of 2011 and SEO is bigger than ever with numerous SEO practitioners from all over the world. However, most SEO newbies tend to jump right in focusing on advanced tactics and newer strategies. In order to attain SEO success , the basics is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked. Doing so will only result to failure. Here is a simple guide to the very important backbone for any SEO for success:

Keyword Research
Keyword research should be the foundation of any SEO strategy. Most experts agree that Keyword research is one of the most important activities in optimization. There are many kinds of keyword tools available for keyword research. Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool is one of the best tools out there. It is very easy to use and it is also free.
One important thing to remember is to always select “Exact Match” from the left navigation. This will give you a good idea of how many monthly searches are performed with a specific keyword/phrase. Broad match may deceive you by because it usually shows a high search volume.

Competitive Analysis
It is very important to have an idea of exactly where you stand in terms of authority and content. Remember that authority is not all about the number of links to your site. It is more on links from quality and related sites. OpenSiteExplorer is one of the top tools today for determining relative authority. For a quick competitive analysis, you need to look at the domain authority along with the linking root domains. Then, you can use Bing.com for checking a website’s indexation by simply performing a “site:www.sitename.com” search. Bing is used instead of Google because it is more accurate with a precise number of pages for websites.

Title Tag
Every page of your website should be unique including the title tag wherein every title tag should be written particularly for every page. There are conflicting opinions regarding this but most experts suggest beginning the title tag with the most competitive keywords/phrases. Of course, you have to have links pointing to your website. This will take some time so what you can do in the meantime is to focus on on-page SEO wherein the title tag is one of the most important elements.

Summary
Simply by employing even the most basic SEO tactics, you can experience significant results. Get good links, create quality content and make sure to target the most important keywords and use effective title tags. Once you’ve applied the basics, you can move on to more advanced tactics for better results.