When you decide, for whatever reason, that your website needs to show up a little bit higher on the search engine results page, you soon find yourself in the world of SEO, or search engine optimization. If you’ve never dealt with SEO before, the entire process can seem rather overwhelming. Don’t worry! This guide will lay down a few basics to help clarify the process for you.

The first thing that you need to get comfortable with in the search engine optimization game is the fact that you CAN take care of your website’s optimization on your own. Yes, there are experts out there that make a living doing SEO professionally. That doesn’t mean you have to hire them! The basic principles that improve a website’s search engine ranking are not secret, and you can master them without devoting an entire career to it. You’ll find that it’s possible to achieve excellent results simply by devoting a small (but consistent) part of the time you put into your website towards SEO.

Whether you like it or not, the way you’re going to cultivate your SEO skills is by doing plenty of research. This includes not just the time you spend learning about the market in which your website competes but also the time you devote to educating yourself about good optimization strategy. In order to get effective and stay that way, you’ll have to do both. SEO is a rapidly-changing field; there are always brand-new innovations to look at. Search engines are changing their ranking systems all the time, too, so you’ll have to know what to do when they do. Similarly, your website’s specific needs will change over time, and only constant research will help you stay on top.

In the course of your research, remember to be both general and specific. While you want to learn about good optimization techniques in the most broadly-applicable way possible, you also have to remain aware of the fact that not all search engines operate in the same way. Don’t dismiss a potentially-powerful SEO tactic because it’s tailored to a single search engine, even if that engine isn’t the industry leader. Not only can such tactics be highly effective for your website, they can also frequently teach you a great deal that you can use to shape your own overall strategy.

Never lose sight of the fact that the ultimate way to boost your search engine ranking is to run a very popular website with lots of happy readers that check in regularly. A site that people find useful, clear, and enjoyable has a big advantage in the SEO game. Likewise, a difficult-to-use website that doesn’t satisfy visitors is operating under a big disadvantage. The part of your time that you put towards optimization should never be a majority of your overall website management. Your visitors should always come first!

This brief article can barely scratch the surface of the SEO information that’s available to you, of course. Hopefully, it’s put you in the right frame of mind to continue your self-education in the subject. You can continue to build up your fund of optimization knowledge all the way through your career as a webmaster. With that supply of information, you’ll find that doing your own SEO is well within your capabilities!