SEO, or Search Engine Optimization refers to the techniques to increase traffic for your site. There are numerous techniques to utilize, many are easier than others. SEO is basically increasing presence on search websites which should send you more web traffic. The goal for all SEO is to get your website to appear as number one for searches. A good first step is to ensure your blog is optimized correctly. Make sure you use appropriate meta keys and descriptions so that search engines are able to spider your website more effectively. Once this is done you will not have to look at it again. Whatever your website is about make sure your title, keywords and description are all relevant and targeting the area of interest. This is the information which is shown in search engine results. 

Also, it is important to write good content. Plagiarizing content that is not unique will get you marked down by search engines. Search engines are now highly developed and smart at offering users the most relevant content.

Once you have optimized your website correctly and written good, original content, the next stage is to build links. Search engines determine how good your website is by how many inbound links the site has. For example, if your website has more links than another, search engines will rank you higher and you will get more traffic. Writing good quality, keyword driven content will result in this process happening organically but it may take a while for search engines to discover you. To speed it up you can try some of the following techniques.

Firstly, submit articles to article directories. Sometimes it can be tough for the articles to be accepted because they have to be reviewed by reviewers. But, for every article that gets accepted, you also get a couple of links. Search engines really like this. You should see SEO as a game - always trying to get quality links from good sources.

Secondly, you can build links to your blog by commenting on blogs. Many blog owners allow you to link to your site with a dofollow link. Dofollow is the colloquial name given to links that search engines will take notice of, compared with nofollow links. Nofollow was invented because people would pay for links to their website or spam lots of links. Nofollow means search engines will ignore the link which means you will get no SEO benefit from it. Spend some time finding blogs that allow you to link your site? This is beneficial because it will give your website SEO benefits and also increases the awareness and allows you to network with the blogosphere. Your comments ought to be genuine and relevant to the posts. In most cases, writing something self-promotional (e.g.: "please take a look at my home page") will not get accepted and you will have wasted effort and time. Always aim to be a productive commenter.

Furthermore, you may also want to use online book marking websites to bookmark to your content. Do not spam your website too much though because the admins for the sites will likely block your website from being added. But similar to directories, you will be able to receive a good inbound link from a high quality page. If a site is well established, search engines give you more SEO benefits from getting a link from there. In other words, getting a dofollow link from a popular online book marking site is worth much more SEO-wise compared to a link from a small site.

One last tip is to submit your site to online directories. They can be a bit troublesome to setup but if you can get a link from a directory it will eventually improve your search engine ranking. A lot of the directories are well established. Although there are normally various submission options. It is common for directories to offer different free and paid submission options. Generally they will be: paid for, free but with reciprocal links and free. If you can pay for links (although they can be quite costly) then you will see your website fast tracked into the directory. If you go for a free link then it can take months to get accepted. Unfortunately, reciprocal links negate the SEO benefit of the link because they are not one-way. These may be beneficial for referring traffic but for SEO purposes these are not as useful.

If you follow the above hints and tips then you should see an improvement in your search engine rankings. However you should also definitely be using services to monitor and report your SEO efforts and Internet traffic. This way you will be able to see what has the most benefit and what you can focus more on.