There are lots of articles on the internet on search engine optimisation and how to do it successfully both on your own website and for others. You will notice however that there are differences of opinion in every article that you read. The reason for this is simple. Search engine optimisation is an art rather than an exact science. The only people who can say 100% that what you are doing is correct are the search engines themselves.

There are a lot of people out there who have had success with their own methods of performing SEO and who regularly produce information for us all to read. The successful people in the world of SEO have one thing in common. They are all extremely passionate about the subject. It is this passion that drives them forward with second guessing the ranking factors that are updated regularly by the search engines.

Whilst SEO isn’t an exact science the SEO world and the experts have reported quite extensively various consistencies in ranking factors and it is these consistencies that the whole industry has been built upon.

I need to mention quite quickly that SEO isn’t a quick process unless you have an extremely niche idea that nobody else has had before. There are no set timescales or secret formulas that lead to top rankings and anybody telling you otherwise are probably doing something that isn’t ethical and should be avoided at all costs. If you look at it logically if it were as easy as simply doing x y z then why share the knowledge when they could keep it for themselves and optimise their own websites for financial gains only.

After looking at hundreds of SEO articles and attending many conferences it is fair to say that the one thing that overrides anything else is quality content. If you can ensure that your website content is original and interesting to your market you stand a real chance of ranking well. The reason for this is the search engines reward quality content and the better the content the more chance you have of people linking to you. I’m not going to go into detail on how to optimise your website here as there are thousands of articles out there that can guide you on this subject.

What I will say is that after top quality content and quality inbound links to your website this is where people’s opinions differ on the subject, and it is really difficult to decide who to believe. Going back to an earlier point why should you believe them in the first place as if they have the answer why are they sharing it with you? The fact is, unless you are the person who decides who ranks where and why, you are never really going to know how to truly optimise your website.

As a result if you are going to optimise your own website you need to be prepared to put the time in as you will need to read as many different article, blog post and attend as many conferences and webinars as humanly possible on a continuous if not daily basis so you can hear other people’s ideas on the subject and keep up with the latest trends. Then to be successful you need to perform your own testing and come up with your own theories based on your findings and everything else you have read and listened to. It’s a long continuous sometimes frustrating journey SEO and for this reason only the passionate are successful.

Written by Jamie Lyons (actually Mark Farrell pretending to be Jamie Lyons) when they should have been writing about office supplies and debt management help.