Basic and Advanced SEO
For those unfamiliar with this term, SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimisation.
Search engines such as Google and Yahoo place websites in a list with a description containing keywords about the site. A website that has been optimised for search engines will appear higher on that list, making it easier to find them, thus making them more popular.
I would categorize SEO into two parts, basic and advanced.
There are many ways to improve SEO. The basic SEO would be items such as 'Title, Meta tags, Alt attributes, and headings. Basically the parts of SEO that take little time and can be setup straight away. These kinds of optimisation will have an immediate effect on smaller, less competitive searches. They are important for larger searches, but will not make a dent on them without more advanced SEO.
The more advanced SEO should have an effect on larger searches and are just as easy to understand. However it is the time and effort put in that makes it a difficult task.
There are two main factors in advanced SEO, which are content (with good use of keywords) and backlinks.
The content should be all about the subject area that the website is focused on and should contain the most relevant keywords near the start of each page.
The more content the better. In the case of the 'Professional Web Design Directory', it contains helpful and relevant content on every page all about website design and the areas.
Sites that contain such relevant content usually gain more organic and natural backlinks. This is a result of websites with similar content linking to that page as a reference.
Other ways of gaining backlinks is an exchange of links, such as directories such as this one, forums and press releases.
For more information on the basic parts of SEO, see the links below and for more up-to-date information I strongly recommend that you look at the information on this blog SEO4all, whose author always provides sound advice!
A guide to SEO: