The basics of SEO ( Search Engine Optimization) and marketing are to get your website found by the search engines. The SE’s send out spiders or crawlers that find links on the Internet and follow them. Once a SE finds a link and follows it to a website it looks at the header and then the content of the site. This is how you get found. You don’t need a site map though its nice. ( Blogger doesn’t Have site maps).

To have a website be found you need back links. The easiest way to get back links is to leave comments on blogs. When using this method leave a relevant comment with your keywords in the text. Don’t spam and use a relevant user name. Never leave a URL in the text. You will be flagged for sure.

Another good way to get back links to your website is to join forum relevant to your blogs topic. Get to know the forums and then insert a signature in the forums cpanel or your profile. Some forums do not allow signatures or only ones that lead to non commercial sites. Read the terms of service (tos). Again don’t spam and stay relevant at all times. If you become a regular part of a forum because you are authoritative the you can turn up your marketing efforts. So start slow and become part of the community.

Social Bookmarking networks are probably the best SEM ( Search Engine Marketing) tool these days. Digg, StumbleUpon among many others are all the rage. Sites submitted to Stumble Upon have been known to have 1000s of visitors within hours of the site being stumbled. Use caution when stumbling. Read there TOS carefully and don’t trade stumbles through there site or on forums. StumbleUpon watches for to much traffic coming from one place. You can submit your site once. You can also use a service like Stumble Upon Exchange

Digg is a must have social bookmark account along with many others. When you start a Digg account you want to make friends before you start using it to push sites. Once you have a decent list of friends start sharing Diggs on your sites. Try to keep your ads to a minimum and blend them in using text links.

Directories have been a staple in SEO & SEM for years. Some question the validity of directories and if they actually pass on Page Rank. Most directory admins add sites slowly which is good to appear natural. Never pay for links. It is against Google’s criteria for inclusion to there index. When submitting to directories it is best to do them manually and change the description and meta descriptions as much as possible. You can use a service or find someone on a webmaster forum to submit your sites, but it is best to do it yourself. The one tool I do recommend for Directory Submissions is Directory Submitter . You can use the free version.

Yahoo Answers is becoming a good way to promote web sites. If you are a authority about something and have pages on the web about your niche you can answer questions and leave a backlink in the source box. I have just started answering questions and do not want to advocate any spamming. Yahoo has strict rules. You need to read the terms of service. You can put URLs in your profile too. I recommend not leaving any links unless it is relevant and useful to others.

I highly recommend reading the Free SEO News from Aron Wall the Creator of the SEO Book. The blog and forum are full of usful information. Aron Wall is known world wide as one of the best Keyword Researchers and Search Engine Marketing Experts.
Another great resource with blogs and forums is SEOmoz Learn From SEO Experts. Become an Expert. with them. SEOmoz has dozons of blogger that only write to help webmasters and bloggers. Fantastic group of people.

Thats it for now. Happy back linking