Search engine optimization (SEO), can be very daunting if you think about it too much. However, I’ve found that SEO is really not as complicated as some make it out to be. If you review the literature a bit, you’ll realize that the rules for great ranking is a fusion between great writing and effective business networking. Just like writing a good essay you need to write to a target audience with the keywords which defines your business. And, just like power business networking you have to have many folks out there “referring” your services (through link backs). At the end of the day if you stick to the basics of both these concepts, then you will receive great Google rankings for your website.
To demystify the process further USA Today has a brief interview with Matt Cutts, an engineer at Google and also an active blogger. According to this USA Today piece:
Google says it looks at more than 100 pieces of data to determine a site’s ranking. But links are where it’s at, once your search terms are clearly visible on your site and the title and description tags correctly marked.
However, Matt suggests the top five things that any webmaster can do in order to get started in acheiving great rankings.