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What are the four most important elements to building a high-ranking website?

1. Build a web site that is easy for search engines to find and process.

2. Produce a list of key words that customers will be using to find your site, and incorporate those words into your web pages.

3. Get important web sites similar in topic to your own to link (themed links) to you so that search engines know your site is also an important destination.

4. Great Content. Search engines love great and unduplicated content!

90% of Search Engine Optimization is really focused on finding ways to achieve the the four steps listed above. Understanding the fundamental bedrock of SEO will keep your efforts focused and prevent you from wasting time and energy on techniques that have no effect, or worse, could even harm your page's position in the search engines.

There is NO magic in SEO. Ranking highly in the search engines is a matter of building a great site, finding the right search words and getting the right people to link to you and having great content. In SEO terms, you need to build a search engine-friendly site, find the right keywords, and get the right inbound links.