I do a lot of social media marketing, but I'm trying to learn more about SEO. I have some basic knowledge, but I want to know what are the most critical SEO essentials to implement? What are the basics that every site should utilize?

Thank you!

do all possible ways of on page and off page optimization... don't do black hat.

Do both onpage and offpage optimization.

First give more priority in on page seo then you can start off page.

You should be learn about SEO then jump to SMO.

The best way to SEO is write a lot of Articles with suitable title and use arround 3-4% of keyword in it.

And Then build a lot of backlinks.

you can do different off page activities like article submissions, social bookmarking, directory submissions, blog postings, blog commenting, forum posting etc.

Having a quality content. To have a attractive and useful content relevant to your keywords.

Competition analysis is main, if you don't determine the right keyword then all effort would go in vain.

first of done on page after start off page below service

Social Bookmarking
Article Submission
Forum Posting
Blog Posting
Directory Submission

Best seo practice is to get at least one of your primary keywords in domain or sub domain name of your website.
You can use hyphens (-) to separate multiple keywords.
For example: seo-service, seo-guidelines, free-seo each cover two keywords.

Here are the four main phrase of Seo

Keyword research and selection
competitor analysis
site architecture and on page changes
building backlink

if you study above points in detail , I give guaranty that you will learn all you need for successful online marketing

Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can but keep in mind it should not be exactly same as title of your page.
You can use (H1 H2 H3) tag for specifying anything important.
To reduce size of heading use CSS.

For off page SEO, Link Wheel is a very effective way to boost site keyword rankings.

There is only two things into the SEO on page SEO and Off page SEO. Just read about both the things and after the particular time you'll definitely have some idea about the SEO.

for me Social Media Optimization is one of the most important techniques to generate traffic. The benefits are:

* Improve search rankings
* Increase brand awareness
* Drive more potential Customers to your site
* Drive more sales to your business
* Build relationships with your market

Originally Posted by jedz

for me Social Media Optimization is one of the most important techniques to generate traffic. The benefits are:

* Improve search rankings
* Increase brand awareness
* Drive more potential Customers to your site
* Drive more sales to your business
* Build relationships with your market

i want ot add a point: website internal optimization is equally important , in order to get more external links, first your site internal optimizing must be perfect. Key words distribution, technology, products, web design, content, etc.

if you have some basic knowledge of seo then try to start some experiments and start learning about seo techniques by authorized resources like seomoz and searchengienland

pay great attention to the content and concentrate on on-page SEO,
and dont wait for fast fast results.

Onsite and Offsite optimization of a website, Keyword related to niche and unique content are most important thing to start SEO for a website.