Understanding how Google thinks and their motivation behind rolling out new features and improvements is core to the SEO ninja’s mission. Your mission is to understand how Google thinks, and it is based on how Google sees your website.

1: Understand the Google Index
For you to be successful with your website in terms of SEO, you also need to learn how to satisfy Google’s rules so you maximize your share of the search index. The search index is comprised of pages from each website that Google is willing to display in search results. Putting content on the web does not guarantee that Google will see fit to index that content. The index is built on the algorithm that Google continually updates and changes. Google Webmaster Tools is an invaluable resource for providing a quick x-ray about the standing of your website, including how many pages are indexed and if there is something preventing the site from being fully indexed. SEO ninjas have to be skilled programmers in order to reverse engineer the indexing algorithm correctly, but they also need to be effective marketers to be successful with driving human traffic.

2: Perform Quick SEO Diagnostics
Check to make sure that you have an XML Sitemap. It should be located at: yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml - if you don't have an XML Sitemap, you can create a quick temporary XML Sitemap. Ideally, you want your website to create and update your sitemap dynamically when you add new content.

3: Manage Your On-Page SEO
These steps include re-writing the site to incorporate valid HTML and CSS, minimizing the use of tables and in-line javascript, and moving the code out of the way of the content within the context of the website backend. Of course there are at least 2 dozen more elements to mastering On Page SEO.

4: Take Advantage of Free Information
The best step to cover all of these basics is to get a free SEO report. The free report will give you the lowdown on the basics for both on-page and off-page SEO. There are dozens of free SEO tools available, but a true SEO ninja can write his own programs and tools for that purpose.

5: Optimize Continually
SEO is an iterative process. In layman's terms, this means that good SEO is accomplished by repeating some of the same steps over and over again. Did you write and post a blog and grab some inbound links? Great, now do it again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Grab a custom SEO Checklist when you're ready to move your SEO efforts to primetime.