Search Engine Optimization
Just the basics!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

    Search engine Optimization is the process of tweaking your website content so that your web pages will rank as highly as possible in search results. There is a lot that can be done to give your web site and the site pages an edge over your competition.

Step one!

    You know what business you are in. You surely know what services or products you sell. Do you know what words people plug into Google when they search for your products and services? That is "step one"!

    The "search terms" that people use when they want to find the services or products you offer will determine what changes need to be made to your web page(s) content. Every search engine, yes all of them, compare these "search terms" to the content of your web page and order the result so that the most "relevant" pages appear at the top of the heap.

    Now, those search terms become "keywords". These keywords are what you will need to artfully work into the content of your web page(s). Try out variations of the prime search terms too! Reliance on just one keyword or key phrase won't help you too much. The pages o this site are pretty well optimized for "search engine optimization" and a couple of variations as well as the individual words of the phrase. With several million other established web pages to compete with, I might make it to page 10 in a few weeks!

Step Two:

    You have your keywords and key phrases now you need to find out what to do with them. If you have already generated your website, you should examine the following areas:

• Page titles - each page needs a title! Try not to repeat the same title for multiple pages and work your keywords into the title as well as possible. Keep your titles to about 75 characters if you can but never go over 100 characters!
• Page text - Every page of your site should have text, usually called "body" text. Search engines can't read images. Google doesn't know if that picture is a Buick or a Buffalo! In a very readable manner, work your keywords and key phrases into the text that is presented on your web pages. As you can see from the pages of this site, I have worked in "search engine optimization" so that it makes sense and the pages are readable. Do not overload your pages with keywords or key phrases, this could have very bad results.
• Images - I just said that search engines can't read images and that is true! There is something associated with images that search engines do read though. That is the image "alt" attribute. This is a text field associated wit the image meant to describe the image. This is text! Use the "alt" attribute to work in a keyword or two where you can.
• Page description - Each page should have a description "META" tag. This is not seen by visitors to your site but the search engines do see it. Many SEO experts play down the importance of all "META" tags but it is read by the search engines so use it! The page description should be under 160 characters and make sense. Ensure that your keywords and phrases are represented.
• Page keywords - another "META" tag that the experts currently feel is not so usefull. It's still there. It's still read by the search engines. Use it. Here is where you can place all the keywords and keyphrases that relate to your page. Avoid repetition as this can be seen as "keyword loading" by search engines and cost you in page rankings.

    Those are the bare bones basics of search engine optimization. Do just that small amount and you are well ahead of the vast majority of websites on the web already. Every site can be optimized. Static sites like this one are fairly easy to optimize. Sites that use dynamic content (forums, online catalogs) require a bit more work but it can be done.

    Once you have made changes to your site, ensure that you are indexed in the major search engines. There are free submission services and they are OK to use. Do not repeatedly resubmit your site! If you do that, you could end up "de-listed" and have a very difficult time getting back into any search result.

    From time to time, perform your own search to see how you stack up against your competitors. take a look at higher performing sites to see if you can "borrow" a few ideas and increase your own position. Do not copy content!!!!! Just get some ideas of how they got to the position where they are and then use your own imagination to do better.

    Last but certainly not least, if there are several million web pages that you are in competition with, the ones seen as having "authority" will show up higher in search results. With Google, "page rank" plays a big part in highly competitive situations. Google "page rank" is mostly determined by the number and QUALITY of links pointing to a site. These are called backlinks. At this time, I have absolutely no backlinks pointing to this site except for the one on my blog. That means that I will have a page rank of zero. If I show up in the first 10 pages of a search, I'll be very suprised because the SEO (search engine optimization) community is highly competitive.