SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short has become a critical factor in the success of your web site. thousands of web sites are added everyday and it is almost impossible for your customers to find your business without some unique contents and optimization. Further, most consumer don't look beyond first three to four pages of search results, so even a web site that is listed within first ten pages of result set may also have trouble generating traffic. This may sound disappointing news for new web sites but there are ways to improve your chances in organic search engine ranking and generating traffic. Search engine Optimization is the collective term used for making your website "Search Engines Friendly" and generating traffic.

Here are some of the simple things that a webmaster can do to make a website more appealing to search engine robots and spiders. This may not get you listed on the first page in major search engines but this is a your step in right direction.

Appropriate Page Title: Page time for any web page should be relatively short and must describe the page content accurately. If possible, try to include your main keywords in your page title itself. For example:

<title>Linda's Flower Shop</title>

This is a good title but take a closer look. by the title itself you can tell that most of the customers are going to come from local market. So if Linda own a flower shop in Chicago, it make sense to have city name in title itself. Why? Well, most people who would search for a flower shop in chicago will type Chicago in their search query and page ranking in search results depends on the match between page contents and search words.

Metatags: These are used to describe thee description and keywords metatags in the head of each web page. Make these tags different on each web page. Also make sure they are closely related to the contents of the web page. now a days, search spiders are smart enough to read through the contents of your page and figure out the importance of your web page for certain keywords. If metatags don't match the contents, you're not going to get any significant leverage by search spiders.

<meta name="description" content="Suppliers of quality fresh cut flowers, greeting cards and accessories.">
<meta name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, vase, stuffed animals, retail, discount">

Heading Tags: Some search engines still place more emphasis on text within heading tags, so make sure they use keywords. Use one <h1> tag per page with the most important keywords. Use other head tags (<h2>, <h3>, etc) to provide variations and support the main heading.

<h1>Desks</h1>
<h2>Large Desks</h2>
<p>... information about large desks...</p>
<h2>Small Desks</h2>
<p>... information about small desks, etc etc...</p>

Web Page Contents: Here is the last but not the least factor on your web page quality score. Make sure the text of your web pages contain keywords and common phrases which people might search for. Be careful with the frequency of your keywords - you want to have them occur at least a few times if possible, but don't repeat yourself so much that the copy becomes unnatural. The idea is to discretely spread keywords around without making it obvious. Remember that text contained within images won't be picked up by search engines. Only actual text on the page will be indexed. You also want to make sure how to write your keywords. For example, if you run a web site that sells Flat panel TVs, you can do some smart tweaking to get more targeted traffic. For star you can change 'Plasma TV' on your page to 'Buy Cheap Plasma TV'. You can also change 'LCD' to 'LCD HDTV'. What you're trying to do here is to get customer that are more likely to purchase your product. IF a consumer is searching for 'Plasma TV', there is no guarantee that he is looking to purchase one. After all, he may be looking for some basic information. Even worse, he may have one already and probably searching for some troubleshooting help. These customers may generate traffic to your site but they don't add any real value to your business. On the other hand if someone is searching for 'Buy Cheap Plasma TV', he/she is more likely to be a customer.

These are some of the very simple techniques that should be part of design standards for a good web design firm. If you're doing it on your own, make sure you apply them in practice and if you have a professional designing your web site, make sure you pay close attention to their content management and search engine optimization work.