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Gary Bagshawe · 27-10-2006, 04:13

Basic list of procedures for Search Engine Optimisation.

Below is a list of basic procedures to go through to optimise a website.
1. Title tag Probably the most important tag on the whole site. The information that is typed in here is what the browser displays along it's top edge and also what a search engine displays in it's title for results returned. Try to use keywords and phrases before putting your company name. It is ok to repeat words in this tag as long as it doesn't sound to "Spammy". If it reads well as a title you should be ok.

2. Description tag This should be a good description of what people will find when they visit your site. Again use your keywords and phrases as often as you like as long as it reads well. Keep the description short and to the point. Try making it so that people will want to click on it but avoid words and phrases like "the best" "number 1 site for" etc

3. Keywords Here you can put in all your keywords and keyword phrases. Avoid repetition as this could be frowned upon as spam. The larger search engines don't use keywords anymore but there are still a lot of search engines out there that do so it is worth including some.(Click on the link for more information)

4. Text on the page. I can't stress this enough. Get rid of the flash animation that takes forever to load and get some text on the page. If your keywords / phrases are found in your title tag, description, keywords and on the visible page as text (not graphic) then you will watch your site soar into the top rankings in most if not all of the top search engines.

5. Get some links!!! Search engines, like humans don't like dead ends. If a website doesn't lead anywhere it is considered a poor site. In contrast if your site has outbound links ( that may or may not contain your keywords) and inbound links from other sites and directories then it will be considered as more important than a site that does not have any links and as such will be given a better ranking.
Ok, the above information is the very basics of search engine optimisation. There are many other factors to take into consideration when optimising a site but if you follow the above you won't go far wrong. Another piece of information that I think was a quote from Google "if search engines didn't exist would you do it" This statement refers to Spam. If you think that you may be using spamming techniques you probably are. Don't do it, you will eventually get caught and may even get a ban.

The head content of a web page is the first thing that a search engine spider sees when it visit's your web page and there are a few things that we can do here to maximise the chances of getting a good ranking.

If you look at the source of your code the head content will look something like this…

<html>
<head>
<title>use your keywords and phrases here to a maximum of about 55 characters. Use your most important keywords first</title>
<meta name="description" content="Here you should write a description about what people will find at this page, Use your keywords and phrases here and try to repeat two or three times but make sure that it reads well too..">
<meta name="keywords" content="here you should write down your keywords and key word phrases separated by a comma and try not to repeat the same phrase or word too often">
</head>
The proximity of the keywords in the above tags is important so try to get your important keywords and phrases in first instead of your company name. People searching for your products or services may not know that you exist and so will not be searching for your company by name.

What are your keywords and keyword phrases?
These are the words and phrases that people are going to type into a search engine search field to find your site.
You must remember that just because you are familiar with your product or service, not everybody is! You will need to research your keywords in order to be able to optimise your site in the best way. One method of doing this is to ask family and friends what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for a website that provides your products or services. You may be surprised at the results!!! It is very difficult to optimise a site these days for a single word as there is so much competition out there, also consider the fact that if people are not getting the results for their search term they may well use a search phrase which is a combination of two or more words, they may even add a country or city name to their search in order to get more relevant results.
Once you have some keywords and phrases why not type them into a search engine and see what results you are getting. This is the competition!!! Have a look at their source code and how they have layed out their site. (Do Not copy their code directly) but get an idea of the terms, descriptions and titles that they are using so that you will know if you are at least going to be in the ball park.
TIP:- ( To view the source code of a site in Internet Explorer, click view and then source from the drop down menu )
There are many tools which you can use free of charge to help you in your keyword research and in my opinion word tracker is one of them. Keyword services for professional search engine optimization
Once you have decided what your keywords and keyword phrases are going to be you are going to have to decide where they are going to go. I personally don't try to stuff all of my keywords onto one page as this dilutes them. I would recommend two to three keyword phrases per web page.

I hope some of the above info is of help