Search Engine Optimization For Dummies

Most surfers use search engines like Yahoo! and Google to find the websites that they are looking for. Unfortunately there are billions of webpages listed in most search engines. If your website is to be listed at #123,768 chances are no one will ever know it exists. Fortunately, search engine rankings can be influenced by what you do to your website. The entire science of optimizing your website so that it gets listed higher on search engines is known as search engine optimization. Here are some easy to learn and execute tips for people new to the art of search engine optimization. q Create your keyword list. The first thing you need to do is decide on the top searched keywords for your website. If you are a golfing site then your keywords will differ significantly from the site of a medical practitioner. Think about the keywords and phrases you would enter into a search engine to find a site similar to your own. You can also find out the most popularly searched terms using the Overture term suggestion tool. q Create interesting and engaging content using the keywords and key phrases for your website. It is important to remember that while you are creating the content for search engine optimization the fact remains that visitors to your website will also be reading the same content. Hence it must be good content that adds value to your website. q The title tag is given considerable weightage by search engines and can be pivotal in your search engine optimization efforts. Keep the title tag short while ensuring maximum usage of keywords. q A description meta tag is second only to the title tag in terms of importance for search engine optimization efforts. The description meta tag requires you to describe your web page contents in a brief 2-3 sentence description. Try and use as many keywords as possible within this description. However, search engines often display the description meta tag on the search engine results page so make it appealing. q A keyword meta tag is the place to list all the keywords and keyword phrases relevant to your website. The keyword meta tag is no longer as important as it once used to be but every bit counts. A good way to create your own keywords meta tag is to research that of competitive sites. q Exchanging links with other related websites is a great way to increase your search engine rankings. The more sites that link to you the better your page rank and higher your ranking with search engines. In addition, links from other sites can get you more visitors to the site as well. q Forget everything you have ever heard about keyword stuffing. Listing hundreds of keywords one after the other on your website is a surefire way of getting blacklisted by search engines. This is also the single most effective way to be dropped by search engines altogether. Thus, the best search engine optimization techniques are those that follow the simple rules above but with consistency.