Online searching using keywords play a big role in the ranking of your site. SEO or Search Engine Optimization, is what determines whether your site is at the top of the list or dead last.

It doesn't matter how long your site has been on the web; managing how it looks to search engines is the only way anyone will find you. The typical website is rated at recieving 61 percent of their traffic from search engines alone. Now before you go out and spend thousands of dollars trying to make the top 10 take a look at what we've learned about SEO and how it works.

For starters, no one really knows how SEO works. You can do a search and come up with various advertisements for SEO work and cryptic explinations, but the truth is search engines aren't sharing. Even Google gives a simplified, watered down explination that leaves you thinking, HUH. So we did some digging around and found some key points to making your site jump on the search lists.

Keywords

Start by optimising your keywords. I always tell my customers you need to have meta tags. Meta tags are what tells search engines what keywords they can identify your site by. Without them search engines will crawl through your site and make a guess. So start by choosing keywords that describe you and what keywords people will use to look for you. Then use these keywords in your site as well so when the crawlers come, they'll validate you. Google has made it very clear, they don't like keyword stuffing, so make sure you only use keywords that apply to your site. To make it easy Google has created a tool to help you with this here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. A good place to start is with high-interest terms for optimizing; then you can massage your list as you see fit. Once you have your list don't waste all your hard work by placing it on the Home Page. Make those keywords work for you by using them on every page of your site.

Site Titles

All to often I'm reading a web page and notice that the web designers had no idea what the html title was for or they've blanketed the site with the domain name only. Well not only are site titles good for bookmarks and favorites, but they're also good for search engines. A good practice I use is to customize titles based on your pages content and include some keywords as well. Titles with the same name tell customers and search engines every page is the same. Customize your page titles by making them unique to show your viewers what your site has to offer.

Links

Page links are important to how the web works and believe it or not search engines like them too. Another way to get that keyword out is to use it in the anchor text for the link; and that goes for other websites that link to you as well. So instead of a link like web design on your partner sites, you would use something like Digital Matrix Web Design. As for your own site make those keywords useful in your menus and internal links. And don't get conned by phoney SEO's that use links to manipulate page rank. Link spamming will only get you black listed in the search engines. Just remember the quality of the link and the site it sits on when using them.

Let SEO Work For You

Many times clients will ask for a flash only website and picture text. What's the problem with that you ask? Search Engines don't care how pretty your site is. The more plain text you have the more those little crawlers will have to read. But don't let SEO get in the way of your site. Use Flashy images and pretty pictures to decorate your site and let the text do the talkin.

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