Intro to Search Engine Optimization
by Matt Canham

Search engine optimization is the process of maximizing the ranking of your site in
search engine listings. The most important factors to consider to achieve a high
ranking are:

  • the keywords you use,
  • your title,
  • your description,
  • the text of your site,
  • links others provide to your site.
The title is just as important, if not more important, than your keywords. Most search
engines place the highest level of importance on the words found in the title when
calculating the ranking. You should place your most important keyword phrases first
in your title, as some search engines limit the number of characters you can use.
Make your title a readable sentence, as this is the first text that will appear for your
listing on the results page. One thing you should avoid doing is simply listing
keywords. This could be regarded by the search engine as keyword spamming, and
may lower your search ranking, or even get your listing removed from the site.
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In your description of each page you should make use of your best keyword
phrases. In this case, you can use more of them, since search engines will give you
typically around 1024 characters for the description, while they will give you only
around 50 to 80 for the title. Again, place your keywords as close to the beginning of
your description as makes sense.

In the text of your site you should make use of, yes, you've guessed it, your
keyword phrases. Also include any text you have used in other tags, such as meta
tags, alt tags, and headings. Having a lot of content helps as well. A minimum of 200
words per page is recommended. Having many pages of content also increases your
rankings.

Having many other sites link to you is another good way to increase your search
rankings. Both the links themselves and the increase traffic which results will help.
Having bloggers link to your site is also a good idea.

Although these practices will boost your rankings, there are certain design elements
that can interfere with your search rankings. These include frames, dynamic URLs,
Flash, using image maps for navigation, and using javascripts for navigation. Also,
there are certain practices that search engines regard as spamming, and these
practices will get you permanently removed from the site. These include using
keywords in your meta tags that do not relate to the content of your page, using
multiple instances of the same tag, and listing keywords in the text of your site.

Matt Canham is a Copywriter and Internet Marketer, and runs MarinerBlue.com.
It is also a good idea to produce a list
of keyword phrases for every page of
your site. If you must include difficult
to spell words, it is a good idea to
include some common misspellings of
these words as well.
To begin selecting keywords, consider
what words and phrases the people
you are trying to reach will be
searching on. When placing keywords
in your keyword tag, it is best to use
phases rather than single words.
Almost all single words are in very
widespread use, thus will not tend to
produce high rankings. Keyword
phrases can be better tailored to your
business. Also, since phrase searches
produce fewer results, people are
more likely to search on them.
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