There is far more to search engine optimisation than the information given on this page which is is very basic, but if you incorporate these elements into the fabric of your website it will improve your rankings in the search engines. For your business to be successful on the web you should appear in the top 20 of the results returned by the search engine for a particular product or information that has been searched for by the potential customer. If you're serious about your business making money on the web, it is essential that you hire a professional to carry out the optimisation of your website. The process begins by choosing a domain name and opening an account with a company to host your website. Avoid the cheap or "free" accounts as these tend to be deemed unimportant and are not always indexed by the engines for various reasons.
This search engine optimisation tutorial looks first at the META tags. There are quite a few but the only ones you need concern yourself with for this basic tutorial are the ones below.
<TITLE>Your important phrase here</TITLE>
The title tag is the most important tag that is used in the optimisation process. Use the keywords deemed important for your product only once and use a character length of up to 115 letters. Remember that this tag will be seen in the returned results, so it would be to your advantage if it reads sensibly, and don't forget to use a unique title for each page.
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your information here">
The description tag is the second most important tag used. Write two or three sentences about your products using your keyword phrases no more than twice. Some search engines will show all your description, others will show a percentage.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Keyword phrases here">
Only one or two search engines use the keyword tag because the tag has been abused so much in the past. It is still worth using, so place your important keyword phrases in the tag and don't forget that mis-spellings are likely in many searches.
The search engine optimisation process should be carried out on all your pages, the reason being that all pages including content related to your products can be an entry page through the search engines. So use the meta tags with information in the tags relating to the content of that particular page.
The text content on your important pages should contain no less than 250 words relating to your business and products. The search engines only read text and links so use text links for your navigation system. If you would rather use graphical navigation buttons do so, but still place your text links somewhere on your main page, or on a sitemap that is linked from your main page.
<IMG SRC="optimization.gif" WIDTH="size" HEIGHT="size" ALT="information here">
The tag above is the image tag that is used with your images. Make sure you use the ALT tag within the image tag and keep the images on your main page to a minimum. The information within the ALT tag should if possible contain your most important keywords.
The search engines place some importance on other websites that link to yours and are viewed as a positive vote for your site. So to make the most of your optimisation efforts, create a links page and exchange links with websites that have content related to yours, although one way links are much more beneficial if you can get them!
Finally, submit your site to all the major search engines and directories. If you can submit through paid inclusion, do so, as this will get your site indexed within a week - free submission can take months. As already mentioned, this is a very basic search engine optimisation tutorial and if you carry out the above instructions it will in time improve your rankings. For optimum results we can design, build and carry out the optimisation needed on an ongoing basis to drive the targeted visitors to your site for your products or information. Or we can optimise your existing site.
