Every search uses a formula called an algorithm to index and rank web sites. While no one except for the search engines themselves know the exact formula used for their algorithms including the importance of each aspect, and what all the aspects include, we do know some of the more important aspects that are used.
There are 2 categories to define all the properties that are used in deciding a web sites rank.
Page related properties witch are concerned with keywords and their placement, and outside properties. This article will focus on the optimization of the page related properties (I will however briefly state what the outside properties are) but you will be able to find information on outside properties in the "Promotion" section of this web site.
First I will discuss keyword research. After I will discuss each of the page related properties and how to place keywords into each.
Keyword research is the starting point to being able to succeed in the search engine optimization of your web site. The only thing that I can really help you with here is directing you to where you can find out what keywords will work for your web site. There are 2 places that I personally reccommend and they are Overture.com and Word Tracker. Overture is completely free where as Word Tracker offers a free demo but will give you more information through that demo. Each will give you a list of related keywords or phrases and how the keyword or phrase you typed in compares to them. Once you have experimented around with these services for awhile you should have a list of about 10 different keyphrases and one or two alterations to each. Try not to have single word keyphrases as they are often very competitive. One last thing I should tell you is that words like "and,but,to,or,if,ect..." are usually disregarded on search engines to save memory so they usually have no relevance.
The reason that I have chosen this as the first on the list is that it is applicable to all other information regarding search engine optimization and keyword placement.
Some search engines use proximity in their algorithms witch is how close keywords are to each other. The closer they are the better.
here is an example:
Fishermans Paradise has fresh sea food.Even though the second example is more elaborate, the first one should perform better is a search engine query for the keywords "fresh,sea,food" and any combination of them as the keywords are a lot closer together.
Search engine spiders read your page from top to bottom left to right and some search engine algorithms use prominence, witch is used to describe where the keywords are located on you web page. Keywords that are placed on the top of your page tend to have more value. Some people also believe that you should place keywords near the bottom of your page, but I have no opinion on this matter.
Let's look at an example of a bad title and see how we can optimize it for search engines. The following title is fictional and is only used to display my point. It is for a sea food restaurant called Fisherman's Paradise that is seaside.
Bad title:
Fishermans Paradise
This title does absolutly nothing as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Instead let's incorporate some information that will make it more appealing to search engines.
Good title:
Fishermans Paradise: Seaside restaurant, fresh sea food.
This will show up in queries looking for seaside restaurant, restaurant, sea food, fresh sea food, and Fishermans Paradise for people looking directly for your web site through the name of your restaurant. The keyphrases that I have included generate many queries that would relate to a sea food restaurant.
Ok so take your most important keyphrases and incorporate them into your own title for your web site with the information above in mind.
Here are the actual tags, they are inserted in between your <head> and </head> tags.
<meta name="description" content="Web site Description">
<meta name="keywords" content="Web site Keywords">
Since some search engines algorithms use prominence, you should place your keywords and description tags as high up as possible so that they are regarded as being more important. Your keywords meta tag should contain all lower case unless you feel a specific word is normally capitalized. Do not, however, EVER use all caps in almost everything that is search engine optimization or web site optimization related.
Your description meta tag should be 1-3 sentences long, and have all the most important keywords incorporated into it. Your keywords meta tag should be 10-25 words long and should contain your keywords, as well as any abbreviations or alterations that queried many relevant results during your keyphrase research.
ALT tags are an attribute to the img tag that replaces the image with text for browsers that don't support images. They are also used because search engines don't index pictures, and if you have a picture containing your web sites slogan and you want it to be indexed you can use an ALT tag. You can see if you have ALT tags already by hovering your pointer of any image and if, after a few seconds, a small text box pops up containing text you have ALT tags. That text is what browsers that don't support images will see.
ALT tags are a perfect spot to place a relevant keyword or two that relates to the picture, and will be picked up by a search engines algorithm. Now let's look at how you incorporate ALT tags if you don't have them already.
<img src="../picture.gif" alt="This is a Picture">
The text in bold is the ALT tag of an image as you can see. You replace This is a Picture with whatever text you want to be shown or indexed.
Some search engines and directories give alphabetical priority. For this reason when you choose your company name you should take into consideration that a name that starts with a letter early on in the alhpabet might be placed near the top as opposed to one beggining with a letter near the end of the alphabet.
Numbers and symbols, such as "1,2,3" and "!,@,#" rank even higher then, for example, the letter "A". For this reason, if you can, it is a good idea to begin with a high ranking letter or number. While it might not make an obvious differance at first, you will notice little differances. One example is my web site. Alot of the "links" pages of the people I have exchanged links with will have me on the top of their list, witch results in more traffic from their web site then someone at the bottom of the list, simply because my company name starts with an "A" and they happen to list them in alhpabeticaly.
This does not mean that you should change your company's name for this reason, but rather should be something to consider when your first starting out. Also if your company name is, for example, "Zornox" do not submit to search engines or anything for that matter as "@123Zornox" as it could result in imediate disqualification. Always be truthfull.
Another thing to take into consideration, if you have not already purchused a domain name or are planning on switching, is choosing your domain name and incorporating keywords into it. In some search engines algorithms your domain name will have more priority in comparison to other aspects of your web site. For this reason if it is possible you should try to consider using what service or product you are offering instead of your company name.
With all this said and done there is only one thing that I would like to advise you on. You should not spam the search engines as it will only demote your search engine ranking. This means don't use keywords one after the other, instead only use them where it would be perfectly normal to see them. Incorporate them into your text and remember to stay within 3-7% keyword density.
When choosing your url, keywords, and or title do not misrepresent your company. if you company name is Fishermans
Paradise do not simply put a "@" in front of it on your title tag to attain a high search engine ranking, that is considered
spam and will result in removal of your web site or a penalty to its search engine ranking.
Search engines are not stupid, and take almost anything you can think of into consideration, as they have trained professionals working every day to optimize there service so don't try to trick them or go against the system, even though it might temporarily work, I guarantee you they will figure out what you are doing and penalize you in some way or another.