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Introduction

Some few years ago, you just build a website and be assured of visitors as there were so few websites on the Internet. Today the Internet is very different from the way it used to be. If there is any accuracy to data released by Netcraft, then the Internet has about 207,316,960 sites as at February 2010. To arrive at this number, Netcraft looks at the number of sites hosted on the different top servers.

However, there is more good news than the bad ones. Today there are over 6 billion people on the Internet and thousands of people are getting connected every day. The main problem for a new website out there is how to get it noticed above all existing competitors because, how your site looks alone does not guarantee its success.

Where To Start

Unfortunately, nobody has a magic formula to consistently guarantee you top ranking with the engines. Most of the search engines use different ranking formulas, and what works well at one site this month, may not work well the next. The search engine environment is in constant flux. Many things alter your site ranking, new sites may have been added to the index, one of your competitors may have resubmitted with a new strategy or, as frequently occurs, the search engine may have changed its programming.

There are a seemingly endless number of companies that advertise that they will give you “premium positioning” on the “top search engines” for one low monthly fee. While there are some good companies that provide quality services, you need to be careful if you outsource this work. There are a number of “optimization” techniques that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies have been or are currently using that can actually get your site banned from search engines! This also applies to site submission software. A key point to remember is that search engines want good, solid, unique content, not Spam, and they have geared their algorithms to reward sites that deliver relevant content.

DIY SEO!

The only half-way affordable solution we have found is for you to do your own search engine optimization and placement. Over the next few tutorials we will be helping you with tips and techniques to get your site top placement. We hope you’ll stick with us to learn more about how to move your site to the top! We cannot guarantee that your site will be very popular after this but you should certainly get enough visitors to make your site worthwhile.

The Groundwork

As the popular saying goes, ‘if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. This is an area where a lot of people have failed to get it right when optimizing their website is that they don’t prepare properly. Anyone can submit their site to a search engine but there is a lot to do before you do this.

First of all, make sure that you know what your website is about. Although this sounds silly, a lot of people find that they don’t really know a category their website could fit in (for example Internet Marketing). You will need this once you start submitting to directories and link sites. If your site has many separate subjects, promote them one at a time.

The second thing you should write is a description of your site. The “description” is used by some SE’s as the “summary” for the website. That means that people will see it… and use it to decide whether or not to “click” on this link.

Do’s

1. 250 characters Max. (counting all spaces and periods) in Meta “description”.
2. Never write anything like “This is the best website ever created on the Internet” or “The most innovative site around” because it probably isn’t and people aren’t fooled that easily
3. Write your description in the 3rd person. For example don’t write “We offer several free services to help your business.” Instead write “Here you can get several free services to help your business.”

Dont’s

1. Don’t Begin Each Word With A Capital Letter
2. DON’T USE ALL CAPITALS

Once you have written your description, save it in a text file somewhere. You will need it later. Next you will need to come up with some keywords. These are the words which people will use when searching for your site. You should have about 20-40 of these. Type them into a text file separating them with commas. For example a site selling kid’s wears might have keywords like:

kids, kidswear, childrenswear, store, girls, boys, toddler, baby clothing, schoolwear, clothes

Here are some tips for your keywords:

• Put your 5 most important keywords first. It hasn’t been proved to increase your search engine ranking but some search engines have a limit to the number of keywords you use so you can make sure they are not cut off
• Never repeat a keyword. Search engines will consider this spamming and will not index your site
• Try to think of alternatives to some words. For example, in the keywords above, both the words kids and toddler were used
• Include plurals of words in your keywords but don’t take out separate ones for them. For example, you wouldn’t take out the keyword kid so that you could include the word toddlers

After gathering your keywords, save them to a file as you will need them very soon.

Finally you should make sure you have a descriptive title for your site. An example of this is, instead of calling a site:

Kids Apparel

you could call it:

Kids Apparel – Clothing store for kids, toddlers, boys, girls and baby

This will help your search engine ranking and help people to understand what your site is about.

Meta Tags

Meta Tags are the text added to your HTML code between the <head> and </head> tags that tell Search Engines what is in your web page so that it can be indexed. There was a time when carefully crafted meta tags would generate first page ranking – especially on Alta Vista and HotBot. This technique no longer guarantees top page ranking.

However, when a Search Engine uses the description tag as a “summary” for your page there is a great marketing opportunity. Using a <META> description gives you some degree of control over how the search engine “presents” your link to the viewing public.

Sample Meta Tags:

<html>
 <head>
 <title>Kids Apparel – Clothing store for kids, toddlers, boys, girls and baby </tittle>
 <meta name="description" content="Online specialist kids clothing retailer for children aged 0-10 years. Selling schoolwear, boys, girls and baby clothes. />
 <meta name="keywords" content="kids, kidswear, childrenswear, store, girls, boys, toddler, baby clothing, schoolwear, clothes />
 </head>
 <body>
 Your content here.
 </body>
</html>

What Next?

Now that we have covered the foundations and ready to start optimizing our page, we will be looking into search engines and how to submit your site to them in the next part.