What is Search engine optimization or SEO? It is the science and art of getting your web pages rank high at the search engines. Some people think that SEO is so complex that they cannot possibly understand it. Still others think that to rank high at the search engine depends on a stroke of luck.

Well, these are all misconceptions. Ranking high at the search engines does not happen by chance. There are some basic things you must do to stand any chance of getting your web pages to perform well at the search engines.

On-page factors

1. Use text not graphics for your web design. Web pages that are loaded with graphics are not friendly to search engines' crawlers. Search engines classify and rank pages by text, not graphics.

2. Build your web page content around specific key phrases. Your web pages must have specific themes. It would be very difficult to rank high for generic terms.

Carefully research and select 2 or 3 word phrases pertaining to your niche to optimize. Don't just optimize your home page. Work on your sub pages. You want as many pages as possible to be indexed and ranked well.

3. Organize your website internal links. You want all your web pages to be crawled and indexed by the search engines. You want to make it easy for crawlers to find your internal pages. It is best to include text links to these pages from your home page, and to cross-link all your web pages.

If your navigational system uses Java-script or images, then you have to add text links at the top or bottom of your web pages to make sure that the crawlers follow all the links. Double-check all your links to verify they are working.

4. Include your key phrases at the following places…

a. URL and file names. The URL and file names are important indicator to search engines. It is good SEO practice to put your key phrases either in your main domain name or in your file names.

b. Title and description tags. Your title text is displayed in the blue line at the top of your browser. It is located in the section of the html document.

If your title is "House Pets" then the title tag in your html document should look something like this: House Pets

Description tags are not visible to website visitors. Search engines often display them as text form to give searchers a cursory glance of your web pages is. Your description tags should be compelling to pull in visitors. It should contain your key phrase.

c. Headlines and subheadlines. Place your headlines at the top of your web pages page. Your headline and subheadline texts should be enclosed with special header tags such as , , .

d. Body Text of web page. Your key phrase should appear in the first paragraph, center and the last paragraph of your body text.

e. Anchor text. These are your navigational links, incoming and outgoing links of your web pages.

Important note: Don't use the same key phrase in your URL, filenames, title tags, description tags, headlines, body text and text links. Search engines may penalize you for keyword spamming. Use variations of your key phrase or terms related to it.

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