Basic SEO Principles

SEO is the name for the adjustments and additions you do to make your web site more attractive to search engines. Search engines use algorithms to decide how relevant and important a page is, using factors like the page's content, URL, meta tages, site history, and inbound links. How well the page does determines how prominently it is featured in the search engine results when a browser searches for a given keyword. A page that ranks well according to appropriate principles is called "SEO friendly." The average reader does not look past the first couple of pages of search results, often not even past the top two or three results, so appearing in the top ten or twenty results for your site's keywords is essential for getting traffic to your site.

How do you use SEO to do that? First, you select the keywords to target. Everyone would love to rank high in the search results for a general term, such as "coffee," but the competition makes that almost impossible. The more specific the keyword, the lower the competition, and the easier it is to rank well. "Coffee beans" is a more specific keyword, but "Blue Mountain coffee beans" is better, and "roasted Blue Mountain coffee beans" is excellent. If competition is high enough, you may need to add even more terms to the keyword phrase, such as "roasted Blue Mountain coffee beans Boston."

Once you have a list of keywords, retool each page to target one keyword apiece. The best practice is to put the keyword in the page's file name, title, and description meta tag. (The keyword meta tag, despite the name, is irrelevant to good SEO. It was so overused that search engines generally ignore it now.) Any anchor text that points to the page should also include the keyword, and the main content on the page itself should repeat the keyword a certain number of times. The optimum number of times a keyword should be repeated in the body of the page is one of the more delicate parts of good SEO; search engines alter their algorithms frequently to weed out spam, so one month the most SEO friendly keyword weight is 12%, then it drops to 8%, then the next year the percentage is down to 3%. Stay on top of the latest developments in the industry by reading good SEO forums, and keep track of the preferred keyword percentage.

When you are done with the page content, consider your page design. Is the content of your site at the top of each HTML page, or do search engine spiders have to wade through unfriendly walls of code to find the body of the page? If the code is now at the top of the page, can you relocate it after the page body? Are there plain HTML links between pages, or do you have to hope the spiders know how to read Javascript or Flash links? Have you implemented a spider friendly sitemap?

As you can see, making your site Seo friendly is not an abstruse, magical process. It is simply a matter of creating search engine friendly content that readers enjoy, and adding a few minor enhancements that are visible only to spiders. Read search engine blogs and spend some time on reliable forums, and soon you will know everything you need to make your site SEO friendly.