Search Engine Optimization Is An Art Form

I'll repeat that ... Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an art form, it's not a programming language or coding method. I like to think of SEO as an orchestra. The drum, tuba, clarinet and all the rest of the instruments may sound nice when played by themselves, but sound really GREAT when they all play together in an orchestrated manner. SEO is much the same ... there are certain pieces of the puzzle that you work to improve on, and when they all come together, you have an optimized website.

Getting top listings doesn't come by accident. If you know SEO techniques you should try to build them into your site as you build it. That is probably not your situation and you have a site built by someone else and it needs to be optimized. I suggest that your focus your first efforts on optimization after you have a completed site.

I have seen many people make the mistake of jumping into SEO without having the knowledge to really make the correct changes to their site. These people inevitably load their pages with keywords and do a lot of things that are just going to hurt your ranking, or the ability of your site to ever be ranked.

Something to avoid is overuse of your keywords. It happens all the time too. People just don't understand the history behind the spider spamming and think that more is better. 50 keywords on your page will probably get you banned for that keyword. Five on the page may well get you listed high for it. Algorithms are always changing and there really is no one keyword density for any given page. This is something that has roots in all the other facets of your page, everything else that is there, and where any given keyword appears, whether it's in heading tags, or just text. Get lots of inbound links.

SEO is common sense, but it is even more than that. It is understanding how different html tags works together, and how the search engines will perceive that. It is a lot of trial and error which will, in the end, lead you to good solid and proper optimization techniques. All of this will lead you to better search engine rankings.

The one thing that will make your business profitable is getting listings on the top of the results pages. This is called "above the fold", the part of the search engines results page (SERP) that displays WITHOUT scrolling.

Concentrate on getting your optimization right for the major engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo! This is where 99% of your traffic is going to come from. They each have differing algorithms, but good solid techniques will help you win on all three of these giants.

The main items that you will want to work on to get optimized are the title tag, the meta description tag, the meta keywords tag, code attributes like alt=, title=, summary=, H1 and H2 tags, and possibly the H3 tag, keyword density, navigation and/or ease of navigation and anchor text and internal linking are all among the main things to work on for on-site optimization.