8 Ways To Optimize Your Website For Search

Search engine optimization, one of the most important things a developer can do to help drive traffic to their websites. Many newcomers to the web business don't realize, or perhaps even know what search engine optimization is. Search engine optimization, or "SEO" is the act of making your website search engine friendly so that the frequently visiting bots will make sure to index every page on your website and not leave one or the other hanging.

1. Use meta tags in the header of all of their pages.


Many search engines do not follow these tags anymore, however it is still important to use them for the search engines that do. It helps the bot index the site more efficiently and tells it where to go and when to come back.

2. Make sure that you have a unique title on your pages to distinguish them from the rest.


This way you can have a variety of keywords and rank much higher on many search engines.

3. A domain name.


Often a sign of being a professional in the web business is having your own domain name. This not only allows people to remember your site more easily, but it also makes the customer/user on your site feel like your site is more established. When choosing your domain name make sure to pick the keywords that you want to optimize your website for. An example would be if someone registered the domain name "search engine optimization.com", they would be looking to get the top spot with those terms.

4. Alt image tags.


Make sure you label all of your images with the "alt" attribute. This is important for the search engines that come to index your site. They will be able to index your images more efficiently, if at all.

5. Place important information towards the top of your page.


Search engines will primarily focus on the top 100 words on your web-page. This is where you want to locate all of your important information like meta tags, titles, and keywords.

6. Use your keywords in your title tag


A title tag all by itself is a must on websites, don't forget it! You should also make sure to integrate your keywords into the title somehow. The information in your title tag is what is listed in search engine results.

7. Use search engine friendly urls.


This is one of the more important ways to get your site ranked higher. By using search engine friendly urls like "www.mydomain.com/this" instead of "www.mydomain.com/page.php?p=this" it allows the search engine spiders to reach those pages and continue indexing your website. Many scripts already have this feature built in, but one way to do it yourself is by using .htaccess.

8. You can use a simple program that does all the above for you.


There are fast programs out on the market that are able to do all of the above for you automatically with the push of a few buttons. SEO Elite v4.0 is one of the fastest and probably most effective ways of increasing your page-rank on google or other search engines.