Search engine optimization

After you have chosen your keywords, it is time to start the search engine optimization phase. This page contains tips on where to place your keywords in order to achieve a high ranking. Notice that we will only look at the page and the placement of the keywords. There are other, very significant factors that affect the ranking of your site in different search engines. To get the "big picture", you should remember to read the other articles in the "Search engines" section.

The advice included below is non-specific. That means it applies to most of the engines, but the results achieved by following it can vary depending on the engine in question. Since most of you probably just want to optimize one set of pages instead of creating different pages for different engines, going with the advice included below is probably a good choice.

If you decide to start creating engine-specific pages, be warned - it takes a lot of work to create them, not to mention to keep up with the algorithm changes of each engine. It can be a very successful method, but I would only recommend it to those who already have plenty of experience in the search engine optimization field.

But enough with the talk, let's begin. Here are the instructions on where to place your keywords:

• No search engine optimization process is complete until you have made sure that the most important keywords for the page are in your <TITLE> tag. Don't clutter it up with them, but make sure that at least the keyword or phrase you're trying to target is included. You might want to throw some non-keyword words in there too, single word titles are rarely the way to go.

  Usually it is best to include the keyword phrase first in the title, followed by the non-important "support" words. If you are trying to target two words or phrases with the same page, make sure both are in the title. Using lower-case seems to have a slight advantage over using UPPER-CASE, because most searches are done using lower-case. Lower-case can however look a bit silly in some cases, so don't obsess about it.

  Remember not to get greedy! Make sure that when you are done, your TITLE still looks more like a TITLE than a keyword list. Trying to stuff too many keywords in there doesn't usually produce good results, and it also tends to keep people from clicking your listing.

• Use the most important words/phrases in your META description tag. Again, remember that this tag is displayed in the search results, so don't just stuff it with keywords. Try to include most of the keywords/phrases you're trying to target, but at the same time try to form them into a logical sentence. I know from experience that this can be a real brain-teaser, but the truth is that there's two parts in search engine optimization. Your site must be high on the results list, but it also has to look like it is attractive and interesting, otherwise users won't click on your listing.

  Remember to read the Meta tags article for more information on the description and keyword tags.

• Use all of your keywords and phrases in your META keywords tag, but try to keep it at around 10 words or less. Do not repeat one word more than three times and do not use words that aren't mentioned elsewhere on the page.

• Use the most important words and/or phrases in your heading tag (it's the <H1> thing). Generally I include only the most important keyword or phrase here, since H1-headers are really big. Remember that the header is large and visitors are going to see it, so it should look natural.

• Use all of the words and phrases you have chosen in your body text. Using them a few times in the top part of the page is important, since many search engines place more weight to words found on the top of the page compared to words found on the bottom of the page. Remember to make your writing seem natural when placing the words/phrases, nobody wants to read a document that is just one big list of keywords.

  Using the keyword in bold, italics or underlined can also provide a minor boost, but as it influences the readability of the document, remember to be careful with this one.

• Having a link or two containing your keyword in the link text can also help your ranking. If possible, point the link at a popular and well known page that is relevant to your keyword.