General Search Engine Optimization

• Search engine optimization has been hailed by some as the essential way to drive traffic to your website and derided by others as a way for people to artificially distort search results. As search engines have become increasingly active in ensuring the integrity of their results, understanding the realities of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and its realistic possibilities will enable your website to make the best use of search engine results.
• Meta tags are the phrases you insert in the HTML of your web page, including the web page title. This means that you need to be certain that the title of your webpage utilizes the keywords that people who are looking for your content will use as their search terms. If you’re creating a site on classic Cadillac convertibles, you may think the slang term for convertible “ragtop” sounds hip, and title your page “Cadi ragtops.” But while you may appeal to readers who link to your site from similar webpages and blogs, you can bet that you will never reach the many, many more users out there who will simply search for “Cadillac convertible.” So while there’s nothing wrong with putting a catchy phrase in your title, just be sure you don’t leave out the general terms that describe your site.
• Meta tags are not only in the page title, but are also within the HTML code that tells search engines what your page is all about. You can create a meta-description tag that has all the information you want search engines to relate to web uses. Google sometimes uses these descriptions in what it displays to the web user about your page, but Google does not use these terms to boost a page’s rankings. There are also meta-tag keywords, and Google has publically stated that it ignores these. While there are webmasters out there who want you to pay dearly for magic formulas that will boost you site’s rankings, it’s important for you to research what the search engines themselves actually have to say about the way they work. Fortunately, some of this information can be found online.
• Google’s SEO guide is available at:
  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
  Bing’s webmaster tools including SEO:
  http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/?rfp=1857040249
• Is there anything else you can do to boost your site’s search engine presence? One area that is often overlooked are the URL’s of pages within your website. When a blog or forum post contains a URL from your website, search engines will use the text in that URL as the “anchor text” for the search. So make sure that the links within your site lead to directories with clear URL’s. For example, if you have a website for a pizza parlor, the menu or daily specials page should read www.pizzaparlor/menu or www.pizzaparlor/specials.
• Making everything in the URL lowercase, starting with the title of each document, and using hyphens rather than underscores or other characters are among the suggestions from Microsoft’s Vincent Wehren. The key is being aware that your URL is an important part of your webpage!
  There are other ideas that one can utilize, and we have only touched upon a few basics here. Probably the most overlooked concept in SEO is that search engines are being constantly refined to weed out irrelevant information and provide useful and unique content to the web user. Google’s blog post about this subject (which also a great example of how to make your URL count!) can be read at:
• http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html
• So, yes, there are many things you can do to maximize your website for the best possible search engine results. But the number one thing you can do to maximize your website’s visibility and search engine ranking is to build a site that draws upon your knowledge, resources and creativity to reach people and provide the information they want. Whether you have a business, an informational site, or a special-interest target market, quality is an essential ingredient in successful SEO.