A website you build might look really flashy and pack in a lot of features, but ask yourself an honest question here: What good are all those bells and whistles doing if nobody's even visiting your site? This is the problem you're going to have unless you address the issue of SEO, so bone up on your skills.
Do not forget that search engines are not people. Use HTML, which search engines can read, to give your site an advantage over the competitors. Including other forms of programming is useful and perhaps even necessary, but including HTML as a back-up will give the search engine the information in needs on your website.
Figure out what your goal is on every single page and then design to that goal. For example, let's say you are selling hockey equipment. Do you want to focus the page and copy towards equipment reviews, playing hockey with friends or the NHL? A more targeted page will garner more clicks, but a broader page will get more views. You have to figure out which works for each ad individually.
Keep your HTML title tags free of "stop words" to ensure the tags are properly indexed by search engines. Some search engines eliminate common words like a, an, the, and, but, in, on, he, she and other similar words to increase the relevant links and improve on the speed with which results are returned. Keeping these words from title tags that receive the most weight in Search Engine Optimization ensures your site is properly indexed.
If you are using images on your site, incorporate your keywords and phrases into image tags and file names. By doing so, you add weight to the engines and increase your percentage of copy weight greatly. Each image should carry some amount of this phrasing, or it might be a wasted image.
Make sure that you include good headings to all of your paragraphs. These headings should be relevant to the topics that are covered in the paragraph. Make sure to include great keywords in your headings to make it easier for your reader to find what they are looking for.
Make sure your keyword density isn't too high or too low. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the more times their keyword is mentioned, the higher in the rankings they will go. Doing this actually causes the engines to tag your site as spam and keep it low. Try to aim for using your keyword in no more than 7% of the content on your page.
For the best SEO boost out of inbound links, be sure that a keyword is included with the URL. This ensures that the search engine sees not only a positive vote for your site, in terms of the link, but also sees a connection between your site and that keyword.
Effective SEO tactics will not require a high level of skill or even a whole lot of effort. What's important is that you take the right approach. As you learn about SEO, you will find that a few minor tweaks can equate to big results. Get started on your optimization by using what you've learned here.
