Search Engine Optimization — What is it?

keyword phraseOptimizing your website so you will obtain a high search engine results position is what SEO Techniques is all about. It is reported that 65% of all websites visited start with a search from a search engine.
For people to find your site via a search engine, the site will require a high Search Engine Results Position (SERP). This means when they search keywords phrases like SEO techniques, they will find you site page on the first page of the search engine results. Ending up on the 10 page of the search engines results will not get you any traffic.
Getting a high SERP is a combination of a number of things. Leaving out any of the items on the following list of SEO Techniques can result in your page not getting as high a search engine results position as it could.
The SEO List
There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let’s get started by reading the following list of SEO Techniques!
1. Domain & File Names:
Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page.
2. Keyword Phrases:

1. Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.

2. Add keyword synonyms to your content.

3. Put the keyword phrases in the phrase<
4. Insert the keyword phrases in a tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
5. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.
3. Keyword Density:
Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.

4. Bad Techniques:
Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very imformative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website.

5. Title & Meta Description Tag:
Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content=”Description phrase” or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title.

6. Meta Keywords Tag:
The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn’t ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway. It is as follows, and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page.

7. Author & Robots Tags:
The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company’s name.

8. Quality Content:
Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind

9. Quantity Content:
The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.

10. Changing Content:
You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed.
www.carsinlondon.com/used-cars-london-ontario.php shows a sample of php script that will do this.
11. Avoid Dynamic URLs:
Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the “?” that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
Static pages are the best but if you have a db driven site, make sure the menu and site map like go to inventory.cfm not inventory.cfm?vn=0 .
12. Frames:
Many search engines can’t follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames.

13. Site Map:
A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need.

14. Site Themes:
All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.

15. Site Design:
You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.
These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.
Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given.
Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don’t have a proper doctype on each page Internet Exployer will go into quirks mode and display it different.
Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation show you any broken code that could cause your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions.

16. Separate Content & Presentation:
Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.

17. Robots.txt File:
While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don’t get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Intersting trivia

• In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have 'the rule of thumb'
• Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled 'Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden'...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
• The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
• Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S . Treasury.
• Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.
• In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes.
• When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... 'goodnight, sleep tight.'
• It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.
• In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England , when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them 'Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.' It's where we get the phrase 'mind your P's and Q's'
• Many years ago in England , pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. 'Wet your whistle' is the phrase inspired by this practice.
• If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
• Coca-Cola was originally green.
• It is impossible to lick your elbow.
• The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work in US is Alaska
• The percentage of North America that is wilderness is 38%
• The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $ 16,400
• The average number of people airborne over the U.S. In any given hour its 61,000
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
• The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace
• Most boat owners name their boats. Obsession is the most popular boat name requested by all of them
• If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter 'A'? Answer - One thousand
• What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common? - All were invented by women.
• Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil?
• On Father's day there are more collect calls than any other day of the year
• At least 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow!