Everyone wants their site to be at the top of the Search Engines. They want to be found for any content or keywords that are contained on their site. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the art of making a website have a good ranking from Search Engines is the Holy Grail of the internet. Unfortunately it's much easier said than done. There are a very limited number of things that a website owner (in partnership with their designer) can directly do to influence their search engine ranking. This article will attempt to explain SEO in a coherent manner and explain some simple things that you, as the website owner, can do to influence your ranking.

There are two types of SEO- organic and inorganic.

Organic SEO is contained in the source code of the webpage. The copywriter (or website owner) writes articles that are relevant to the site topic and contain a small number of keywords used in an appropriate manner within the text. The articles should be clear and concise. The designer then includes these articles within the site design using page names that relate to the information, and using other HTML tags- like header tags and alternate text for images- creating a site that is readable, easy to navigate and pleasant looking. The designer will also include meta information, which will help people find your site- these are hidden tags in the header of the webpage which inform search engines the title and description of your site, along with a small list of keywords.

Inorganic SEO consists of any techniques one might use for optimization that is not contained in the page code. This would include any paid or unpaid advertising you use, non-reciprocal links to your site and purchasing an effective domain name.

Spiders, or bots from search engines go out and read all of the tags within the code of each site. They use complicated formulas based on how often specific keywords and phrases are mentioned in your text and how many links you have to other active and relevant pages. They relay this information to the search engine and together with your inorganic SEO endeavors, they list you when someone searches for your keywords according to how important they have deemed your site to those keywords.

It sounds like a fairly easy process, and like it should be simple to affect your SEO ranking. Not so. The spiders and bots also judge your site on user experience, interactivity and how often your site changes. Some of these things you can affect, but some things you can't. Using your keywords too much in your text can count against you. You want to have relevant links to active pages, but not too many, or that will count against you as well.

So, what's a website owner to do?

Organic Search Engine Optimization Tasks:

Website owners should go forward designing their site with the idea that the website will be attractive, readable, easy to navigate- and present valuable information to the web surfer. Knowing your audience is your best bet toward optimizing your site for search engines. Here are a few ideas to help within the code of your site.

1. Know your audience. What keywords are they searching for? Use Google Adwords to find out what the best keywords are for your site. Choose specific keywords, rather than generalized. If your site sells widgets, you might want to use keywords like "blue widgets" because it is more specific than just "widgets". There may be loads of widget manufacturers out there, but fewer manufacturers of blue widgets, which means you are more likely to come up in a search for blue widgets.

2. Pick just 2-3 keywords or phrases that best define your content. Use these appropriately in your text and articles- but not too many times- about 3-7% of your total text is all that is needed. Make sure that your content relates to the other items on the page.

3. Choose a couple short titles for your articles or sections that use your keywords, to use in HTML header tags.

4. Include links to other relevant sites- make sure they are active sites, and don't use too many. Make sure you know the content of the linked pages!

5. A good website designer will choose names for your files and images that reflect their content, which in turn will help to boost your ratings. They will also use alternate text for your images to reflect the content of the images and your site.

6. If you can, change the content on your site often. Changing content- with a blog, or store products- will keep visitors and search engines coming back.

Inorganic Search Engine Optimization Tasks:

There are several things that you can do to help optimize your site that aren't within the code of your site. Here are some ideas:

1. Choose a search engine friendly domain name. If you already have a business name, choose that as a dot com for your domain. If you haven't chosen your name yet, consider something that uses your business type in the name. ABCbluewidgets.com contains the name of the business and what they sell. Bluewidgets.com contains the product. Both of these are effective domain name choices when selling blue widgets.

2. Register your domain for more than 2 years. Anything registered for under 2 years doesn't look like it will stick around, so it gets demoted in the search engines.

3. Get some links to your site. Write articles for other sites, try writing guest posts on other blogs- don't forget to include a short bio, including your website name and address.

4. Register your website with the search engines. While search engines will eventually get to your site, a faster way is to bring the site to them. You can register sites with Yahoo and with Google. Another important place to register is with dmoz.org. Find the most specific category and then click submit url at the top of the page. If you have a brick and mortar business, register it with Google Maps.

5. Google other ways to increase traffic to your website and spend a certain time each day working on that. There are lots of ways to bring more traffic to your website that don't include search engines. Focus on these a little and the increased traffic will help raise your search engine rank as well.

6. Give it time. Even following the most stringent SEO regimen, it will take time for search engines to find you and for your site to work it's way up the rankings.

Our belief is that there really is very little that one can do to influence their search engine ranking. Even following all these guidelines, there is still no guarantee that your site will come up first for the keywords that you've chosen. We believe that a well-designed site with content of interest to your visitors is the best bet to bring them in. Clear navigation and a pleasant design are key. You don't want to bring in visitors just to lose them with a sad looking site and unclear navigation. There are a lot of free, low-cost and paid ways to bring traffic to your site- working with these opportunities builds your website reputation and helps your search engine ranking in the long term.

DON'Ts

Here are a few things you really shouldn't do. They will not help your search engine ranking, and in many cases they will really hurt it.

• Don't use templates from mass template sites. Get your own custom design if you can afford it. If you can't, choose a predesigned idea from a boutique designer that won't be sold to more than 2-3 people.
• Don't use tricks to fool the Search Engines. They won't work and your site will get banned.
• Don't use Flash animations or too many javascript doodads. Spiders can't read them, so they will just skip the page if there are too many.

More Resources:

Top 7 Serious Search Engine Optimization Suggestions
Top 10 Bad Search Engine Optimization Ideas

Google Adwords - use to find relevant keywords and phrases
Submit your website to Google
Submit your site to Dmoz.org
Submit your website the Yahoo Directory
Put Your Business on Google Maps