Search engine optimization involves setting up your site so that it will be found by search engines when people type in certain words. Search engines like optimized sites because this makes it easier for them to work out what the site is about.

Search engine results are ordered by relevance first, and page rank next. For example, if two sites are equally relevant, then the site with the higher rank will appear first. If a page with a high rank is less relevant than a page with a lower rank, the lower ranked page will show up first.

This is why it is vital to optimize your site to make it relevant to certain searches which you want to target.

Keywords

The first step is to decide which words you want your site to show up for. It is a common mistake to target a word which not many people actually type into a search engine.

Services such as Wordtracker can help with determining which words should be targeted.

Another way to find out which keywords are actually entered into Google is to set up a Google AdWords account. (You don't have to actually activate a campaign and spend money). Your AdWords account has a tool called a "Keyword Tool" which allows you to view which words are entered into Google.

Yet another way to find keywords is to use the wonder wheel in Google search options.

Once you know your keywords and key phrases - then you can optimize your site for these words and phrases.

How to Optimize your Website?

1. URL

The URL should contain keywords that you are targeting. If you can get keywords into the domain name, that's even better.

eg. if you are targeting widgets, then the domain name should be  widgets.com   or have the word widgets in it.

If you can't get the keyword or key phrases into the domain name, then get it into the URL.

eg.  if you are targeting "widget gruntbuglys"  then the URL of the page should contain those words. It would look like this;

       http://www.optomforum.com.au/widget-gruntbuglys.html

Search engines seem to isolate individual words out of the domain name even if you don't have a space. Dictionary words are usually isolated well.  eg.  for the domain optomforum.com.au  the search engines will recognize the word "forum" if the search is for the word "forum". However, for other parts of the URL if is a good idea to clearly separate the individual words with a "-". Search engines read the "-" sign like a space. Using an underscore is probably just as good but often not recommended.

2. Title

The title is the text that appears as the title of the window in the browser. The HTML code for the title is in the header section of the HTML code and it looks like this; <title>insert text here</title>

The title of the page is one of the most important things that tells the search engine what the page is about. Don't bother putting your website name into the title if it doesn't fit. It is more important to put the keywords into it. Keep in mind that the title of the page is what appears with most prominence in search engine results, so make sure it makes sense and conveys the right message so people will click on it.

Do not repeat the same word in the title if possible.

Only the first 80 characters of a title are seen in the Internet Explorer title bar, but search engines can read a few extra characters. Do not go much over 80 characters. It is believed that Google only looks at the first 72 characters.

Make sure each page on your site has a different title. Webdesigners inexperienced with SEO techniques make the mistake of giving the same title to each page.

3. Headers.

Headers are important. This is often neglected by webdesigners who focus on the graphical appearance of a page. There must be text headers containing the target keywords.  A header looks like this  <h1> header text  </h1>

There are different levels of header. Try to keep to some sort of hierarchy, so the main headers are h1, sub-headers are h2 etc.  h1 headers are quite big, but the  style sheet you are using should have shrunk it down.

Beware of people who argue that headers are not important. Using headers is very consistent with the principles of search engines rewarding relevance.

It is believed that Google may change how much importance it places on headers. It has been speculated that h2 may in some cases be worth more than h1, seeing that h1 tags are often over-used. Therefore use them all.

4. META Tags.

These tags are contained in the header part of the HTML code for each page.
Make sure each page has different Meta tags. Webdesigners inexperienced with SEO techniques make the mistake of giving the same meta tags to each page.

META Description Tag:

This tag is a short description of the page.  It is often what appears as part of the Google search results for your site. If the search words appear in the description tag then your description tag will appear as part of the search engine result. Having a good description may help with getting someone to click on the link.

Make sure it explains to a human what the page is about in as few words as possible - it should include keywords.  If you don't have a META Description tag, and your site is listed in dmoz, then the dmoz description of your site will appear on the Google results page.  Being listed in dmoz is good for your site - as explained in the Page Rank section below - however the dmoz description is often not very helpful.  You should have a meta description tag as this gives you control of the description. If you are not listed in dmoz and you don't have a meta description tag, then Google will automatically generate a description from text on the page.

It is in your interest to control the description by having a meta description tag. 

An example of a Meta Description tag is below: (the syntax depends on which markup of HTML you are using.)

<meta name="description" content="Optom Forum. Optical Industry Directory and Forum for Australian Optometrists and Optometry students to discuss issues relevant Optometric Practice Management and other issues relevant to Optometry. " />

META Keyword Tag:

This tag was developed for the original search engines such as Alta Vista as a way to tell the search engine what the page is about. It is not as useful with todays search engines.
Google apparently ignores the meta keyword tag but other search engines may use it. Often it is not worth using any more.

This is a way for you to tell the search engine which keywords you think are important on that particular page. Keep in mind that the keyword tags are only of value if the same keywords are also used in the text of the page, do not use too many keywords. Current wisdom is to not use more than 10 keywords. The search engine may compare what you think the page is about with what its own analysis of the text says the page is about. It is in your interest to ensure that the meta tags are consistent with the text on the page.  Many web designers think that putting keywords into the meta tags is sufficient, and they don't put the same keywords into the text.

Some argue that this tag should actually be used for keywords that are not in the text of the page. This argument is not consistent with the principles of search engine design - why reward words which are not on the page? - This would not help with relevance. In fact, in the past webdesigners added irrelevant words to this tag to generate extra traffic. For this reason putting in irrelevant words is unlikely to work now.

example of a meta keyword tag;

<meta name="keywords" content="optometrists forum, optometry discussion board, optical industry, optical bulletin board, optometry forum, optical forum, optical industry, optometric practice management, optical practice management" />

5. Content.

The text of the page must contain all keywords and phrases that you are targeting. The text under each header should be relevant to that header and also the title. Try to target phrases as well as individual words. Do not overuse the keywords, as this could get your site removed from a search engines index. Aim for 3% to 6% usage of keywords in the text. There are web resources which will analyze your page for such statistics. Do not try to target all possible keywords into one page. Optimize different pages for different searches. Do not make any page too big, if you have lots of content then split it between pages.

Content is supreme.  All else is pointless if you don't have relevant content.

6. Links

All pages should link to all other pages within 2 clicks. The home page should link to every other page within 2 clicks.

Links must be static HTML links. Links used in menus are sometimes javascript links which are not followed by search engines. Therefore, it is good to have static links as well. You will see that most sites have text links at the bottom of the page for the search engines, as well as the javascript links in the menu for humans

The number of internal links to a certain page from other pages on your site shows the search engine how important that page is in your site. Try to ensure that there are quite a few links between all pages on the site, preferably from within the text, do not just rely on links at the bottom of the page. If there are lots of links to one particular page, then that page will appear to be more important.

To link between pages, make sure that the text around the link (and also the text that is clicked) is relevant to the page that the link is linking to. Do not just have "click here" as the link. Search engines judge what a page is about by the words used to link to that page.

Linking to external relevant sites helps with relevance.  Regularly check that all external links are correct, and the site you link to has not changed. This is important as it shows if your site is a quality site with correct information.

7. Overdoing It.

The purpose of search engine optimization is to tell the search engine what the site is about. Search engines do not like being manipulated into giving results that are not relevant. Therefore;

Do not have everything perfect in a competitive category - ie. exactly the same words is URL, Title, Headers, Meta Tags, Alt tags, link text, inbound link text. If it looks overdone, then it probably is. It and may get you panalized. I know the rest of this page says to do these things, just don't overdo it.

Do not have any text obscured by graphics, search engines may think you are hiding something. Even if only a small part of the text is covered.

Do not have the text colour and the background colour the same.

Do not do anything that cannot be seen by humans.

Do not over-use keywords. If any keyword comprises more than 10% of the text then this looks suspicious. However, in some cases this may be unavoidable if it is the nature of the site.

Never create mirror sites - ie. other sites with the same content. If you have other sites, make sure they are different.

Do not create mirror pages within your site. If you have two pages the same, make sure one of the pages is marked no-index Mark one of the mirror pages as no index in the robots.txt file. Also look up rel cannonical for a way to handle database generated mirror pages. certain pages.

Do not create a page containing only keywords. Do not have lists of keywords.

Do not have any keyword used too often. Do not target too many keywords on any page. (Alt tags can also have too many keywords.)

8. Sitemap.xml

Create an sitemap.xml  file by visiting sites such as  http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Upload your sitemap.xml file to your public html directory on the server. This file can be edited by an editor such as Notepad++
This file is read by most search engines and it gives them a list of all the pages on your site. The search engines will not necessarily visit all pages in your sitemap.xml file if they cannot get to the same page by following normal links in the web pages. Make sure that all pages can be accessed by folllowing links. The sitemap file is just an extra tool to help the search engines.

9. robots.txt

Create a robots.txt  file. This is just a text file (you can write it in notepad or Notepad++) that goes to the public html directory. Most search engines visit this file first. The robots.txt file can tell search engines which pages they should not index, where the sitemap.xml is etc.

the robots.txt file may just consist of one line, giving the location of the sitemap.xml file.  eg.

Sitemap:http://www.optomforum.com.au/sitemap.xml

ALL major search engines look for the robots.txt file EVERY time they look at your site. Make sure you have one, even if if doesn't contain much useful information.  Some people choose to hide their sitemap.xml file by giving it a different name, and submitting it to the search engines directly. They may do this to hide all their landing pages from their competitors.  If you want to hide the sitemap file then you should still have a robots.txt file. It could just contain instructions to follow all links and index all pages - the correct syntax for this is available online.

10. Error Pages:

If someone types a URL that doesn't exist then a 404 error message appears. Apache servers allow you to make a custom error page. Create a file called 404.shtml using Notepad++. Upload this to your public html directory. This file should be based on your template for your other pages. It should simply say something like,  "Error 404: The page you have requested has moved or the URL has been typed incorrectly. Please use the menu to navigate this site."

The coding for all internal links in this page should allow all links to work no matter what directory the incorrect URL is in. This can be done by giving the full URL instead of just the filename.

(eg. any link following the command  href  should look like http://www.optomforum.com.au/filename.html  instead of just filename.html)  This way it will work from any directory someone may type into the URL.

You can make 403.shtml and other error pages in the same way.

11. Search Engine Webmaster Account

Set up webmaster accounts with Google, Yahoo, and Bing at the following sites. Upload your sitemap.xml file to the search engines through your account.
The Google account is particularly useful in assessing your site. To set up these accounts, you must be able to upload certain files to your server for verification that you really are the webmaster.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
http://www.bing.com/webmaster

12. Flash Graphics and Animations to show text.

Google indexes shockwave flash (swf)  files that contain text in a readable format.  This means that this sort of file is OK to use.  In fact using SWF instead of image files for headers is now recommended.

Keep in mind that not all text in flash files may be readable to search engines. Many users find flash animations annoying and iPhones cannot play flash animations.

Also, avoid having text in image files. This is also unreadable to search engines.

13. Images

Search engines cannot read what is in an image. However, you can give them an idea from the name you give the image. For example, instead of giving an image a filename of   pic1.jpg   call it   optometrist-chart.jpg  

alt attributes should be used to give a brief description of every image. Google likes alt attributes - use them.

The filenames of the images and the alt attributes should use the keywords that are being targeted on the page. Text near the image helps with describing the image.

If an image is used as a link to another page on your site, then the name of the image (and the alt attribute) should be relevant to the page it is linking to.

Use the Google webmaster tools to get images indexed.

What is Page Rank?

If you install Google Toolbar and enable page rank, you will see that most pages are ranked on a scale of 0 to 10. The scale is exponential, meaning that each rank is an order of magnitude higher than the previous rank. Page ranks are continuously updated by Google. Every few months a snapshot of the page rank is taken and this fixed rank is shown on the Google toolbar. This means that the real page rank may not be the same as what is shown on the toolbar.

Google calculates your page rank by counting and analyzing how many links to your page it finds on other pages. This gives an idea of how important your page is.

Links to your page from pages with a high rank are often worth a lot more than links from pages with low rank.

If a site links to you, and you link back to them, it is not worth as much as if they link to you only.

The idea is that if your page is truly important and useful then lots of other pages will link to it.

Imagine that a page (Page1.html) has a page rank of 3. This means that it has a link energy (link juice) of three to spread to other pages through links. If there was only one link from this page to another page, then the other page would also get a page rank of three through the link from Page1. The page rank of Page1 is not reduced because of the link.

If, on the other hand there were two links from Page1.html, then half of the link juice from Page1.html would be passed to each page through each link. Each page linked to would get a page rank of 1 or 2. (Remember that the page rank scale is exponential. Also, links lose 15% of their link energy with each link.)

Most pages have many outbound links. Page rank is transferred to other pages through these links.

Page rank gets transferred through links. You do not reduce the page rank in your own page by linking out to other pages.

A web page with twenty links on the page will transfer approximately 1/20 of its rank to each page it links to. However, Google analyses the links and transfers more page rank on some links than other links. eg. navigational links such as a list of links at the bottom of the page transfer very little page rank, as opposed to links which look more important.

Links lose approximately 15% of their "link energy" or "link juice" at each link.

The same principle applies to transferring page rank between pages on different websites as linking to pages within your own website.

Keep in mind the term is "Page Rank", not site rank. Each page is treated separately.

Controlling Page Rank

Webmasters have the power to control page rank within their own site to some extent, or at least ensure that all pages are equally linked. You can concentrate page rank to certain pages within your site by having more links to certain pages.

Links marked with no-follow tags will stop page rank from being transferred with the link, but they will not give you more page rank to use on other links.

Google reduces the total amount of page rank (link juice) available for real links in pages which have no-follow tags. In this way the total link juice available to real links is the same as if the no-follow links were real links also. This means you are better off not having a link at all than tagging it "no-follow".

Keep incoming Links Relevant

The most important way that Google has to determine what your page is about is from the text located in and around links to your page. This is especially important for competitive keywords, where everybody optimizes correctly, so it is impossible for Google to choose a relevant site based on internal optimization techniques alone. Therefore, Google determines what your page is about from the content of inbound links.

This is why the wording of links is important. Your listing in directories should contain keywords. This is why you may see references to "relevant links" when you exchange links. Do not think that "relevant links" means that the site containing the link has to be related to your site. What this means is that the link itself needs to be relevant to your site. All this means is that text around the link should be relevant to the keywords you are targeting. Keep this in mind when building links.

Keep the links relevant. Don't worry if the sites are not relevant. Some webmasters don't understand this, and they only link to sites in their own industries. This is a misunderstanding of the concept. However, it is better if the subject of the whole site or page is relevant to your page. It is also helpful to have as much text as possible discussing the topic of your link near your link.

When creating links to increase your page rank it is important to keep the links relevant to the keywords being targeted.

How to build Page Rank?

The principle of building page rank is to get other pages to link to you because your site is so good and useful.

Directories:

Get listed in as many directories as possible. Make sure that the directory listing is relevant to the keywords you are targeting. Do not get into directories which list bad sites with which you do not want to be associated as this could affect your relevance. Your competitors may list you in bad directories just to hurt your relevance, this is why you have to set your relevance correctly. There are directory submission services available which will manually submit your link to thousands of directories. Most of these listings will be ignored by Google, but MSN search lapped it up in the old days. Not all directories have much value. Directories that charge for listings are often ignored by Google. Some directories don't charge for listings, but they charge to review your submission for listing - this seems acceptable at the moment. However, it seems unethical and will problably be a bad thing in the future. The current wisdom is that listings in thousands of low-grade directories are not worth much to your page rank. However, it will help. Keep in mind that it can take months between getting listed in a directory to it affecting your page rank - Google is not in a hurry.

Google is reducing the weight it puts on links from directories. This makes sense as directories are rarely useful to web surfers. However, some directories are still worth being listed in.

Directories - DMOZ

The single easiest way for an optometry practice website site to get some page rank is to get listed in the Open Directory Project - dmoz .   If you get into dmoz, then possibly you can achieve a page rank of 1 or 2 within a few months. This is because lots of other directories copy the dmoz listings. You may find that a lot of directories include all dmoz listings and then they charge to review extra listings for inclusion. Therefore, if you are in dmoz, you may not need to submit to directories manually.

Google uses dmoz as a way to filter real sites from spam sites and to set categories for what sites are about - this helps them with relevance. It can take a long time to get into dmoz - if you get in at all.

Your site is not likely to get into dmoz if it has little useful and unique content, if it has only one page, or if it has broken links. Of course every case is different and different editors may have different interpretations of what constitutes a useful site.  An individual optometry practice site is taken to be unique just by being the site of an individual business.

Large organizations with lots of resources can get better page ranks without bothering with dmoz, but for an independent optometry practice, you cannot beat dmoz for results compared to the small amount of work involved.

If you don't have a meta description tag and then the description given to your site by the dmoz editor is often included in the description that appears in the Google search results. This is not always a good thing. dmoz descriptions are objective descriptions of what your site contains, they will not be promoting your business. It is possible to tell Google through your webmasters account to stop using the dmoz description. However, having a META description tag will usually allow you to control what description is shown in Google, even if you are listed in dmoz.

Directories - Yahoo

It is believed that the Yahoo directory is no longer worth much at all to page rank, but it may help relevance.

It costs US$300 for business sites to get reviewed for listing. Business listing into the Yahoo directory must be done through the US Yahoo site.  Getting listed in Yahoo will help with credibility as it will categorize your site's content. Sites are reviewed by an editor before being accepted into the Yahoo directory. This means that your category is correct and that your site is a real site. The advantage over dmoz is that you get in within one week if you pay the fee. It may be valuable to pay to get into the Yahoo directory if you have a new site and you wish to get credibility quickly. The description given to your site by the Yahoo editors may show up in Yahoo search results.

New Sites

New sites should not get into too many directories too quickly as this could get them penalized by search engines. "Too many" means getting into thousands of directories straight away.  Beware of too many irrelevant links. This could confuse the search engine about what your site is about.

Realistically, internet users don't use these directories, so they are purely for page rank building. It is likely that Google does not place much value on directory listings.  Dmoz is given special credibility because it is a way for Google to filter real sites from well optimized, machine generated marketing sites.

Exchange Links:

Exchange links with other sites: When sites link to each other this is called reciprocal linking. Create a "Links" page which can be viewed with one click from your home page. On this page you can link to other sites. The link needs to contain a short description of the other site - not just the link. Make sure you advise the other site of the text that they should use in their link to you.  Sharing links will not get you a high page rank. But just to get started it is good. You can possibly get a page rank of 2 just by sharing links. Check that the link from the other site is a proper link, and that it doesn't have a "no follow" tag in the link coding or the page header, and that the page is not marked as "no-index" in the robots.txt file or the page header. Firefox browser has a plug-in that shows if a link is a real link. There should not be more than 50 links on any one page. Often webmasters try to hide the word links from search engines by calling them resources or other such words.

It is likely that if you have incoming links only from pages with a high page rank and no links from low page rank pages then this will look unnatural and suspicious. Google is pretty smart at picking unnatural patterns. Remember that relevance is more important than page rank, if you can get a link from a low ranking page where the whole page is about your keyword then this is worth more than a less relevant link from a page with higher page rank.

One of the easiest ways for optometry practice websites to improve their page rank would be to link to each other. This would help greatly with relevance as well as page rank.

Link Exchange: These are sites where website owners exchange links.

Tri-links:a linking system where people get together to make their links look non-reciprocal.  eg. A links to B, B links to C, and C links to A. It is unknown whether search engines have worked out how to crack this system to count it as reciprocal linking. This system is flawed because your outgoing links will usually have no relevance to the keywords on your site, this will reduce your relevance.

Link Farms: avoid including your link in a link farm. A link farm is a large list of links, usually with no description for each link. Link pages should not have more than 50 links per page and each link should have a description. Do not link to link farms from your site. These are not very common any more.

Having a link to your site from a "bad neighbourhood" probably will not hurt your site, as long as you have lots of good links too. If putting a link in a bad directory could damage a site's ranking, then people could do this to their competitors. It is possibly that it can hurt your relevance though, if you don't have good links too.

Check every outbound link regularly to make sure they are all still good. If your outbound links become broken then this shows your site is not up to date and therefore not a quality site. This is actually more important than many people realize. If your outbound links link to unreputable sites or become broken then this will hurt your page rank. Make sure the sites you link to have not changed.

Linking to established sites which have a well established theme will help your relevance. This is often neglected by people doing SEO.

Blogs and Forums:

This is an inefficient technique but it may help;

Get your web address into blogs and forums. However, this is considered spam and frowned upon in lots of places. Most blogging software automatically puts no-follow tags onto new links, but they become real links after a few months if they haven't been removed by the blog owner. You will see people putting comments into blogs just to get their web address included. Forums usually have no-follow tags on links to prevent spamming as well. However, having your URL associated with your profile is usually permitted, and sometimes it is permitted to have it in your signature as well. This will give your site exposure, if not page rank.

Links marked no-follow still help your page credibility in some way. Google classifies them as a site where your page was discussed. Page rank is not passed through no-follow links. Instead of spamming your site in a forum, you can contribute to the discussion, but have your URL shown in the signature. This is tolerated on lots of forums. Some forums only tolerate this if you are a financially contributing member.

Press Release and Content Upload Sites:

The idea of a content upload site is that you submit an article containing your link to the site. The site then allows other sites to take your article and publish it on their site. Your article - and your link - will then be on another site. If you write really useful articles you could get hundreds of links quickly. That is the idea anyway.

Create other Websites and Blog Accounts:

Create a blog which links to you often. It should be interesting in its own right and not spammy. It should have new posts regularly.

You could create other sites which link to you - be careful with this. Make sure the other site is not a mirror of your first site. If the other site has no page rank then this will not help you much.

If you have lots of blogs with no page rank that nobody visits then this isn't going to help you much. It is better to have one blog which you work on regularly than ten which are neglected.

Google values Blogs and "How to..."  "What is..."  websites, as they assume these are useful to people performing searches.

Get Articles Published:

Get articles into newspapers and magazines which are online, as they will be indexed by search engines.

Video Sites

It is trendy to post promotional videos onto sites such a youTube. It is easy for search engines to guage the popularity of a site or keyword by the number of video views and the number of clicks to view the linked site.

Twitter and other social media

Twitter is very popular for page rank building. Each tweet is counted as a page in its own right. Google is probably cracking down on people using tweets to increase their link count. It is likely that people following ten times as many people as the number following them have already been marked spammers. Twitter works if you also have a blog and a website to link to. You need to tweet regularly and be genuinely interesting. It is common to see lots of spammers on Twitter whose links are most likely ignored by Google as well as other Twitter users.

By analysing links in social media such as Twitter, Google can assesses the polularity and usefulness of websites. It makes sense that this is a genuine way to see which sites people visit and find interesting. It is also more difficult to manipulate, as spammers are easier to detect and ignore. Get into social media if you are serious about building your page rank. Keep in mind that the page rank shown on the Google toolbar is now only a small part of how sites are ranked.

Authority Sites

Some sites are accepted by Google to be authorities on certain topics (ie. certain keywords). This authority is gained by analysing what sorts of links are made to these sites. It would be great to be accepted as an authority on a topic, but this is unlikely to happen for most optometry practice websites. Therefore, optometry practices should associate themselves with existing authority sites. This will try to ensure relevance to certain keywords.

One example of an authority site is the Optometrists Association website. A link to a practice website from here should set the practice website as being about optometry. Luckily, the OAA website allows a website link from members' listings. The problem is that Google cannot find these listings by itself due to the design of the OAA website. Therefore, if you link to the page which shows your practice link, then Google will find this page. It will then see that there is a link to your site from the OAA site.

Another good site may be your local council website if it has a business directory. You need to get listed in this directory to set your location and business category. If the business directory works only by searching it, then it is possible you may need to link to the page with your listing to get it found and indexed.

If you cannot get a link from a relevant authority site then you can still benefit just by linking to the authority site. This will mean that your site is related to what the authority site is about. Your link should include relevant keywords.

SEO Professionals:

SEO Professionals such as First Rate and StewArt Media perform the following functions;

Keyword Analysis
Competition analysis
Landing Page Design - sometimes they will create a separate landing page for each search phrase.
Copywriting and HTML coding - edit the site to include keywords and phrases and make the site SEO friendly.
Internal Link Analysis and Design
Directory Submission
Social Media link building

The fact that there is a market for SEO professionals shows the poor knowledge of web designers.

Sometimes it is when commissioning SEO professionals that business owners realize who really owns their site. The webdesigner may not allow the SEO professional to modify the site, as the original webdesigner owns the intellectual property.  This has actually happened.  Beware of who actually owns the site. Make sure you own the copyright.

All SEO work can be done by the website owner as there is little technical knowledge required, the reason you would pay a professional is for expert knowledge that is likely to get results. For competitive categories SEO professionals are a good idea. For sites such as optometry practice websites it seems to be overkill.

Beware of SEO professionals who promise to get a good ranking for a non-competitive term which no-one will search for. Use the tools in Adwords to get an idea of which words are actually used in searches.

SEO is not Search Engine Marketing or Pay-Per-Click Advertising

A lot of marketing companies use the term SEO interchangeably with marketing and advertising.  Some businesses offering  search engine optimization services may actually be offering pay-per-click advertising.

Be Careful of SEO Companies which do not improve your site.

There have been articles published about supposed SEO companies which get traffic to their own well optimized sites and then redirect it to their client's site through pay per click ads which they have organized for their clients. 




Hopefully this page is a useful overview of the principles of search engine optimization. People can read such information and then ignore it because it doesn't suit their site design ideals, or because others are not doing it. This makes things easier for those that optimize correctly.

It is common for webmasters to read such information and then pick a few of the points that they will actually do.  To do it properly, you need to actually follow most of the 13 points in the SEO section of this page.  Doing only some of these things will not get the same results.

This information is only a summary and webmasters must take responsibility for the consequences of over-optimizing.  Keep in mind that content is rewarded by search engines, and the information on this page is merely advice on how to tell the search engines about your content.


copyright 2008-2009  Anthony Liska





A useful site for optimization tools is Webconfs

Detailed articles are contained on Website Helpers

Detailed page rank information is located here:  http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm  

Keep in mind that search engine criteria change regularly, and only the search engines know what is good and bad.

The general principle is to tell the search engine what the site is about and to make sure your site is really about that topic.