You’ve created the perfect website, but no one comes to visit? The images are good, the color scheme is spot-on, you have added text on all pages, but no one seems to find your site. Your problem may be that you have not optimized your website for search engines. While there are some parts of this process where current thinking is a bit cloudy, much of it is common sense, and by following a few simple rules you will see your pages beat much of the competition in search engine rankings. Follow this advice methodically, and you should see an improvement.

The first task is to identify the keywords for each page on your website. A web page is optimized with respect to a particular set of words, which reflect the words people type in to search boxes when searching. Put yourself in their shoes and think about what words people would use to find your content, and then note these down for each page. You want no more than 3 to 5 words per page.

Having identified the keywords for each page, they need to be systematically included throughout the HTML code in the head and body tags. When you include keywords, try to do so naturally within the context of other text in sentences etc.

The head section is invisible to the web site user and is only visible by looking at the code of the webpage.  The view your web page code go to the top of your web browser and select “view” then “source”.  In the head section, the title tag is the most important tag. It should contain 9 to 12 words, with keywords used appropriately. Following that, the description tag is also important. Add a paragraph of text here with several sentences, perhaps 50 words in total. Keywords should be used several times in a readable format. The ‘keyword’ tag is next. This has been abused by website developers so often that many search engines do not rely on it’s authority, however it should be included as some still use it. List your keywords or phrases, separated by commas. The most important keywords come first.

When the head section is complete, the body section needs to be analyzed. The body section is the visible web page (text, images and links).  Include a header tag (H1) at the start of the web page, and several sub-header tags (H2) throughout the page. These tags should consist of short titles, with keywords included in different arrangements.

The links on your pages should include a title attribute with keywords included.  Image file names and folder names should include keywords, and an ‘alt’ parameter with alternate text which has keywords added.

Finally, the body text should have keywords used throughout, interspersed at natural intervals. Aim to have 400 to 800 words of content on a page. Search engines see this as a measure of authority. A page with few words is considered to be of less value. The text must flow naturally and fluently, and the use of keywords should seem normal to the reader. Words at the start of the page content have more authority than words placed towards the end. Comment tags with keywords can be placed at appropriate points throughout the HTML code.

Important points to remember throughout this process is that you should use keywords systematically, but you will be penalized if your content is seen as spam with unnaturally frequent use. The keywords in all pages, including the head tags, should be different, reflecting different content on each page. Put these ideas into practice, and over time you will see your pages perform better in search engine rankings.