Search engine optimisation - the basics

Having good search engine placement is essential for any web site, especially if you're trying to sell products or services. Being on the first page of the results generated by the search engines can bring a lot of visitor traffic

However, before getting too involved with any search engine optimisation or web marketing you must perform some analysis on your web site. Ask yourself "does my site have good content", "is it offering value to my visitors". If you can't think of any compelling reasons to visit your web site yourself, then you can hardly expect other people to do so. Any search engine optimisation work under taken will be in vain if once people click through to your site they are not met with engaging content, products or services and instead simply click away

In order to effectively get high search engine placements your site is going to have to be more than just a one page add for your product or service. It needs to be packed with as much useful information that relates to your web sites topic or theme as possible. Content serves many useful purposes, apart from the obvious one being that accurate and informative content is compelling to your visitors, it also allows you to increase the use of keywords pertaining to your web site (business), increase the density of these keywords, even manipulate the order of them

4 reasons why content is king

Directory editors like it. Directory editors look for good information content in the sites they want to include in their databases, the more informative your site the more likely they are to include it
Webmasters looking for pages to link to like it. When it comes to forging incoming links from other sites, people are more likely to link to good information content than a page that serves only to advertise a product
People searching like it. Accurate and informative content will compel your visitors to drill deeper into your site, which hopefully will help facilitate a sale, or at least give them a reason to come back again (potential customers need to be exposed to your products or services up to 7 times before they buy)
Search engines like it. Extensive content with an over riding theme or context allows you to increase the use of keywords pertaining to your business

The ability of your web site to get maximum top search engine placements is inherently related to the amount and quality of content on your site. A five page site with little content will never do as well as a 500 page site crammed full of relevant information. Search engine optimisation works, but you must be realistic about any limitations already present in the construct of your web site

What are the main SEO points to concentrate on?

Good content has already been mentioned, keywords within the content are the next most important consideration, you can find more detailed information here about choosing keywords

Other points to focus on are: -

Page titles - One of the most important points to focus on
Meta - tags - Now ignored by a lot of search engines, but Inktomi reads them so still worth spending time on
Link popularity - Increasingly used by search engines as a ranking criteria

should you write content for people or search engines?