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Get the basics right.

Your first step to making sure your site is search engine friendly is to make sure the search engines can 'read' your site easily. This means getting the fundamentals right.

In this article we are going to cover the main building blocks of your site:- HTML, frames, keywords, title, description. Alt and keywords tags. We have assumed a basic understanding of HTML. At the end of this article we will show you how you can check your search engine rankings.

HTML ' get it validated.

Make it easy for search engines to 'read' your site. Check your HTML code. Search engine spiders are computer programs. They work to a predefined set of rules. The easier you make it for them to crawl your site the more likely it is that you will get your pages crawled without problems. Make sure you check your code for errors and that it is well formatted.

Keywords ' take the guesswork out of finding keywords.

It's a good idea to do some brainstorming when choosing your keywords. Try to compile a list of all possible keywords that your potential customers would use to find your product or service. The secret of picking high performance keywords is to aim for those phrases that generate a lot of searches but at the same time have limited competition.

The Title Tag ' how to optimize your page title.

When search engine spiders crawl your website they give a lot of weight to your page title. The search engine crawler uses the title to judge what the site is about. You should aim to place your most important keywords at the beginning of your title tag. Remember that the search engines will display your title as part of the search results. Try and make the title attractive to your potential visitors. The Title tag is an essential part of getting a better search engine ranking.

Meta Description Tag

When the search engines return their results it is quite often the contents of the description tag that is displayed on the search engine results page. Use your keywords in the description and make sure it is as appealing as possible. The number of visitors you get will depend to a large extent on how much they are attracted by your description. In other words no point being on page 1 of the search results if nobody clicks on your site.

Meta Keywords Tag

Search engines are putting less and less emphasis on the Meta Keywords tag. The keywords tag has been abused in the past and improved search engine rankings are less likely to be as a result of the keyword tag. Nevertheless it can do your site no harm to enter your top keywords into the Meta Keywords tag.

Body text

Remember that not all search engines use the description tag. This means that the results shown on the search page will be the first few lines of your body text. Try to put your keywords at the beginning of your text and remember to make them as appealing as possible. You are trying to get people to click onto your page rather than your competitors; so give them a reason to visit your site. Try to make use of the heading tags and if possible use some bulleted lists. Place keywords within your text in a natural way and do not spam the engines by cramming your text with keywords.

Alt tag

When you insert an image into your webpage one of the image properties is the Alt tag. In the description of your image mention your keywords. The keywords in your alt tag will not necessarily give you an immediately higher search engine ranking but they will certainly not harm your chances.

How do you check your ranking progress?

How do you know if the changes you have made are working. For a limited time we are offering a free website ranking report. This will show you your position, for your chosen keywords on Google,MSN and Yahoo. Reserve your report today. Visit our website now for full details