Search Engine Optimization refers to structuring your web site so it ranks high in the organic (non-paid) space with search engines results. Different search engines (Google, Yahoo, Alta-vista etc) use different strategies for ranking your site, so it is not possible to rank well with all of them all the time.

The higher ranking a site can achieve, the more traffic will result. Having a poor ranking is like having a yellow pages ad that no one can find. The only customers who call, already have your phone number.

Keywords alone are not enough. In fact, many search engines don't care very much about them anymore!

There are various strategies and tools which help in achieving this goal. It is much more than just choosing appropriate key search words. It is about organizing your site appropriately, so you get visibility.

Key word frequency, meta tags (Title, Keywords, description, abstract), alt tags, keyword density, link popularity, keywords in links, site index ability and many other things are all factored into the equation. Google uses over 100 different factors to determine your ranking.

Obviously, the best place to be is listed on page 1, as 75% of users will not click to page 2. In designing your site think themes, so each page or section of your site focuses on a different aspect of your business. For example, a law practice may have different sections focusing on different types of law (corporate, personal injury, capital cases etc.). Some other points to remember are

• Search engines can't index flash or pictures, so limit their use.
• Menus driven by programming languages such as javascript cannot be indexed, it is also better to link to these as opposed to including it in your main page for reasons of keyword density.
• Be careful of redirects from other domains (bait and switch) you may be penalized by the search engines.
• Use keywords to link to other pages. The automated spiders from Google and other search engines rate links more highly, think of them as spider food. Also, use keywords as cookie-crumb trails both to benefit spiders and humans.
• Redefine the <H1> and other tags using CCS tags. The search engines give higher priority to the use of the old header tags.

The competition in your industry and the competency of your competitors web designer, will determine how difficult it is for your site to achieve a high site ranking within the organic space . Structuring your web site for a high ranking takes time and patience. The search engines (crawl) visit your web site maybe only once a month, so it is best to be prepared. We can help you achieve an excellent ranking.