What is SEO ? Search Engine Optimization
There are a number of things you can do to boost your site’s rating with search engines. Large companies can afford to pay for sponsored links and advertising with sites like Google or Yahoo, but most of us don’t have the necessary funds to splash out on that kind of luxury. Instead, we have to use other, more subtle techniques, to naturally inch our way up the ranks.
How a Search Engine Works The best place to begin before optimizing your site is to try and understand a little of how a search engine spider works. At a very basic level, it will trawl through your page, and give it ‘points’ for certain things. Some it places more importance on than others, but put simply, the more of these things that you have, the more points you get and the higher your rating will be.
Before going into more detail on these areas, something you’ll need to take into consideration is frames. Web developers are generally split into two camps on this issue, and it’s reasonably safe to say that most people either love them or hate them. Frames undoubtedly do have their advantages, but if you’re trying to build a site that’s optimized for spiders, then they can only cause trouble.
If you make a site without frames, you allow the search engines to reference your page quickly and easily. But if you do decide to build inside a frameset, then you’ll have to make use of the tag. However, for the sake of this tutorial lets assume that you’ve chosen to forgo frames. Onto the Important Stuff: Meta Tags and More By now, just about everyone is aware of the tags that are available to developers, so it’s helpful to get these right from the beginning. Tedious as it may sound, always write individual meta code for each page of your site, as that way it has a greater chance of coming up through a search. By trying to condense the whole content of your site into a few keywords for one page, you’re ruining your chances.