Optimizing a web site for search engines is a simple job! But, it involves a few steps, which if followed properly, makes a web site hot property on the internet. Below are some simple steps for making a web site search-engine-friendly are being listed.

                   1. Make a good website – a useful one!

People tend to spend huge amounts of money and time for designing and creating websites. But, fact is that most end up with lousy, poorly designed and badly authored websites. The site needs to have content that people intended to find. This should be presented in an appealing format. The page should be friendly and the site should, in addition to being “people friendly”, be “search-engine” friendly.

                   2. Go for key-phrases and not key-words

Using keywords and improving the ranking of a website is something similar to the old needle and the hay-stack story. Concentrating on key-phrases, on the other hand, changes things a lot. Instead of a single word, concentrating on whole sentences is similar to several keywords working together and effectively.

                   3.  The <TITLE> Tag

A common mistake that people generally make is that they make a TITLE tag, extremely friendly for people who visit the site, but unfriendly for search engines. What’s the point in having a people friendly title, if no one is ever going to visit? So, optimizing the TITLE tag is very important. The first and the foremost point is to make sure that most of the keywords, or the complete key phrase, is present in the TITLE tag, but it should make sense.

                   4.  The <META> Tags

META tags play a great role in improving the ranking of websites. On most of the search engines, the page title is truncated and the META tag gets displayed. Google does not pay attention to META tags now, but they may change tomorrow. Google, as for now, is king, but remember that there were other search engines ‘alive’ a few years back. So, there are all chances for a new search engines to trash Google. Also, there are still search engines that look into the META tags. Keep the description within 200 – 400 words and the keyword or the key phrase must not repeat much. Otherwise, the website may identify itself as spam.

                  5.  The beginning paragraph

It is important that the keywords and the key phrases appear more than once.  However, if it is too much, the search engine might think its spam and the site will lose the ranking altogether. The advisable limit would be around 10 or 12 keywords per page. But, it should never go beyond 14.

                  6.  Other useful points

a. Note that some search engines list your site if and only if the site is registered as a domain. That is, free domains are not listed. E.g. www.mysite.com gets listed whereas www.mysite.freesite.com does not qualify.

b. There is a common misconception that a URL with a lot of keywords in it draws more results and attains a higher rank. This is not at all the truth. No major search engines rate your site based on the keyword presence in the address.

c. It is better to avoid tricks like repeating the keywords in the background color repeatedly, putting key phrases in comments (/*……*/) etc.

d. Try to get maximum links to your website as many search engines nowadays rank the popularity by looking into the number of link-ins

e. Avoiding flash is better. The search engines cannot look inside the flash content. Rating automatically comes down.

f. Try to avoid HTML errors on your pages. The presence of HTML errors can make the site appear in ways other than intended and this adversely affects the popularity of the site

g. Now, if the site gets traffic, manage and use it. The users who visit the site should be provided with the apt information, neatl presented