We’ve all had the experience of looking for specific informationon the Internet, typing what seems like apretty clear phrase into the search bar, and getting a mix ofuseful and not–so–useful websites on the results page. Wadingthrough irrelevant sites is annoying, especially when theyseem so promising from the description. Generally, more usefulsites are near the top of the list. So put the shoe on theother foot: do you want to be a source of irritation in yourpotential customer’s search efforts, or the knight in shiningarmor at the top of the page? What you need, my friend, is astrong SEO campaign.

SEO is about making your site as “findable” as possible inthe vast sea of websites on the World Wide Web, which meansconfiguring them so search engines like Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, Ask, Lycos and others can find your information easilyand index it in their directories. Sites near the top of a searchengine results page (SERP) are said to have high page rank,and they tend to be more relevant. Numerous studies – fromeye–tracking to click–through rates – have shown that websitesin the top few positions of SERP’s get the greatest traffic.Those lower down the list get lonely, and many users don’teven bother with page 2 or beyond.

Making a website search engine friendly requires specializedand ever–changing expertise. A good SEO campaign takesa lot of attention, time and maintenance. Many businesses hirecompanies that specialize in SEO to design and monitor theircampaigns, often with multi–year service plans. It’s not a badoption for companies heavily invested in their websites. Thekey concept in web marketing is “target audience”. An optimizedsite allows search engines to pair your site with webusers who are looking for what you have to offer.

Search Engines work by deploying little bits of code orprograms, called “robots” or “spiders,” that “crawl” through theInternet, scanning and archiving information from as manywebsites as possible. Sometimes called “organic” SEO, the basicidea is to put various elements in place to allow Search Enginesto find your information on their own.

ne of the top SEO tactics is clear: well–written text.Search Engines exist to help users find relevant sites. Theirfirst priority is to scan text. The more informative, organizedand useful your content is, the more legitimate it will be toboth users and Search Engines. You don’t have to write a book,but you need enough content to get your message across andincorporate keywords, another important text–based SEOtactic. Keywords are short phrases that pinpoint what yoursite offers. Search engines use them to pair your site with thesearch terms people type into their browser. Keywords shouldappear at least once in the body of your web text.

Links are a crucial yet often abused SEO technique. Searchengines view links to or from other websites, and to some extentbetween pages of the same site, as a “popularity vote”. But a linkto your Uncle Bob’s fishing trip pictures will work against youunless the site you’re optimizing has something to do with UncleBob, fishing, or the lake in question. Descriptive anchor text (theunderscored or highlighted “hot” words you click on to get to adefinition, article, or other website) is preferable to nonspecificphrases (like “click here”) or long web addresses.

In short, links must be relevant. A link to your site is betterthan a link from your site, and the more popular or higherranking the source of the link, the better. Link building is likeany other relationship: it takes time and has its own etiquette.A good web design or SEO company should know how to makelinks work for, not against, your page rank.

Coding issues can also affect SEO. All websites should havea title, description, and a few keywords in the back–end coding.These are known as metatags. Search engines vary in how muchthey use metatags, but it’s a good idea to have them in place.

Functionality (how well your website does what its supposedto) plays a significant role in SEO. As a rule of thumb, anythingannoying to a user will also annoy the search engines. Large imagefiles that take a long time to load, sites that don’t work acrossmultiple browsers, broken links, poorly formatted text, videosor audio files that don’t work, websites that are not properlymaintained or updated, and a host of other functionality issuescan have a negative impact on page rank.

One of the most direct ways to get your site indexed is tosubmit it manually to the individual search engines. This is particularlyuseful for new, re–designed or updated sites. You canreview the submission policies and other information availableon the websites of the major search engines. They’ll tell you whatthey consider good and bad form.

If SEO is important to you, and it should be, make sure yourweb designer understands how it works. Blogs, online publishingand pay–per–click campaigns can also be effective, providedyou know what you’re doing. These are often labeled Search EngineMarketing, and will be addressed in future articles.