Truly optimizing your website for good search engine placement can be a long, uphill battle given the amount of competition. However, here are five quick tips that will improve your visibility to search engines that also correct common website design mistakes.
1. There is a great temptation to put important text in an image because of the ability to format the text in a favorite font or with special treatments. But text in an image is invisible to the search engine spiders that are indexing your site. If important keywords are buried in the image, you will lose the opportunity to let search engines know more about your site.
2. Use meta description tags on your web pages and work to make sure that each page has a different description that accurately describes page content.
3. Never try to hide repeating keywords on your pages by using text in the same color as your background. This is considered a spamming practice and may even cause your site to get banned.
4. In the first sentence on each page, use important, relevant keywords close to the front of the sentence. This lets both the search engine and the site visitor immediately know what your page is all about.
5. Give your pages a good title that also reflects keywords for which you would like to be found in searches.
These five tips are just the (pardon the expression) "tip" of the iceberg when it comes to fully optimizing your website. They are a good starting point though and as Sam Gamgee's gaffer might say, "It's the job that's never started that's hardest to finish."
