Well, You have made a site and you got the data. You have put it online and want people to see it. The best and easiest way to get people to your site is Search Engines. But most of us know the vast amount of Competition on Internet. So here are some steps which will Definately let you rank better than others on Search Engines. In short.. I m trying to give you basic points of Search Engine optimization.

1. The Text that comes first has the highest importance. Don't forget this. So concentrate on the starting part of your pages. Avoid Indexes, Common links on such areas.
2. TITLE tags! The biggest and the most important player in SEO. Never ever look down on them.. They are THE MOST important things which are considered in ranking your pages.
3. File-name and URL. This part is now being considered seriously. Search Engines use Filenames are sources of possible keywords.
4. Link Backs. Get lots of links to your site. Your site won't get indexed until other sites link you. BEWARE : Don't submit your site to FFA (free for all) pages. They don't do any good, but infact they might very well harm your sites ranking.
5. Keyword Optimization. When optimizing your pages for search engines, suppose you are writing a page on "Search Engines". Try to include as many words and phrases containing "search engine" and also words/phrases similar to or related to Search Engine. ( Please don't over do it)
6. Using Proper ALT tags. Use proper alt tags for putting up information related to the images on your site.
7. Try to make your pages as simple and clean as possible. And put as much CONTENT as possible. The more the content, the better the results.
8. Also, try to break, very large page into seperate pages.
9. Getting links to a page related to "Search Engines" from other pages which are related to same topic, really boosts ranking.
10. If you own a DOMAIN name, It is very much recommended that you register it for atleast 5 to 10 years which shows that your are really interested and dedicated towards making your site and have large plans.
11. From my own experience, I have found out that, TEXT which is LINKED is given more importance than the text which is not linked.

Well, these are some of the basic important things you should know...

Great tutorial OpaQue. I just have a quick question. I was told that Meta tag keywords are also helpful. Lately everyone is saying that it doesn't matter anymore.

Your thoughts on this?

There are other things that could determine it as well.

If you sponsor the engines, expect them to treat you well.

Dates (mofication), if you site is regularly updated.

Some sites are categorised by the engines to fit specific areas that could aid the search, e.g. MessageBoards/Forums used to help people. The Engine also understands the MessageBoard/Forums method of stating a problem is solved, so if a searcher is searching for a problem and the engine has sites that has relevance to the search as well as stating it's solved, they will make that an important site for the searcher. (amazing right?)

Search Engines are as intelligent as we can make them to be, and even that should be something to be inspired by as they are continuously working on improving it.


Cheers,


MC

Hey WeaponX,

They were considered helpful, but it was abused to a point that Search Engines needed to find a way of not being taken advantage of. Some engines may still rely on this but you'll find anything that is more likely to be correct is taken higher priority. e.g. if the title of your website is about "Dogs" then the search engine will believe you, because that's what is being displayed to the viewers when they go there. If your keywords were about "Dogs" yet you had no information related to Dogs then obviously you just lied and Search Engines can't trust this information.

Things they kind of trust, Your Title, Content in the Pages and filename of your page.

Meta tags are no longer trusted, other than by smaller engines I would believe but it doesn't hurt to include them as long as it's all relevant to your site.

Cheers,


MC

Thanks for the clear up MC. I did hear that more and more SE and phasing meta tags out also. Particularly Google since they seem to show search results to sites that have a lot of other sites linking to it. I got content, title and meta tags on my site.

Question here. I never knew that you can sponsor search engines. How do we do this? I have the Google search on my site, is that taken into consideration?

Very nice explaination OpaQue. I've been doing a little research on the subject the last few days and this has helped a lot.

I think you should have made a better point about each page being considered seperately in rankings.

Meaning that even though www.astahost.com/page1.php is ranked 4 or higher, page2.php may be unranked.

But increasing the number of high ranking pages in your site may increase the rank of your root (usually domain) directory.

Additionally, you'll want to have your link placed on other high ranking pages, not your own though. Having a high ranking site placing your link on there site will give your page a boost.

I look forward to learning even more about this from you.

vujsa

I don't think so. The only way ther take into consideration is money. You can buy yourself and AD on google Adsense system, that would give you all the popularity you can get... But it costs...

And about SEO, I would add that if you start using google's Adsense system, it also boosts your rank on google too...

Very good tutorial opaque. It will help for new webmasters. By the way here is a link on google relating to same thing. It is very helpful.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Thank you very much for this tutorial. I really like it. It was not only extremly easy to understand, but also very helpful. Once more, thank you.