Below is a summary of the most important factors to consider when trying to improve your position in search engine results. Please see our detailed guide for more advanced tips.

Content is the single most important factor in achieving high search engine ranking. Search engine spiders love text-rich sites, but can only "see" actual HTML text on a page, not text "hidden" in graphics or Flash animations. As a rule of thumb, you should have about 200-250 words on each optimized page.

Keywords are the everyday words people enter in search engines to find products and services. If you are a book seller and decide to use "previously enjoyed books" as your keyword, when what you are really selling are "used books", your web site counter may never make it passed zero.

Make a list of potential keywords by talking with employees, customers, family members and friends. Finalize the list with keyword popularity tools such as Wordtracker, and then try searching under those terms. Take notes on how many similar documents are found, and for which competitors, before optimizing your pages for the most relevant keywords. Keywords should appear in the following places:

• URL
• Title Tag
• Meta Tags (Keywords, Descriptions, etc.)
• Headers (H1-H6)
• Body Text (Keywords should appear at least 5 times on home page and 2-3 times on inner pages.)
• Text Links (A HREF)
• Alt Tags

Spamming search engines is a good way to get banned. Even if you are not caught right away, your search engine ranking may suffer because of fraudulent techniques. So what exactly do search engines consider spam?

• Using text that is the same color, or just a slightly different color than the background to "hide" words.
• Repeating a keyword over and over again in your Keyword Meta Tag or Title Tag.
• Creating a page which is stuffed with keyword content so far down the page that few people will see it.
• Creating a plain page specifically designed for high search engine ranking, and then once it is indexed, uploading a different page to your server.
• Submitting a page to the search engines that automatically redirects to a page with different content.

The most effective results are obtained from web sites that were designed with search engine placement technology in mind. It is too bad that the majority of web site designers pay little attention to how a search engine would index their sites. You know what is even worse is that some web site layouts prevent the search engines from indexing the site at all!

Even though you have a web site, the search engines only index web pages not web sites (so remember to check all links properly on your web pages which together complete a web site). Some search engine optimizers will suggest changes to your original web site while others prefer to create entirely new pages or an entirely new site.