Many people seem to believe there is some magical formula when it comes to getting search engine traffic. No one can say exactly what it takes to get top ranks and keep them, unless they work on the inside. If some one tells you they can guarantee top rankings, they are full of you know what.

Even if you don’t know the secrets there are basics, that are just that basic search engine optimization, that can go a long ways to get your some traffic.

Keywords: It amazes me how often I see people guessing at keywords. I’ve seen people talk about ranking high for a particular keyword or phrase even though its a keyword no one searches for. Although it seems like common sense, you need to use keywords surfers actually type into the search engines.

Title: The first word or words in your title should be your keyword(s). Follow this up with other related words. A good website to find related words is Clusty.

Top of the Page: It is recommended to use your keywords at the top of your page surrounded by <h1> tags. The only problem with this html tag is that it makes the text quite large and might not fit well into the design f your site. An easy fix is to use a CSS stylesheet to make the text appear how every you’d like.

Though-out your page: Next you need to sprinkle your keyword though-out the rest of your page, usually at around 2%-8% in relation to the rest of your text. Too much and your pages will look like spam, to little and you would’nt be backing up your keyword or keyword phrase. The best tactic is to just write as you normally would, the search engines love natural web-pages.

Other will also say to use <h2> and <h3> tags around your keywords on your pages. Although the jury is out as you’ll see different opinions, to me it could’nt hurt. I personally would’nt use them more than once or twice on a page.

As I said these are basics, but will get your off to a good start. This is also what is called “On Page”  optimization. Next time I will go over “Off Page” basics.



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