Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely complex subject because Internet Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN do not openly publish all the factors involved with calculating how they rank a website for particular keywords. It is up to the SEO specialists of the world to try different techniques, see what works and publish their findings to others. Here are a few simple “on-page” factors we have identified that can help your website tremendously in Yahoo, MSN, and Google. There are also a significant number of “off-page” factors that have an additional impact on your ranking, but we will cover those at a later date.

We are going to use Mixtopia Premier, one of Web Ascender’s clients, for these examples. Mixtopia Premier is a bartending outsourcing service that serves the Metro Detroit and surrounding areas. Mixtopia Premier uses our basic SiteCTO package and we helped them optimize their website for the keywords “Michigan Bartending Services” which has seen excellent results in only 4 weeks.

They are currently:

• 1st on Yahoo
• 1st on MSN
• 3rd on Google

Here are a few of the basics that anyone can do to help their ranking:

The Website’s Page Title – This is the text that you read at the very top of your browser window.

The page title tag <title> is one of the first tags in your web page code. It is often neglected and a web designer may simply put “your company name” in between the title tags. This data is very valuable to the Search Engines. I recommend that you format your title like so: “KEYWORD YOU WANT | Your Company Name.” You can see we made sure “Michigan Bartending Services” was in Mixtopia’s Title. Another common mistake is having the same Title on every page of your website. It is well worth the effort to make your titles unique for each page.

META tags, although not as important as they once were, are still very important. The description tag is often used by search engines to display what your website is about to the user before they come to your page.

Put keywords in the Meta keywords tag that might be searched upon to find your site such as “Michigan Bartending Services, Wedding Bartending Services” etc. You should limit this to less than 10 comma-separated phrases. Also, make sure the text that you put in as a keyword actually exists in the content of the page. If the text isn’t on the page then the Search Engines will not reward you.

This may sound like a no brainer but it happens all the time. Make sure the keyword or search phrase you are targeting is actually in the content on your pages! If you are going for a keyword such as: “Michigan Bartending Services” then you should have that on your page 3 or 4 times. Make sure that the keyword is on your page and if you can add it in an H1 tag (programmer jargon) you will get an extra pat on the back from the Search Engines. What’s an H1 Tag? If you look at the web page code for Mixtopia you will see this:

The last tasty morsel I will give you for your web page is image names. Name one of the images on your website “Your-Keyword.jpg” (e.g. Michigan-Bartending-Services.jpg).

All of the techniques I have mentioned above are some easy things you can do to increase the Search Engine ranking for your website. If you’re unable to update your website easily and make these changes, then you should consider signing up for SiteCTO, and you can get all of Web Ascender’s website and SEO expertise rolled into a nice little package. We will even periodically review your website and give you some recommendations.