Tips on Search Engine Optimisation 1. Beware of search engine optimisation companies with outrageous claims. Search engine optimisation or SEO is changing a web site so that it ranks high in the free search engine listings determined by crawlers. Be wary about SEO firms making unbelievable offers. Beware of claims like “permanent top positions” or “submission to 500,000 search engines and directories”. It should be said there are good SEO companies. SEO is just making a website attractive for people and search engine crawlers. 2. Write copy search engines love. Write good copy. The content should be targeted to the site and its visitors. The visitors should want to return. This will also help people link to your site. Many inbound links are good for search engine ranking especially from top sites. Keep updating the content so people will want to come back. The crawlers will go to your site more if you have new content, and the content will be indexed faster. Good content should be grammatically correct and spelled properly. You may need to hire a writer or editor to make sure the content is good. Spelling should be thought of for various reasons. American and British English have different spellings, for example 'color/colour'. Another consideration is keywords that are often misspelled. If your keywords are misspelled, include the correct spelling along with the misspellings. Be sure the page titles are short yet pertinent to the content. This will tell people and search engines what to expect on that page. The title is what links to your site from search engine listings. Also invent different titles for each page. Employ the h1-h6 elements for headings. Search engines may ignore graphics as headings or text embedded in graphics.
3. Have proper web design. Make sure the URL’s are good for the search engines. A question mark or query string may stump a search engine. You should have semantic, lean, and compatible markup. Validate your HTML. The crawlers need good markup. Making your site handicap accessible such as for blind people helps search engines too. This entails using real headings, paragraphs, and lists and not using things that will bother the crawlers. You can have Flash and JavaScript, but they shouldn’t get in the way of getting around the site. Put your site in the Lynx browser with the graphics, CSS, JavaScript, and Flash off. If there are difficulties, the crawlers will probably have trouble. Submit your site to the major search engines although the crawlers will probably find you. Unless you pay, it will take a while for you to be listed. Don’t employ shady tactics like cloaking, link farms, keyword stuffing, and alt text spamming. This will get you punished or kicked off search engines. Don’t use frames. Even if the search engine can handle it, it makes it harder for users. Don’t spend too much time on meta tags. Use the meta description element. Search engines may put the copy in the meta description element in the site description in the results. Make sure the copy clearly describes every document. Search engine optimisation will help both search engines and site users. | 
