Search engines ranking is very simple in what it is trying to do. It tries to analyse your website pages to understand what they are about, how relevant they are for relevant search criteria and if the site is well formatted.

If you build a website with lots of relevant links and pages which are useful you should get a good ranking in the search engine. The more links with relevant site you have the more chance that the search engines will find your site.

However, there are a number of things you can do to try and optimise your site for certain keywords in mind. We suggest these steps to help you get good rankings:

Choose your keywords

Firstly what key words do you want to optimise your page for. Once you have list of the popular keyword you can start designing your website.

Think about the keywords as you build your site

Target a page at being very relevant for a key word, make sure that:

• the keyword is included in your page name
• the keyword is included in your page title
• the keyword is mentioned in your meta description
• the keyword is included in your meta key words
• the keyword should also be included often in your page text. However be careful not to over do it otherwise a search engine may thing you are trying to trick it.
• make sure pictures, links and applications have relevant names for your keyword

Help the search engine

When you include pictures ensure that you put a relevant description in the alt tag. This is what a search engine will read when it scans your site. Be descriptive of the picture e.g. if you are running a car website's and have this picture call it something like a picture of a Vauxhall Omega. This text will also appear if you hover your mouse over the photo. If the picture, as the one below does links to a site, or a page then it should be as relevant as possible. For example, this one links to http://www.deals4cars.co.uk

The html code for this picture is as follows:

<a href="http://www.deals4cars.co.uk"> shows the link
<img src="http://www.deals4/images/car.jpg" shows where the picture file is
alt="Picture of a Vauxhall Omega " describes the picture in text
width="150" height="113" border="0" align="left"></a> formatting instructions

Search engine spiders prefer descriptive alt tags and so do visitors with disabilities or visitors who surf with images turned off in their browsers.

Carefully name your pages

Some Search engines use the page name as a guide to how relevant the page is. Make sure your page name reflects the topic being discussed. It also makes it easier for site maintenance too.

Try to include keywords inside your file names, directory names, and your domain name. We have created a car insurance site which is called Deals4carinsurance.co.uk, there is a directory called car insurance and the file names in the directory reflect the insurance company being featured. This can also help, providing it is not too over the top get a higher search engine ranking

Have clear and descriptive navigation

There is nothing more frustrating than getting to a website that is almost impossible to navigate. From a search engine point of view it is similar. A search engine robot will seldom spider your whole site in one go. Make sure that the important pages are linked to and from the home page.

Contextual Keywords

Basically, don't try and fool the search engine that your site is about something it isn't. Make sure links, descriptions etc are relevant to the page. If you think about it logically, if you are trying to sell car insurance for example and you have a page about free toys. You'll may get many visitors, but are they in the market for your products?

There are some great tools available to analyse your website. A very good product is Web position Gold. It costs about £100 for up to 5 sites. However, if you make money from your site then it could be well worth buying it. There is a free download trial so you can see the power it has - download your free trial