INTRODUCTION

Hello to you all. I have had over the past few weeks and months a number of people asking me about their web pages and how they can get them to 'number one'

Well this post will discuss some basic requirements of your web pages for them to be first recognised by the search engines and then perhaps in the future for those pages to rank highly.

A word of warning though. There are very few 'real' experts on search engine rankings - so be careful of anyone offering to 'get you to the number one spot' at a cost. The first thing I tell people is to check where that company's website is in the rankings. If they are not in the top couple of pages for their own company name even - dismiss them straight away.

This field is an extremely dynamic one and miniscule changes in your methods can have a big effect on your results. Therefore, be prepared to take your time and learn how and when is a good time to make more changes. Preferrably, once you have the basics in place, make one or two changes at a time after that so you know that changes in your rankings were due to x or y rather than a or b or c or d or e or f or g or...you get the picture?

But anyway, let's get the basics in place first...

THE BASICS

First of all a list and then this post and other posts will go into more detail:


1. Decide on what KEYWORDS you are targeting

2. Think about the TITLE of your pages

3. Think about the META TAGS of your pages

4. Consider very hard the CONTENT of the pages

5. Attract good quality INBOUND LINKS to your pages (IBL's)

6. Provide OUTGOING LINKS from your pages to relevant resources

7. Don't SPAM (keyword overloading, search engine submitting etc)

8. Whereever possible keep your page code (HTML CODE) as clean as possible

9. Ask for HELP when your stuck

Disclaimer

The advice, comments and suggestions posted in this forum should be regarded as suggestions only. The arena of SEO is a tough one and the smallest change can have big effects on a page. It is very difficult to show that x y or z had such and such an impact on a page. Therefore we cannot take responsibility for any perceived effects on your pages.

Article written: 27th April 2006
Article modified: Not applicable