What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

SEO is ensuring that the content of your website has been tweaked to ensure the maximum possible effectiveness in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It is important that your website gets the message across to human visitors, however this is futile if your site is not being visited. One way of increasing traffic to your website is to improve it's ranking in the search engine results. Here are some simple ways to improve results:

1. Content that contains key phrases - Imagine what your site visitors might search for in a search engine... Does your website contain these phrases? Are there competitors sites out there that match your key phrases, is there some way that you can ensure that you focus on the things that others don't?
2. Page titles - Are the titles of your pages unique? Do they reflect the content of that page? it is important to include keywords (phrases) in the page title. The page title is also what is displayed as the link to your page in many search engine results so should appeal to potential site visitors.
3. Meta Descriptions - In some search engines (Yahoo!, MSN) the text that is displayed alongside the title link is pulled directly from the meta description tag of the page. It is therefore important this this text accurately summarises the current page and reflects the content. Again, like the title it should be unique for each page on your site.
   Link titles - It is possible to assign a "title" to links to give more information about the destination page that the link points to. Search engines take note of this and it also helps users. It is also important to use keywords in the link anchor, i.e. don't use "for more information [link]click here[/link]" instead use "for more information visit the [link]about my site[/link] page."
4. Text rather than images - Although a picture says a thousand words, unfortunately search engines cannot read images. Therefore, if you want search engines to know what your site is about, then ensure that it is written in plain text. Never use images for displaying text!
5. Alt text to images - If you do use images be sure to add an "alt" tag to the image, this will allow you to give the image a text description which the search engine can read. Not only can search engines read this but disabled/blind visitors using screen readers will also now know what this image represents.
6. Add a sitemap - There is nothing better than a site map to help search engines and users find all the pages in your site. It need not be complex and can simply be a list of text based links that show the structure of the site and link to all your pages. Link to the sitemap from the main pages of your site.
7. Unique - There is no point in copying text from other websites, the search engines will recognise this and give the original site more value. By ensuring that the content in your website is unique, your site will become the "authority" on your chosen topic.
8. Fresh - Keep the content of your website up to date. Add new pages on a regular basis. Not only will the search engines appreciate this, site visitors will also be more likely to revisit if they think that there will be new content next time. The more content that your site has, the more chance of unique phrases getting picked up by the search engines.
9. Inbound Links - Get other websites to link to your site. Are there other companies in the same sector as you? The more links to your website the more chance of search engines and potential customers visiting. Steer clear of link farms (pages with lists of links) though as these can have a negative affect.