Search Engine Optimization sounds a lot scarier than it is, most people think it takes a Phd in website marketing to be successful in getting your website listed on the search engines and with a high placement. Another misconception is that you have to pay for your hits on a website in order to get placed high or that you have to spend more than your website cost for a company to do your search engine marketing for you.

The real story behind great search engine marketing is great website optimization for search engine placement. So before you can get the placement you want on the search engines you need to make sure your website is properly optimized. Now what do I mean by optimized? Well there are a lot of options depending on the type of site and the competition for high ranking in your market but here are a few examples to get you started thinking about SEO.

Meta tags: Meta tags are pieces of code on your web page that deliver information to the search engines. Making sure your meta tags are properly configured is the easiest and most direct way to be sure the search engines are getting the proper information about your site.

Alt text: Any image on your site is invisible to a search engine unless you add alt text to it. This is especially important if you are using images for any text like headers or menus. An alt tag is not as effective as using straight text but if you are using images for text having alt text is better than nothing.

Page names: The name of the html file that makes your web page is important to a search engine. A page called page1.html or index.php?option=com_content&sectionid23 doesn't tell a search engine anything about the page but if that page were called aboutcompanyname.html then we're at least adding something useful to the search engine. Now even though it's not a big piece of your search engine marketing it's important to use all the weapons in your arsenal to win this war.

Articles with keywords: Writing articles is one of those things that people don't think about when they think of search engine marketing but the more information you have on your site to attract people the better rankings you get. Also the more other sites link to yours the higher your placement is going to be since most search engines these days put the sites with the most relevancey at the top and a site that has a lot of visitors seems more relevant than one with only a few no matter what your content is. Articles like how to's, informational articles or even press releases are just one more thing for a search engine to index or even for another site to link to. When writing these articles be sure to get your keywords spread throughout your article. For instance if you look at the article you're reading right now you will see words like SEO, search engine marketing and search engine optimization used regularly because these are the main keywords that I would like to see listed from this article. 

These are just a few of this tricks in the search engine marketing bag and when done right they can make all the difference in the ranking of your website. To get started on your own websites search engine optimization contact AaronVan today!

AaronVan is a full time freelance designer and photographer focusing on the print, interactive and marketing industries. With over 10 years experience in a variety of fields related to the advertising industry AaronVan has the knowledge and the ability to take your companies marketing to the next level.