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Free SEO Search Engine Optimization : Optimise Your Web Site Free

Search Engine Optimization is the process of setting up your web site to get listed and high rankings in search engines such as Google, MSN & Yahoo. This article is for those of you with your own website who want higher rankings without the cost of submission companies and software.

Processes of Good Search Engine Optimization Free

Keywords

Keywords are the most important thing to consider in search engine optimization. These are the words on your web pages that promote what your site is all about and they are what a search engine uses to list and rank your site.

So what are these magic words? For a website promoting a website selling second hand books, keywords may include SECOND HAND BOOKS. But are these the best keywords, are there better ones and what is the competition using? The answers to these questions may be best answered using a Keyword Generator. One good generator is GOOD KEYWORDS which is free and analyses search engines to find you the best keywords. It can be downloaded FREE at www.goodkeywords.com.

Using suggested keywords for websites listed with OVERTURE. The best three keywords are SECOND HAND BOOKS, but the amounts of web sites listed are 3752. However if you include the keyword UK there are only 189 to compete with.

Keyword Placement

Once you have chosen your keywords for search engine optimization what should you do with them?

Firstly ensure your keywords are in your Page Title, so for our example your Title could be Second Hand Books UK. Many people make the mistake of using the Title as the site name or store name which tells search engines nothing about the content of the site.

Secondly always have a heading which would be similar if not the same as your Site Description at the top most part of your page. Search Engine spider from the top of the page down and create your description from the first text entry on the page.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the amount of times your keywords appear on the page. It is calculated by divided the number of times your keywords appear into the number of text words on the page.
This is a vital piece of information for good search engine optimization, if your density is too high you will be classed as spamming your keywords and your rating dropped, too low and you will be rated low.
Yahoo and MSN have a much higher density tolerance; it is estimated as high as 5%, while Google has a much lower tolerance as low as 2%. As a general guide write the text well without over exerting the keywords.

An excellent free web page analyse tool can be found at http://www.freewebsubmission.com/web-page-analyzer.html
Using this tool you can compare your own page keywords with a competitor’s page.

On Page Search Engine Optimisation

Now we have our keywords in place how can we layout our web page for best search engine optimization ?

Page Title
As previously mentioned use your page title to highlight your keywords and what you do not who you are.
Johns Bookstore is a no-no, it says nothing to search engines about what you are trying to promote. Also avoid words such as AND and THE

Use <h1> Head Tags
Remember search engines analyse you page from the top down. So at the top most of your page place your page title, which is your keywords, and surround it with <h1> head tags.
Next place try placing your site description below this and surround it with <h2> head tags. Now when a search engine analyses your page it know exactly what you are promoting.

Footers
Likewise include a page footer at the bottom of the page which includes your keywords. Such as © 2005 Johns Bookstore :: Second Hand Books UK

BOLD & Underlining
Always highlight your keywords once in your page text by Bolding them or underlining them.

ALT Image Tags
If you have a graphic header, or picture at the top of your page. Add an alt image tag to it containing the site title

Linking

Now you have optimised your web page the next most important thing to do is linking.
To get good ratings your site needs to be linked to from other already listed and rated sites to obtain maximum search engine optimization

There are a number of ways to do this free. Firstly search the internet for sites that are related to your own, i.e. relate to second hand books and see if they have link page.
If they do contact them and ask them to exchange links. Be sure when you contact them to state what description you want on your link. Remember Johns Bookstore is no good to you; you want the link tag to include your keywords.

Once you have done this try using a Linking company that will trade links for you free of charge.

They will advertise your site in a directory for people like you who want to exchange links. Be very careful to link only to sites you have looked at yourself and are happy with their content.

Analyse Your Site

Once you have done all the above for search engine optimization on your site you need to analyse your site and competitors sites to see how you are fairing and just as important what your competitors are doing.

An excellent free web page analyse tool can be found at http://www.freewebsubmission.com/web-page-analyzer.html

Statcounter is free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!

I hope this gives the reader a good overview of good practive in free search engine optimization.