In the times in which we live vast numbers of people have heard of search engine optimisation (SEO), but even so, many are often not completely aware of how it can help them. A myriad of new websites go online with each day that passes, with many of them in competition with each other for identical keywords and yet with just a small minority of them getting the benefit from those keywords.

Forming a website that has outstanding content is simply not enough to drive business to them. In order to achieve success online for a business website, clever SEO is vital. If you fail to correctly optimise your website, then you will not be able to make your existence felt on the Internet. The higher your website is shown in search results on search engines, the more traffic you will attain. What SEO is all about is structuring website pages in a way so that they are located, read and then indexed by the search engines in relation to particular keywords.

By using SEO you are permitting search engines to see what each page of your website is about, but search engine submission alone is not sufficient, as it is necessary to make use of some specific techniques make sure your site is targeted for its keywords. Here are some tips to help you along the way with on page optimisation, but I will deal with off page optimisation in another article.

On page optimisation involves the insertion of your selected niche keywords in various places onto your web pages, as well as changing page titles, headings, content and URLs to progress your rankings as far as search engines are concerned. Look carefully at your website construction, as this will have its part to play in how search engines look at the site. The site will be made in a static or dynamic format and because the actual task of crawling the web is a tough one for the search engine spiders, make sure your links and navigation within the site are good. Check out the present position of your site and then try to find ways to improve it.

In terms of W3C validation, this involves methods to keep websites on track, so ideally every website should be validated through the W3C validator, as this will disclose if there is an error within the coding. However, whilst this is important, it does not have an impact upon Google rankings, etc.

Carry out keyword analysis regularly as this is a vital part of the SEO process. Use the Google keyword tool for this purpose and carefully choose the keywords you are going to use for your site. The closer the match of your keywords to what your customers will put into their search engines searches, then the better prospect you will have of getting more traffic and therefore a good ranking. Try to select 6-8 keywords that appropriately represent your business.

Meta tags play a crucial role in SEO and these include the following. Title tags are the most important feature for getting your website to where you want it to be, so make sure you include your main keyword into the title with good keyword density for the site content. Give each page of the site its own title, as your site’s prime purpose will be indicated via the title tags. Remember that Google will only read 70 characters within the title tag, so be precise.

Make your description tags a concise précis of what your site is all about, paying attention to the fact that you need to limit this to around 160 characters. For the keyword tags, make sure you are choosing the best ones for your niche that will most effectively reach your target audience. Where images are concerned, remember that SEs are very good at reading text, but not images, so if your site contains images, then they need to be optimised by using special tags called alt tags that explain the image. Search engines will pay more attention to images with these tags. Create a sitemap, as this will help to inform the search engines about your pages. Sitemaps help to speed up the addition of web pages to SE listings.

Use Google Analytics and the Webmaster Tool to analyse traffic visiting your website. Once you have created an account you will be able to keep track of all activities, as you will have a thorough statistical account about your visitors.