Create an effective Title.
Many search engines use your website Title more than other data in your page when they rank you. Make sure your title is short and has keywords that effectively represent your site. To write an effective Title, use the method told to me by my friend Ed Thorpe when he writes ads or articles. First write what you want to say in a normal sentence then take out all of the words not needed so your readers can still get the meaning of what you are saying. The same goes for creating a website Title.

Don't use frames.
Using Frames to create your sites makes site building a lot faster and easier especially for those using Front Page. Unfortunately, most search engines simply can not index a frames page. You have to remember, there are 3 distinct frames the engines must index for each page and most don't have the technology to do this. If your site does use frames, use doorway or gateway pages explaining the purpose of the site along with all Meta tags, etc.

Don't try to fool the search engines.
This is probably the biggest trap peoplefall into. People come up with ways to 'fool' search engines, and they work for alittle while...sometimes. But then the search engines catch on and write routines that penalize sites that use this practice. Examples of this include, but are notlimited to: repeating keywords over and over; using invisible text (white text on white background); using very small text to jam the keywords in a small area.

Keep the important content near the top of your pages.
The actual text on your website is very important.  Search engines (spiders) read this to determine rankings.  Some engines will place a higher rating of importance based on where they find the text in your page. Closer to the top is usually better.  But having keywords throughout your page develops a "theme" and that too is important. 

Don't stuff the top of your pages with data the engines can't read.
As with the last example, something higher up in your page can be more important than something further down.  Therefore, HTML formatting, images, scripts, etc. toward the top of your page can result in lower ratings.

Website Content should be your #1 priority.
Your quest for high placement must start with a good website.  It is important to have a lot of text describing what you do.  Use your keywords in the content, but don't repeat them over and over.  Many search engines rate sites based on 'keyword density'.  This is usually a formula that looks at META Keywords, words in your TITLE, words in paragraph text, words in links to other pages, and even words in the 'ALT' text on your images.  They will even look at different forms of your keywords.  For example, if an important keyword for you is 'FISH', the word 'FISHING' in the body of your document will raise the confidence in the word 'FISH' on some engines

Keep your site updated.
Make sure that your site is up to date. No one likes to go to a page that never changes or that is very out of date. Make sure that the data in your page portrays the message that you want to send.  Check the links on your site every now and again.  Make sure the links are still active.  Dead links are not only an inconvenience for the visitor, but can also negatively influence your rankings.

Don't go image crazy.
We have all seen pages that are almost all images. Usually they are the most beautiful sites.  After all, your artist can make beautiful screens that display your content in the most eye-pleasing way. However, the search engines don't have eyes. They don't see the beautifully formatted text in your image. All they see is 'yourimage.jpg', and 'yourimage.jpg' doesn't go far in terms of content and relevancy.

Links to Other Pages.
We can't emphasize enough the importance of links. Both from your page to other pages, and from other pages to yours. We recommend Linkshare as a great resource for name brand advertising links.  See our resources page for more information on the Linkshare link exchange program.

First consider links on your pages.
When many search engines see them, they consider your site more 'real'. It also give the search engine spiders a place to go.  Make your links meaningful. Make sure they relate to what you do (and keywords that are important to you). You can't have too many links on your pages.

Links from others websites.
Some search engines place a very heavy rating of importance on how many other sites in their index have links to your website. Think of it for a second.  If you knew that a company was only linked to by one website, versus a company that was linked to by a thousand websites, which one would you consider more important?  If you were a search engine, you would surely try to link the more important ones first.

This is where patience comes in again.  It can take some time to get a  ton of links to your website.  We help quite a bit here, the fact that we submit to so many sites will help you get a great head start in this area!