Identify Your Key Phrases. With end goals in mind, next step is to compile a key phrase list. Brainstorm phrases you feel are important to your business and also make sure you go through existing pages or your web site and add to list any phrases that appear naturally within copy. With list in hand, it's time for some heavy-duty keyword research. You can use a free suggestion tool such as those provided by Overture or Google or pay for time limited access to WordTracker.

WordTracker - http://www.wordtracker.com Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Google AdWords - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

More often than not, you'll find that phrases that you thought were important are not actually searched for by real people. The key phrase suggestion tools above will give you alternate suggestions to test.

You will now be armed with a list of actually searched for, highly targeted, relevant keyword phrases. Weed out any irrelevant phrases from list and rank relevant ones in order of importance for your business. Then decide which 2 or 3 phrases to focus on within copy of each page of web site. The home page of site should usually focus on main 2 or 3 phrases that encompass general theme of site. Inner pages should each focus on 2 or 3 more specific phrases. If your pages already have some text copy to work with, take a look at existing words on each page and see which 2 or 3 keyword phrases in your short list will fit best with current copy. If pages of site don't have much copy to begin with, or if there is no specific focus on any given page, a rewrite from scratch will be necessary.

Write Text Copy. Now it's time to get down to nitty-gritty of writing text copy for your pages. If you're starting from scratch, be sure you keep in mind which phrases need to be used, what goals of site are, and who target market is as this information will affect how you write copy. If you're lucky enough to have some existing copy, next step will be to work in necessary keywords whilst maintaining flow and rhythm of text. Once your copy is finished you should have a number of pages focusing on 2 or 3 key phrases each. Edit HTML Code. Optimising HTML code includes creating Title tags, Meta description tags, Meta keyword tags, hyperlinks, and possibly headings and image alt attributes. All of these are factors in helping search engine spiders to properly classify your site, with some being more important than others. There is too much detail to go into in this newsletter but more information can be found in our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Start at Beginning” Click here for an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html Upload and Submit Once you have completed all steps above upload your new pages to your server and if this is a new web site, submit them to search engines. If you are updating an old site that is listed (all-be-it badly) in search engines, it is not necessary to resubmit it.

Also don’t forget to perform your directory submissions or directory change requests. Make sure you submit to directories only when your web site is complete as this aids directory editor categorise your site more easily, and they'll be less likely to edit your submitted description. Link Building. Now it is time to begin your link-building campaign in earnest. Link building can be started in a quick burst, but should also be an ongoing process. You should always be on lookout for sites that are a good fit with yours and contact them about exchanging links. For more info on link popularity and its effect on search engine rankings, please read our guide “Start at Beginning” Click here for an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html Wait and See. All that’s left to do now is wait for your organic listings to begin listing. If you've paid for inclusion with search engines and directories that offer this service, you should start to see results within two weeks. If initial rankings aren't as high as you'd like them to be, don’t panic. Concentrate on your link building and your efforts will be rewarded over time. Try not to make any major changes to web site its-self for at least 3 to 6 months.

Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for all those free, targeted, highly motivated customers!

The Alt Tag is meant to be a textual description of image it is attached to. There is nothing wrong with tailoring Alt tag to meet your keyword goals IF tag is still understandable and if it appropriately describes image. The offence occurs when an Alt tag has obvious keyword repetition/filler that a search engine can key in on as spam.

7: Comment Tag Stuffing Comment Tags are used to include useful design comments in background source code (html) when creating a web page. These tags should be used only for adding technical instructions or reminders; however, these tags were often used to artificially increase keyword count for particular search phrases.

At one time there was some argument that this technique worked, but it has always been a "Black Hat" search engine optimisation technique that even then could result in placement penalties. Nowadays this technique will not help an optimisation campaign, if anything it will be ignored or produce a negative result.

8: Over Reliance on Meta Tags Meta Tags is a broad term for descriptive tags that appear in most web pages and are used to provide search engines with a concept of page topic. The most common tags are description and keyword tags.

At one time, extinct search engines such as Infoseek relied a great deal on Meta Tags and many took advantage of this factor to manipulate rankings with relative ease. In today's far more advanced climate search engines place cautious weight on Meta Tags and when considering rankings Metas play only a fractional role. Some webmasters still consider Meta Tags ‘end-all and be-all' of ranking producers and forget to optimise rest of their web page for search engines. With this line of thinking they miss that search engines place far more importance on body text (or visible text) of web page. This is a critical error that will ultimately lead to low or insignificant rankings.

Note: An extremely common example of Meta Tag over-reliance are web sites that have been designed totally graphically and are devoid (or nearly so) of html text that a search engine can read. A web page such as this will have no body text to index and may only provide a small amount of relevance to web page which ultimately leads to poor rankings.

Over reliance on Meta Tags does not produce intentional search engine penalties, however, simple act of ignoring other ranking principles often means a lower ranking.

For more detailed information on how to use all Tags more effectively, download our book “Start at Beginning” here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

9: Duplicate Content This tactic is blatant Spam and is very common today. Essentially Webmaster will create a web site and then create duplicates of each page and optimise them differently in order to obtain varying placements. By doing this you are saturating search engine databases with content that is essentially eating valuable bandwidth and hard drive space.

Duplicate content is a dangerous game often played by full-time marketers accustomed to trying to attain placements in aggressive markets. Avoid this tactic like plague unless you are willing to sustain serious ranking damages if you get caught - which you likely will.

10: Automatic Submission Automatic Submission is use of automated software to submit a website to search engines automatically and often repeatedly.

At Enable UK word ‘automated' is a disturbing when used in reference to search engine optimisation and submission. The fact is that automated campaigns are not as effective as manual (by hand) ones.

Automatic Submission Tools can only submit to search engines that allow such submissions. These search engines make majority of their profit from surfers like you viewing their advertising, be this at their web site or by emails you will receive as a result of submitting to them. Automated tools have also been known to repeatedly submit sites and sometimes each individual page within a site and if a search engine is submitted to too often it will consider submission as Spam and website being submitted will not fair well.

The more established and popular search engines do not allow automated submissions, in fact submission companies continually try to upgrade their software to try and subvert search engines' latest effort to stop their programs.

All in all, this leaves submitter in an unstable position where they may or may not have their submission ignored. The cardinal rule of search engines… submit ONCE and it may take a while (usually no more than 2 or 3 months) but site will get spidered at some point. If within a few months a site is not listed, then resubmit. As for major engines like Google… be patient and definitely don't submit more than once if you can help it.

I hope that this article has told you a lot of things you already know and that you have not already fallen into any of these traps. If you are intending to outsource your Internet marketing campaigns, be extremely wary of any search engine optimisation company that suggests any of these tactics. Some of these tactics may work in short term; however, that outcome is not only rare it is also a great way to get banned from major search engines completely.

For detailed information on how to optimise your web site effectively, without upsetting search engines, download our guide “Start at Beginning” here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html