There are a few different elements you need to think about when first putting up your new web site. Starting with basics and building from there is best way to go. Optimizing your web site and getting it ready for Internet World to see is what you need to concentrate on first. Here are a few helpful hints to get you on your way to success.

When optimizing your web site and making sure it is ready for search engines to crawl frequently, there are a few key areas that you need to pay attention to. The three main fundamentals for creating successful search engine optimization are Link popularity, Meta tag creation and optimizing your web site. We will specifically concentrate on creating meta tags to help optimize any web site.

What is a Meta Tag?

A meta tag can be found in "html code" within a web page. Each meta tag is used by search engines to determine what your web pages are about. The meta tag Information provides "essential guts" of your website page. Your Web site "Title and Description" Tags are an essential part of this meta tag creation. The "Title, Description and Headline" Tags can be first thing any web searcher will see when they do a search on internet.

Since first impressions are everything, importance on making "the Title, Description and Headline" meta tags readable, relevant, attractive and properly optimized are absolutely essential. The true key is not to over optimize because you are likely to be banned entirely from search engines if you choose to do so.

What happens when search engines crawl your web site?

Unless your website is in first two or three pages, it is unlikely that you will receive many visitors from search engines.

So what should a webmaster do to give their website best chance of ranking high in search engines?

All search engines work slightly differently and have ever changing algorithms for ranking web pages, but these tips can be applied when planning, developing or marketing a website to help you reach that top page of search engine results.

(1) Choose your keywords carefully

It's extremely important to set aside time to research your keywords. It's best to do this in planning stages, before developing your website, but many of us start a website without knowing a thing about how search engines work, so you may find yourself doing this weeks or months later.

Try to choose phrases that are searched on frequently and if possible have a low number of competing websites.

To get an idea of number of times a keyword is searched for per month, type a keyword into box at

Overture Search Suggestion Tool

This will tell you how many times your keyword was searched on in previous month (based on Overture's partner search engines) and give you a list of similar keywords.

Another useful tool to help you choose your keywords is Word Tracker. This tool will help you choose your keywords and give you a "KEI" for each set of keywords based on popularity of keyword (number of searches) and amount of competition.

You can try this out for free on:

Wordtracker

If you manage to pick your keywords in planning stages you may even be lucky enough to find a domain name that contains your keywords.

(2) Optimise your pages

Once you have decided on your keywords you will need to optimise your pages for those keywords. Here are a few tips.

- Ensure that Title of your page contains your keywords.

- Mention your keywords inside meta tags. Most search engines no longer use meta tags, but some make use of them so it is still worthwhile using these.

- Try to make sure that first occurance of readable text on your page contains your keywords