Proof Positive - http://proofpositive.com
8 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Website
http://proofpositive.com/articles/98/1/8-Easy-Ways-to-Optimize-Your-Website/Page1.html
By Scott J. Patterson
Published on 12/24/2005
 
Traffic from search engines is widely considered the best (and
cheapest) way to generate traffic to your site.  The
increasing popularity of search engines has led to the
development of a whole industry that revolves around ways
to “optimize” websites

8 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Website
Traffic from search engines is widely considered the best (and
cheapest) way to generate traffic to your site.  The
increasing popularity of search engines has led to the
development of a whole industry that revolves around ways
to “optimize” websites.

The end result is that many people now think that
only “professionals” can help their website rank high within
search engines.  But, the truth is that anyone can structure
their site so they rank high for many keywords.

Below, I have listed 8 simple steps that you can take to
optimize your web pages.  By following these, you will improve
your chances of increasing your rankings:

1)  Target one word for each page:  A huge mistake that many
beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page.  
Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific
keyword for each page.   That way, you can make sure that the
page is focusing on that one word without any distractions.  
If you want to target multiple keywords then it is necessary
to create a separate page for each.

2)  List your major keywords in the links back to your site:  
Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have
started to take into account the words that are mentioned in
the title tag of the links that point to your site.  So, a
great way to improve your rankings for your keywords is to
place it in the title tag.  

3)  Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich:  
Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on
the left-hand side of a website.  Since search engines
primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left
side menu is a misuse of valuable space.  

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description
and web copy within the first 100 words of your site.  An easy
way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of
the standard left-hand side.  

But, since the left-handed menu is now commonplace, you can
also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed
menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your
website.

4)      Insert the keyword into your title tag:  In the source
code of most pages are “header tags” (also known as Meta
tags), which help search engines understand the content of the
page.  

To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code
of the page.  The first step is to insert the keyword in the
title tag.  (This is what is shown in the results of a search
engine when your site is listed)

5)  Insert your keywords in the description tag:  The
description Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag.  
The information in this tag is listed directly below the title
tag in search engine results.  As a result, a good description
can make your website stand out from other listings.  To get
the prospect to click on your site, it is important to write a
snappy description while using your keyword.  

6)  Insert them into your keywords tag:  Like the title and
description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines
understand the content of your web page.  Although this Meta
tag has become less popular, it doesn’t hurt to put your
keywords here.  

7)  Place your keyword in the header:  When writing the actual
text of your site, the first part should be the headline.  
Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words
in the headline as being more important then the rest of the
web copy.  To take advantage of this, you should have your
keyword in the page headline.  But, since the header tag (h1)
is quite large, you should format it so that it is smaller.  

8)  Write your keyword enriched web copy:  Now that you have
set up the structure of your page, you can write your web
copy.  While creating the text, you want to include the
majority of the keywords at the top and the bottom of the
page.  In addition, the keyword should be included a few times
in the middle.  Basically, the common saying is that the
keyword density should resemble an hour glass shape.

The total web copy of your page should be about 300-500
words.  Also, the keyword should be included about 5-12% of
the total words of the page.  The percentage varies according
to each search engine, so you might want to play around till
you find the best results.

If you follow all these steps, you will definitely see an
improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords.  
The best part is that you do not have to spend any money on
the expensive search engine optimizers!

Good luck!
===============================================================

Scott J. Patterson brought his website to the top of many
search engines for important keywords.  To find out how he did
this AND also how he created his online store with NO computer
experience, be sure to check out a Fr** copy of his ebook:

http://www.buildingastore.com/8O.html

RESOURCES:

iPowerWeb has some great deals right now

Let Yahoo host your site and register your domain names

Easy CGI Web Hosting
This is actually quite a good package, starting at
$7.96 a month and no setup fees.