This is the first in a series of articles on Search Engine Optimisation I will be publishing over the coming weeks, I am starting from scratch so when i say basic ... I mean it

Keyword placement on your webpage is one of the most important areas a website designer should pay attention to. In this article I am going to introduce you to the basics of Keyword placement for higher Search Engine rankings.

There are 7 main area's which you need to concentrate on in order to get the best results for your chosen keywords in any Search Engine:

1. URL : Your web address

If you are thinking of designing a brand new website for your business then choosing the right URL (Domain Name) is very important. If possible, pick a URL that includes your most important Keyphrase (group of keywords).

2. Webpage Title

The title contains the words that show up at the top of a browser for any given webpage. For example, this webpage has "Webecho Designs - Webdesign, Website Marketing & SEO".

NOTE: The Title tag should always appear as the first item in your HEAD tag.

3. META Keywords

The META Keywords tag is placed in the HEAD of your webpage's (x)html, by putting a few well chosen keyphrases in this area, you are summarising the content of the page for the Search Engine spiders.

There are many differing opinions on the value of the META Keywords tag, most professional SEO's agree that they are no longer used by the majority of Search Engines as they have been heavily targeted by spammers in the past. While this may be true, the few extra seconds it will take you to add this META Keywords tag will not harm your website (as long as it contains relevant Keywords).

4. META Description tag

This META tag should be used to briefly describe the content of the page, it is often displayed by Search Engines beneath your webpage title in the Search results. Including your keywords here is important, not only to the Search Engines but to your potential visitors, a well written META Description tag, should be used to encourage searchers to visit your website - so while including keywords is important, please make them relevant.

5. Headings H1 - H6 (like this one)

Using headings correctly makes you web page much easier to read, by announcing to the visitor what each section is about, most webusers 'scan' the page for information and these headings help them find what they are looking for quickly.

By the same score Search Engines use these headings to help determine what your webpage is about, as headings are 'accented' they are given more weight than normal content.

6. Links

There are two types of links we will refer to in this section:

Firstly, internal links. Internal links point to other webpages on your website, by placing your important keywords or keyphrases in these internal links, you are 'announcing' to the Search Engines and your visitors alike what the page that the link is pointing to is about.

Secondly, we have incoming links. Incoming links are very important to helping you attain higher Search Engine rankings. By including your most important keywords in the incoming link (anchor) text, Search Engines (and visitors) will have a better idea of what your page is about.

7. Content

Lastly, we will look at placing Keywords and Keyphrases in your content. One of the most important things when doing this is - be natural, remember the ultimate goal of your website is to provide visitors with the information they are looking for, your content must 'read well' to Search Engine spiders and human visitors alike.

This is a lot easier than it sounds, if you are providing information that is relevant to your keywords and informative or interesting to your visitors then those keywords 'should' appear naturally in your copy. There are many different theories on keyword placement, keyword weight (the number of times your keyword or phrase appears in the content) and highlighting keywords. I will be exploring this area in more detail in a future article.

In conclusion

You may have noticed a theme developing throughout this article : Think of your visitors first and the Search Engines second, provide quality content first then work at getting higher search engine rankings. If you are providing quality content to your visitors, then they will link to you and they will tell their friends, who will link to you and so on ...

'word of mouth' is still the most effective way to promote you website, remember that there is no point ranking at number 1 in Google if you don't actually have anything interesting to say!

Was this article helpful?

Please post your comments below, did this article help you at all, did you learn anything new? I have deliberately started with the basics, some people just don't know anything (we all have to start somewhere), over the coming weeks, I will be writing some more articles and exploring each area in more detail, so if this was too basic, please come back soon.