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Here are ten basic SEO techniques you might consider doing yourself to get better search rankings and increased site traffic:

For example, if you sell hand-painted china, www.hand-painted-china would be an excellent choice since you are trying to attact people who are looking for your product. Conversely, www.handpaintedchina.com would be okay, but less desirable, since most people who search for hand painted china will put spaces in between the words that are the target of their search. However, including hyphens in your domain name seems to be of diminishing importance as search engine technology evolves, so your primary consideration should be to use a domain name that is easy for your customers to remember that matches your branding. The decision to change your domain name should not be taken lightly.

If your website has been out there for several years already, changing your domain name can actually hurt you in the end because the search engines typically include an aging factor in their algorithms so that an older domain could well have better ranking power than a newer one.

Any domain name registration service will provide a lookup tool you can use to see which domain names are available. Full disclosure note: The link for domain name registration goes to my domain name registration service.

Use keywords in file names and folders - When you save a file to be posted on your website, use your keywords in the file names.

For example, hand-painted-china.html would be a great filename for a business that sells hand-painted china.

Because you are not prohibited from using the same filename as your competitors, as you would be with your domain name, and because you can do this regardless of whether you use a WYSIWYG editor like Front Page or Dreamweaver without knowing much HTML, this technique is quite easy to implement and make a regular practice.

Don't leave blank spaces in your filenames. Use an underscore character ( _ ) or hyphen ( - ) instead. I find both equally useful.

4 - Search Engines Weigh Your Titles Heavily

Use your keywords in your page titles - What you place between <title> and </title> in the HTML for your web page is critical. Use your keywords, avoid prepositions and conjunctions where possible (the, and, for, with, etc.) and watch your punctuation within the title. Using only dashes between phrases in a title seems to help.

For example, Hand Painted China - Dishes - Mugs. It is not necessary and usually not advisable to waste space in your page's title tag with your company's name. If you do, put it at the end of the title - you want your keywords up front.

5 - Making the Most Use of Your Targeted Keywords

Use keyword text, not images for your site's navigation

This SEO technique gets your primary keywords on every page of your web site. The link leads to the page you are targeting for that keyword or phrase.

In the old days it was common to use image maps with hyperlinked hot spots for website navigation. Image maps are counterproductive when it comes to search engine optimization. It is still common to use images, such as buttons for website navigation. This too, is counterproductive because it doesn't allow you to take best advantage of your keywords. While you can insert your keywords into the image's ALT tag, linked text carries greater weight in the algorithms search engines use for rankings.

6 - Provide Plenty of Keyword-Focused Content on Your Website

Create useful keyword content - often - The saying "content is king" is true. The actual content on your site has everything to do with your search rankings.

New content should focus on your targeted keywords whenever possible. Repeat your keywords and related words in your text, but don't overdo it to the extent where your content looks like spam, is grammatically incorrect or doesn't serve its purpose.

The more often you update your content, the more the search engines will spider your site - walk through your content to see what it contains. The more content you create, the more likely you are to get noticed and opportunities to cross link to other keyword focused content are also increased, which helps improve the rankings for the content you're linking to.

7 - High Quality Inbound Links Can Boost Your Rankings and Site Traffic

Secure incoming links - Most website owners engage in reciprocal linking strategies - agreeing to exchange links with other sites. While this is helpful if you reciprocate with related, high-value websites, it is not nearly as effective as securing one-way links coming in to your site.

Getting a listing in a legitimate and frequently consulted web directory is valuable, even if you have to pay for the listing. The most trusted free directory on the web is DMOZ. The downside to DMOZ is that getting a listing will take some time - even 18 months or so in some cases. Additionally, you need to be careful to request the listing for the correct category for your website. If you don't, you won't get your listing.

8 - Keyword Description Text Boosts SEO and Compels Searchers to Click

Make keywords part of a compelling description - Within the HTML code of your web page you want to include a Description tag. A description tag looks like this:

The content of a Description META tag is used by some, but not all, search engines in the search engine results page to describe the content of your page.

If the search engine your website visitor uses to find sites that use your keywords displays the contents of your Description tag, you want the searcher to be compelled to click the link to your site. Ranking number one doesn't mean your link will get clicked.

9 - Anchor Hyperlinks with Keywords

Use keyword text in your links - The text used to anchor a link is important and needs to be keyword related whenever possible.

For example, link the text hand painted china to your hand-painted china page, do not use click here. No one searching for hand-painted china is likely to search for "click here".

10 - Enhance Your Site's Usability and Improve SEO with a Site Map

Create a site map - A site map is a separate HTML page that acts as a directory of the pages on your website. Each page listed in the site map is hyperlinked.

Use keywords in the link anchor text and consider synonyms that might be commonly used in place of your keywords, such as plates for dishes. Also, since search engines seem to place more weight on text contained in a bulleted or numbered list, put your links in lists.

A site map is not only good for getting search engine spiders to follow your page links and easily crawl your entire site, it's a useful tool for your visitors because it helps them find the content page they're looking for. It may also help them click into pages they might have otherwise overlooked.

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