Many people tend to think that placing the right keywords in meta keyword tag is enough to get your site appear high in search engine results for those target keywords. That's not the case at all. That might get you somewhere (though not close enough) with Yahoo. Google completely ignores that meta tag for what it was intended, only scanning its content to be used as simply part of your website content. But it doesn't give it any special attention. To get Google to notice you, your website must have relevant, keyword rich content and it has to be "popular" with other websites (read: other websites need to link to it; the more the better).

BUT LET'S START WITH THE BASICS

On-page optimization is the basis. Some of the optimization is already there when a designer (who knows what they're doing) creates your structure, and I certainly ensure that's the case in my studio:

• clean and valid code (search engines don't like messy code with scripts, flash, frames, invalid tags, etc and will not index the site properly in those situations)

• navigation easily scannable by search engines (no javascript; any page linked to from at least one other page)

Further search engine optimization needs to be put in place. That's keywords research and content adjustment. Like I wrote earlier, having just keywords selected and included in meta keyword is not enough and in fact it is quite useless with Google. Google doesn't put much weight on your keywords unless you have them in your contet (titles, description and the actual page content).

Google "reads" the content of the site and ranks it based on that content. The more "meat" you have, the better. When someone searches a term that is used in your site, then you will show up in the search results. How high depends on how "competitive" (relevant and keyword rich) your content is comparing to others.

On-page optimization is about half of your search engine success. The other half is off-page in the form of internet marketing. Spreading the word about your site is not enough these days. The most important part of your website promotion strategy is getting others to link to your website. You do that by directory submission, link exchange, article and press releases, blogs, forums, etc. That's for getting organic results. There is also paid advertisement (Pay Per Click programs). My best advice is to combine both organic and paid marketing. That will get you the best results, if done right. But that requires a larger budget.

Whether you choose to utilize off-page optimization depends on your business needs and requirements and also your budget (just like with any other form of business marketing). My studio makes it affordable to any small business. Contact me today for a free cost estimate to get you the internets presence your business needs. Soon you will see the return on your investment.