As more and more people round the world are surfing the net everyday, the competition to attract their attention has increased by leaps and bounds in the recent years. Companies - big and small, professionals and individuals are all in the race. Innumerable web pages are being produced and being hosted everyday. All of them are keen to rank high in the SERP or Search Engine Result Pages. and the so the SEO experts are busy than ever before.

An experienced SEO professional knows that the way major search engines like Google, evaluate web pages has changed through these years. Search Engine are getting smarter and smarter. Fooling a search engine is becoming harder. Or should I say risky. When you try to fool search engines, you run the risk to get banned. So, what triumphs? Real good contents? Back linking? What else?

Let's see what are the hottest SEO 'on page' and 'off page' techniques on which SEO experts have unanimously expressed their trust. This list is not necessarily on merit basis, I mean, the first factor on top of the list doesn't mean that it is the most important SEO factor.

On-page techniques

1. The Title tag

Go to the Google search page, type any keyword and hit enter. Have you ever noticed the starting line of each result ? It's the 'title' of the web site. So, it goes without saying that 'title' is important. You must have an appropriate 'title' for your web site containing the most relevant keywords.

2. Meta Description.

You will often hear or read that Meta tags are no good anymore. But the Meta Description tag still holds good. You will never find an optimized web page without it. No SEO skips this one, on the contrary takes care that the description is comprehensive, precise and to the point.

3. H1, H2, H3 tags

The headings. The 'H1' tag or the header is most probably the most significant body tag in terms of SEO along with the 'Alt' tag . It is supposed to be the main headline of a web page and should comprise of its primary keywords or key-phrases. You should have precisely described 'H1' tag on each of your web pages. If you don't like the look and feel of the 'H' tags, use CSS to design it to your choice.

4. 'Alt' tags.

Unfortunately search engine spiders cant view the images on your web pages. Neither they can view those lovely Flash content or animated GIFs displayed in the pages of your web site. They can only read texts. so feed them with some descriptive texts about the images or Flash contents that you may have on your web pages as alternatives. The primary use of the 'Alt' tag is to describe your images or the likes of Flash banners etc. Use this to your advantage - use your keywords as 'Alt' tags. It really helps and is widely used by all SEO experts.

5. Internal Anchor Text links

Using 'Anchor Texts' to link other pages of the web site is now being considered as one of the most important factor that influences page ranks. You can judge it yourself. Choose any well optimized web site with high page rank. Go to the Google search page, type link:thesiteyouchose.com and hit enter. The search will return with several pages and you will notice that quite a few of them are from that very site itself. So, instead of 'click here' do consider using 'For more information on something go to the something page' (replace 'something' for anything you like). I hope you got the idea.

6. Suitably named files and folders

This concept is also relatively new. It has worked like a charm for me. The idea is to name a file 'contact-a-web-designer.html' instead of just 'contact.html'. Or rename your 'download' folder as 'download-cheap-web-templates'. Does it make any sense? I hope it does. Try it, you will not regret.

7. Quality content.

That goes without saying. Good, quality content which is appealing to the viewers is indispensable. Nothing can influence the search engine more, make no mistake. Make sure you write the contents for your web site visitors and not the search engines. And it is very important that you add fresh contents to your web pages regularly - it tells the search engine that your web site is very much alive.

Off-page techniques

1. Link building

Good content and consistent link building - the two most important factors of Search engine optimization. Gone are the days where any links were good enough to achieve good page ranks with the search engines. Now you should take utmost care on who are linking to you and from where? You must have come across the terms like "relevant web site/page" and "good neighborhood". It means that you get more credit if you get back-linking from web sites which are based on the same theme as yours and preferably have high page ranks - the more the better. And instead of placing your url as links use your primary keywords as Anchor Text links.

Now the million dollar question ? Who is going to link to you? Why should well established web sites with high page ranks will consider linking to a new site like yours? Well to harm trying. Most of them will not, but if you have a decent site with quality content some may just agree. But don't worry. Fortunately you have some other options to gain some back-links. Submitting to directories is certainly one of them. Try writing some good articles on your web site theme and submit them to directories round the world. Most article directories will allow you to put a couple of links inside your article provided your article is good enough to be selected. Start trying and you will soon find that it's not that hard. submitting to various directories get your web site indexed by the search engine much faster than otherwise.

2. Approach

Yes. Your overall approach towards optimizing your web site will eventually influence your site's ranking in more than one ways. 'Slow but steady' should be the right approach. You can't achieve anything here in the SEO world overnight. patience is the key here. Don't try to optimize your site for broad keywords like 'web design' or 'Pizzas' at the first instance- it will be sheer waste of time and energy. Rather chose what is known as 'long tail technique'. For example go for 'affordable web site design Santa Monica'. And when you have got some results start working on those broader keywords. And you should have the same approach towards link-building as well. Be realistic. Don't try to get too many links too fast. search engine call it spamming and they ban spammers. Just keep every thing plain and simple.

It is not so hard to earn money from the net. But you should make your self deserving. it is not hard to attract visitors to your web site, but then again your site should worth it. And believe me, you can make your web site worthy.