Search engines are the first things Internet surfers look for when they are searching for goods or services. Where your website appears to the visitors in their search results is of utmost importance. The objective of all Internet marketers is to ensure that their URLs appear right at the top of the first page or at least the first 50th position because visitors would tend to click only on the most prominent URLs.

This boils down to "Search Engine Optimization", commonly referred to as "SEO" and it is also the holy grail of web design. There are many ways to optimize your site so that search engines will list your site higher in their rankings.

First and foremost, it is the "keyword". Keywords are the foundation on which the entire search engine system works. If a top ranking site suddenly drops drastically, it may mean that certain content of the website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders and crawlers. Very often certain particular keyword or phrase has been ineffective due to fierce competition. For beginners, it is advisable to start with keywords which are not too competitive to at least get some traffic going first.

Hence, search engine optimization refers to the development of the right keyword strategies to ensure good ranking of your website. The most effective advertising technique online today is good placement in the search engines.

First thing you have to do is to choose your keywords wisely. There are a number of good sites that could help you select the right keywords (or phrases). One example of such free sites is http://inventory.overture.com. What you need to do is to enter your main site name and they would suggest the keywords in the order of search popularity.

Fill these keywords in the metatags first. As you would find in most good websites by clicking "View" and then "Source" within your web browser, the metatag description and keywords are always placed right at the top before the title and anything else. (Metatags are hidden HTML directions for Web browsers or search engines. They include important information such as the title of each page, relevant keywords describing site content and the description of the site that shows up when a search engine returns a search. Make sure your metatags accurately describe your content)

Also, ensure that your page title and your first page header use at least some of the same keywords. Bear in mind that the least amount of words you place in your title, the higher the weightage Google would give to each of your keywords thus improving your ranking.

Keywords should be carefully distributed through your well-written and edited text as well. However, do not over do it by sprinkling these keywords repeatedly over your page which would look funny and awkward to human eyes. If this happens, major search engines would treat this as search engine spam and you would not rank well.

As we have heard it so many times before, "Content is King". Any websites relevant information to a specific niche is what Search Engines are looking for. The more content you have on your website, the greater would be your chances of enjoying a decent search engine ranking. After all, it is information that draws more and more people to the Internet every day.

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Search engine spiders move from site to site across the Internet by following hyperlinks. If your sites are linked to more high-quality and high-trafficked sites (i.e. websites with high Google Page Rank), you would be held at high regards by the search engines too. It is highly recommended that you register your site with well-known directories such as Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), Google.com and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). Search engine campaign and all the other necessary actions are to be carried out to increase your rankings.

The question is how to ensure that your prominence would continue. Therefore there must be a workable strategy to allow you to monitor and control your search engines positions. The ways search engines rank websites is not fixed and continue to change with time. Hence a top ranking website today could drop to the bottom of the page or even lost in subsequent pages. It is therefore advisable to create a system that could monitor your positions at least on a monthly basis.

Make an effort to know your competitor's position against yours because their rise could lead to your drop. You can view their html codes as mentioned above. Do the necessary correction wherever applicable to improve your website to increase your position in search results based on the most popular search engines. (Some websites give information on the latest most popular list as this list is dynamic and keeps changing.

For webmasters, the major search engines are the most important places to be listed, because they can potentially generate so much traffic) If your search engine positions have suddenly dropped, search engines spiders may have found some problems with your website. Sometimes when you have changed the code, the spider may become confused and consequently drop your positions. If a spider happens to crawl at your website when it is down for changes, you could end up disappearing from a search engine index entirely.

At times, a search engine may change its formula, and suddenly all websites come up as irrelevant as mentioned earlier above. If that search engine is a current favorite like Google, your position in other search engines could also suffer due to the domino effect.

The idea behind ranking high in search engine such as Google is to analyze top ranking websites and find out what they are doing as regards keywords and do exactly those things plus the extra which they have overlooked. Search engine marketing campaign must be treated as a good medium to long-term investment because it entails a lot of effort and financial commitment.