Ten Easy Ways To Raise your Search Engine Ranking (Without Raising Your Expenses)

As web designers, we've all been there. You build the perfect site, the client loves it, it's visually pleasing, you put it online and - nothing.

Sometimes it seems that Google, Yahoo, and MSN are conspiring to make all of your hard work worthless. You feel like Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder of site design up a hill only to watch it roll back down again. What can you do?

Wait - before you scrap the whole site and start over, there are several simple steps you can take on your own to help increase your visibility in the search engines without spamming or paid advertisement

Choose 8-10 keywords that are specific to your business. Make sure that all of them are mentioned on your homepage at least once. Include the most vital ones in your title and in your description meta tag.

Make use of the alt text tag. 50% of the people who visit my sites from search engines enter through Google Image Search. Make life easy for them. Include 1-2 relevant keywords.

Provide information, not just sales. Informative pages are great because they generally contain mountains of industry specific keywords. It also gives other businesses and organizations a reason to link to your site. Bring people in with information and some of them will stay for the sale.

Be robot friendly. Include a functioning robots.txt file and a meta-tag telling robots to index your site. <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">. Make sure to include text links to all secondary pages.

Don't con the search engines. Avoid using hidden keywords and fonts that disappear against the backdrop. Many search engines now recognize and punish the technique. Make sure your keywords are actually site specific. Even if someone does find your car repair site by searching for Britney Spears, what are the chances you'll make a sale? Avoid mirrored pages with duplicate content.

Avoid sloppy code. Programs like Frontpage make it easy to assemble pages without even looking at html. Examine your code. Take out large blank spaces. Avoid attribute tags for items defined at "0". In other words, do the homework required to keep the structure of your site clean.

Be filename friendly. Avoid file names with spaces. Try to keep letters lowercase and don't start a file name with a number. Different browsers and search engines have trouble with different things. When in doubt, keep it simple.

Use names that mean something. Calling a picture photo_mary_took.jpg might work for you, but it tells search engines nothing. Use a desirable keyword when appropriate.

Avoid using frames. They can make it impossible for search engines to record more than one page of your website. Only tackle frames if you are a true code-writing officionado.

Get relevant sites to link to your page. This may require reciprical links. Have a functioning links page for this purpose. Avoid links from garbage sites. If the page isn't at least a little relevant to your subject, it might actually lower your rankings

You still need to have a site with worthwhile content, but follow these ten simples steps, and you should see results within 2 weeks.

Continue to Page 2 : Six Finishing Touches that Will Make Your Website Look Professional.