Part 1 - "The Dos"
(Click here for the "Don'ts")
The optimization of your website for the search engines is about improving your list ranking or positioning on search results when searchers use them to search for keywords or keyphrases relevant to your web pages.

Basically it is all about good design - doing things to help the search engines recognize what your webpages are all about whilst not adding features which can work against you.

We are writing an in-depth report about this topic. In the meantime however...

There are many search engine optimization techniques published by people claiming to be experts in search engine optimization (SEO for short). Simply search for "search engine optimization" in any of the major search engines and you will find a wide range of search engine strategies.

You must however apply caution and wisdom when applying these SEO techniques, by fully researching the potential implications.

One important fact to be aware of is that the search engines publish rules and guidelines about search engine optimization which they expect you to observe. These are subject to change over time and what may be acceptable practice today may be considered unacceptable tomorrow.

Break these rules and you risk getting banned from the search engine listings altogether!

The starting point therefore is to thoroughly appreciate the ground rules of search engine optimization from the search engines themselves.