I've been getting a few clients interested in improving the ranking of their site in search engines. Most of what I do at this stage is basic SEO. I actually like doing site reviews and SEO, and am able to send out pretty informative reports to my clients on ways they can improve their site - both overall and specifically for what search engines are looking for. I monitor statistics, I track trends month over month, and I am constantly thinking of ways to improve my clients' sites.

So does this make me an SEO? I think it does. Am I the greatest SEO who knows the secret formula to guarantee #1 rankings in Google? Not yet (keyword being yet). I have a way to go in terms of picking up knowledge for advanced SEO techniques. But every month I do this, I think I get a little better at it. Things just start becoming more intuitive, and I can often tell just by looking at a site what the likely problems are going to be with the layout and/or content in terms of getting top index rankings.

Let's be honest. The majority of web sites out there (more than 99.9% I'd guess) are not perfectly optimized for search. That means almost every link in the search results is beatable (almost). And somewhere north of 90% of web sites aren't optiimized at all, which means many of them are easily beatable with a little effort. Most sites were developed for primarily for content, and then for style, and the developer didn't give too much thought into how the search engines are going to rank their site.

Here are a few basic tips for improving a web page ranking. I call this SEO 101, it's really just the basic stuff:

1) Use <title> tags. The web page title should be descriptive of the page contents, and not just your web site URL repeated.

2) Use <meta> keyword and description tags. This is 1999 SEO, but it still applies. Make sure your keywords are relevant, and don't just stick the phrase "free money" in there, when your site has nothing to do with giving out money.

3) Use external CSS files, external JavaScript, and keep the HTML clean. If you do a View>Source on your site, is the first 4 pages unreadable garbage? It shouldn't be, your main content should start within the first 2 pages of source code.

4) Get rid of spam. If you run a blog, chances are someone trying to sell something has tried to infultrate your comments. Get in there and delete that stuff, because the quality of your outgoing links is important.

5) Fresh content. New content should appear on the site every week or two. Every month at a minimum. Sites that never change for years are not as relevant to search engines.

6) Relevant content that uses your key words. What is it that you or your company does? Do you offer Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services? Do you even say that the way it's commonly said, so that a search on the phrase (in quotation marks) would lead to your site? Do you say it 2 or 3 times? Do you say it a few different ways, because one person might say SEO but another might called it Google Optimization, and someone else call it Search Engine Optimisation. (Love to the brits, but you all need to use Z's more.) If each page only contains one paragraph of content, honestly not too many people (let alone search engines) are going to find it useful.

7) Post things people want to link to. Why would someone link to your site from theirs? Really think about that. Really focus on that... give people things to link to. Funny things. Smart things. Things lots of people would be interested in.

8) Avoid spammy techniques. Don't have hidden text that humans can't read (white text on white background). Don't overuse your keywords - by repeating them 100 times per page. Don't link to bad areas of the web. Don't add hundreds and hundreds of pages of useless content - ie: one page for each country, state and city that basically says the same thing. Don't rely too much on flash.

9) Use a program such as Google Analytics to track which pages of your site are the most popular. Add the Google Analytics tracker to your web pages, and then come back in a month or two. See what's popular, and do more of that. See what's not really working and do less. Repeat your successes and stop what's failing - a novel idea!

10) Define your goals. Measure where you are. Makes small improvements to your site. Give these changes a chance to set (at a minimum, when Google reindexes your site), and then measure again. Keep making improvements, and keep measuring. Slow and sure wins the race.