Search engine optimisation - Myths and effort

ChizzaChong
Welcome to the first chizzachongalong, hopefully over time i will be able to assist with search engine related questions.
So, the web has developed into the biggest monster that was ever created, Mary Shelley would be proud. and now with millions upon millions of websites, all desperate to be noticed and collect business from the ever hungry world e-shopping population and the info hungry, affiliated, blogging, torrent theives. -
Billions of searches are commited everyday for everything from : Aardvarks in america to Zeppelin racing. And of course, everyone wants to appear on the 1st page of Google or Yahoo (without spending any money). Where do we start?
I suppose the best place to start is all the way right back to the beginning....
Before you even build your site or pass the specs to your designer and host. STOP ! and think what it is you want to achieve. In most cases, the answer is the same.... "To build a professional looking site, which is easy to navigate and brings customers and value to your business" - sound like a good model ?
Its all about triggering people to either send you an email, make your phone ring or tell their colleagues about you.. look at the phenomenons that are Myspace, Facebook and so-on, people linking people and look how much time people spnd doing this...
Ok, so there are millions of people spending alot of time surfing for knowledge, fun and products - and you want some of that action.
The big search engines measure websites in many ways - To be a high ranking page you need to think about all of the following, really before commiting to any build of the site.
Title : who are you, where are you, what is your product - in less than 80 characters (as a guideline)
Description : Niche yourself, what makes you THE one, specialties, offers - (stay under 200 characters)
Keywords, phrases : how will people search for you - ie: electrician, electrical engineer, electrics, electrician blackpool, electrician in blackpool, blackpool lights, ....... (20 is probably what you are aiming for on any one page - less can be more too)
Labelling images : images can be labelled using alt img tags, by using keywords, as your labels, this helps the search engine robots, who cant see your images. select your images carefully and label them well.
Links : this is how the internet works, going from one site to another in any direction, hence the word WEB. so we need to help that and not become the end of the internet, where we have to back out or close the window. Link to your partners, friends, good info.. but always in a new window, leaving your business there. in an ideal world - you could do with 200 links to you, I will explain another time how to do this.
Content : you site content, the images and text etc. need to be current with everything above, obviously. Its no good putting 1 big picture with all the text embedded in... let your words work for you. Some real good copy is important, don't waste words, and remember, there are smarter and lesser people than you out there... you need to write it for everyone.

Next time, we'll talk : Sitemaps, submission, verification and indexing

Ok, i think thats enough homework for day 1... i'll go into more detail, and show links to examples next time too !
Good luck and peacefullness

Chizza