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8 Easy Ways to Optimize Your Website
By Scott J. Patterson

Traffic from search engines is widely considered the best (and 
cheapest) way to generate traffic to your site. The increasing 
popularity of search engines has led to the development of a 
whole industry that revolves around ways to "optimize" websites.

The end result is that many people now think that only 
"professionals" can help their website rank high within search
engines. But, the truth is that anyone can structure their site 
so they rank high for many keywords.

Below, I have listed 8 simple steps that you can take to 
optimize your web pages. By following these, you will improve
your chances of increasing your rankings:

1)  Target one word for each page: A huge mistake that many 
beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page. 
Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific keyword 
for each page. That way, you can make sure that the page is 
focusing on that one word without any distractions. If you want 
to target multiple keywords then it is necessary to create a 
separate page for each.

2)  List your major keywords in the links back to your site: 
Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have started 
to take into account the words that are mentioned in the title 
tag of the links that point to your site. So, a great way to 
improve your rankings for your keywords is to place it in the 
title tag.

3)  Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another 
mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the 
left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily 
focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is 
a misuse of valuable space.  

Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description 
and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy 
way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the 
standard left-hand side.  

But, since the left-handed menu is now commonplace, you can also 
choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so 
this text will be the first thing read on your website.

4)  Insert the keyword into your title tag: In the source code 
of most pages are "header tags" (also known as Meta tags), which 
help search engines understand the content of the page.  

To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code of 
the page. The first step is to insert the keyword in the title 
tag. (This is what is shown in the results of a search engine 
when your site is listed)

5)  Insert your keywords in the description tag: The description 
Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag. The information 
in this tag is listed directly below the title tag in search 
engine results. As a result, a good description can make your 
website stand out from other listings. To get the prospect to 
click on your site, it is important to write a snappy description 
while using your keyword.  

6)  Insert them into your keywords tag: Like the title and 
description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines 
understand the content of your web page. Although this Meta tag 
has become less popular, it doesn't hurt to put your keywords 
here.  

7)  Place your keyword in the header: When writing the actual 
text of your site, the first part should be the headline. 
Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words in 
the headline as being more important then the rest of the web 
copy. To take advantage of this, you should have your keyword 
in the page headline. But, since the header tag (h1) is quite 
large, you should format it so that it is smaller.  

8)  Write your keyword enriched web copy: Now that you have set 
up the structure of your page, you can write your web copy. 
While creating the text, you want to include the majority of the 
keywords at the top and the bottom of the page. In addition, the 
keyword should be included a few times in the middle. Basically, 
the common saying is that the keyword density should resemble an 
hour glass shape.

The total web copy of your page should be about 300-500 words.  
Also, the keyword should be about 5-12% of the total words of 
the page. The percentage varies according to each search engine, 
so you might want to play around till you find the best results.

If you follow all these steps, you will definitely see an 
improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords.
The best part is that you do not have to spend any money on  
expensive search engine optimizers!

Good luck!

===============================================================
Scott J. Patterson brought his website to the top of many search 
engines for important keywords. To find out how he did this AND 
also how he created his online store with NO computer experience, 
be sure to check out a Fr** copy of his ebook:

http://www.buildingastore.com/8O.html
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