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These days, when people hear the words search and engine together, they generally think of Google first, but basically if you want lots of visitors to your website or blog, you need to optimise it so that it can be found by all available search methods. The more hits you get and the more other websites and blogs link and rate and refer to yours, the higher your Page Rank on Google and then your site appears higher in the search results – and the more hits you get. It’s a very important snowball effect.

So what can you do to make sure your site gets found easily? The good news is that there’s a lot you can do and most of it is very simple to accomplish. This article will deal only with the free stuff i.e. the things you should have in place before you consider buying advertising.

The first and foremost thing to remember is that search engines only crawl text. It’s logical – we use words on search engines to find things, even pictures and the search engine looks through words, even if you’re looking for a photograph.

Keywords matter very much indeed. Think about exactly what your site is about, use a keyword search tool and identify some strong keywords and key terms i.e. words and phrases that people use when they’re searching for something online. The more specific you are the better. Opinions vary, but the suggested proportion of keywords to content is 3% to 7% i.e. if you have a hundred words of content, 3-7 of those words should be keywords. This is known as keyword density. Too many keywords will deter search engines, so don’t waste your time just pasting nonsensical keywords on to your site – it really doesn’t work. Another good suggestion was that keywords be made bold or formatted to stand out from the rest of the text, so that anyone using those words to search and find your site can then find exactly what they need to as soon as they arrive at your page.

Make sure your content is clear, concise and well written. A well written site is not necessarily perfectly grammatically correct, believe it or not. Depending on what your site is about, a quirky writing style can work very well – just make sure your keywords are spelled right. There’s no substitute for unique content – your content is what needs the Search Engine Optimisation, your content is what search engines will be looking through and what they will hopefully find relevant to the people out there searching. Good content is more important than a fancy site design. Don’t just write 100 word entries or blog posts – aim at 300 to 400 words, which is usually enough to give people the information they need, entice them to linger at your site and still be short enough not to bore them to death.

Your keywords will probably be part of phrases – like the phrase “Search Engine Optimisation.” Some sources claim that the most commonly used search phrases consist of two words (like “free mp3’s”) but if your keywords and terms are clear and commonly used, like SEO, don’t worry about the number of words in the term.

Make sure your images are labelled, that where you have images as links, there’s alternative text there or a text caption – otherwise search engines won’t find those things. Always remember that Google and so on only search text and ensure that your website contains more text than code on any content filled page.

Verify your site with Google and register it with any relevant directories, linkdumps and aggregators you can find. Note the word ‘relevant’ there – by submitting your site or blog to relatively small online directories (as long as they are active ones) you are more likely to get visitors who are genuinely interested and therefore more likely to make you return visits and get involved. But that is a bit of a digression; in terms of Search Engine Optimisation, the benefit of being registered with directories and aggregators is that search engine search those too and in some cases, those directories may have high ranks and get found quicker than a direct link to your site would. When you’re looking for places to register your site or blog, think further than the topic of your site and also try to find directories that specialise in your country, your language or anything else at all that is relevant to you and your web content. Don’t neglect the big ones though. If you’re blogging, start by registering with Technorati and Blog Catalog. If you're a fellow African, your next step should be Afrigator and the Mail & Guardian's Amatomu.

At the end of doing all of that, grab yourself some free Search Engine Optimisation tools (Google has lots) and test your site and then tweak it some more. Do searches yourself and see where your site comes up - but don't panic, you're not going to be on page one overnight. And keep SEO firmly in mind always; every time you add a link, every time you check your statistics and every time you write content. Once you’re all optimised and raring to go, you can start the proactive and aggressive aspects of marketing and promotion.

Edit: read this ... about Google's latest weapon in the war against spam.