Let's boil it down: there are millions of pages on the Internet dedicated to search engine optimization. There are books, blogs, sites, experts, entire companies dedicated to tweaking your site to get you the rankings you want. How do you hear above the roar?

It starts with an understanding that the search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, are like living, breathing entities who are constantly rewriting the rules. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow in terms of what those beasts are looking for. What probably helps most is the very understanding that we might never ever be able to outsmart them. So, what we do as webmasters, as site owners, as content writers, is to create our sites with quality content and clean code, not for the search engines, but for the users.

With that said, these are 5 things to keep in mind to make your site an optimal presence for the crawling of Google, Yahoo, MSN and more:

1. Quality Content. Plain and simple; write the body of your website with quality in mind. The text, the "alt" tags of your images, appropriate images, and relevant links all equal quality content. Content is king.

2. Validated Code. Your code should be validated by w3.org, the body that creates web standards. By validating your code, you will make sure that there are no glitches in the pathway through your code and on your site that might prevent a full "crawl". Plus, validating the code will assure that your site meets standards, and is accessible to all browsers and platforms.

3. Accessible links. Your pages, especially your home page, should contain clean HTML links to all of the other pages in your site. If you are using java-script navigation, a favorite for "drop-down" style nav, or, God forbid, Flash navigation (a huge no-no), you should also have text links to your supporting pages somewhere on your site. That will allow Google, Yahoo, etc to find their way from point A to point B without getting stuck.

4. Inbound links.  Other sites should link to your site - or, I should say, other relevant sites should link to your site. For better or for worse, Google considers links to your site as a "vote of confidence" and thus tends to rank you higher. If you are neck and neck with a competitor in terms of content, code, etc, and your competitor has more inbound links, they will likely rank higher.

5. Keep it "White Hat". This is probably the most important aspect of designing a site to perform well in the search ranks. White Hat means above-board techniques for prepping your website. "Black Hat" refers to all of those less than honest methods of trying to "fool" Google, Yahoo, etc. Don't do it. It's just not worth getting banned.

Black hat methods include hidden links, hidden text (making keywords the way color as your background - people still do it), keyword stuffing your content , to-wit:

"Welcome to Jim's fish farm, where we farm fish. It's the best fish farm you will find, as fish farm's go. If you need fish, and want them from a farm, come to Jim's fish farm. Our fish are farmed to perfection so that they are farm fresh fish."

That simply reads horribly, and frankly, Google WILL catch on eventually and penalize you. Design for the user, not for the search engine.  Inbound links that are not relevant.

Ultimately, time, patience, and quality, updated content, and the search engine ranks should take care of themselves.

Questions? Call me at 513-349-9756 or email pat@cjtdigital.com