Allow the following list of the basics of search engine optimization to act as a guide during the creation of your next website. Using these techniques when creating your website will help improve your search engine rankings and the results that are generated.

1. Don’t expect overnight success.

Effective search engine optimization takes a lot of time and hard work. Patience will be your greatest virtue when optimizing your sites for high search engine rankings. Search engines take time to compile all the factors that will allow your website to achieve higher rankings.

2. Nothing compares to strong, well-written content.

Contrary to popular belief, well-formed and well-written content is the backbone of effective search engine optimization. Well-written content is intriguing, interesting and will ensure that your visitors are constantly scanning your website for updates. Return visitors will be interested enough to spread word about your website, and may even link to your website from their own. We discuss the importance of being linked to a little further in this article.

3. Use descriptive titles for your pages.

Giving your pages descriptive, yet simple titles will make it a lot easier for search engines to recognize what the contents of each page will be. It’s such a simple concept that is often overlooked. Avoid using the same title for each page – it will confuse search engines since there would be so many pages with the same title and it will be difficult to determine what the page is about.

4. Make good use of the heading tags.

The heading tags h1 to h6 are reserved for – you guessed it – headings. It cannot be stressed enough how important these tags are for generating strong search engine rankings. Although using images will allow you to use the fonts of your choice, search engines will not recognize them. There are image replacement techniques, but most of them involve hiding your text. This may cause a slight risk, because your hidden text may appear to search engines as hidden keywords. Hiding keywords is not allowed and will most likely penalize your websites rankings.

5. Get other sites to link to you.

The more times your website is linked by other websites, the more relevant your website will appear to Google. Google determines high rankings not only by the content on your website, but also by the number of websites that link to yours.

6. Create your websites with valid and accessible markup language.

If your website is written in a poor, messy version of HTML, the browser will most likely still be able to render it. There may be some parts of your website that are displaying incorrectly, but for the most part web browsers are smart enough to display your content the way it was intended. Search engines may not be able to read through your mess of code to determine the content of your website. Writing your website with valid and accessible means you will have more content than HTML code, and your website will load much faster.

7. You can’t fool the search engines.

Search engines want their search results to be accurate. There is no point in tricking them, because it will get you nowhere. Hiding text that contains keywords, or padding your alt tags with an unnecessary amount of words are sure ways to get your website penalized and possibly banned from most search engines.

8. Target one primary search term per page.

Place target keyword phrases in various spots on your page.

Here is a short list of the places to include your primary search term:

1. Title tag.
2. Description tag.
3. Within the first 100 words of the body paragraph.
4. h1 – h6 heading tags.
5. Use it several times in the body.
6. Bold it several times in the body.
7. Link to the page using the phrase in an anchor.

Assuming, you have already registered a web address, it is now time for finding a reliable web host. The process will be similar to registering your domain name. For web hosting, you will need to research hosting companies to determine the one that will be the most reliable. It is a good precaution to call the host(s) you are considering before you register. If they do not have a phone number listed, it is a good sign that they are not a legitimate company.

The best of the reliable web hosts have a very strong customer support team that will find a solution to any problem you may have within 24 hours. Avoid hosting companies that have a lot of downtime. If your website is offline (even for a day), any clicks you receive from Google will register in Google that your site no longer exists. This will severely affect your search engine ranking. All of the hard work you put into achieving priority search results will have essentially been for nothing.

Domain & Web Hosting Packages

Many reliable web hosting companies offer a package deal when you register a domain and a hosting account. In many cases, the domain is free with the hosting registration. This can be extremely useful when maintaining your hosting plan – you will only have to renew once instead of renewing your domain and hosting separately. It will also save you about half the total cost per year, as your one fee (often less than that of registering a domain alone) covers both the rights to your domain name and web hosting.

Below is a list of the top reliable web hosting companies and their most affordable starter package:

Host: Siteground
URL: http://www.siteground.com
Monthly Fee: $7.95 (with 3 year registration)
Web Space Allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
E-mail Accounts: Unlimited
Server Uptime: 99.9%

Host: GoDaddy
URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Monthly Fee: $4.24 (with 3 year registration)
Web Space Allowed: 10 GB
Bandwidth Allowed: 300 GB
E-mail Accounts: 100
Server Uptime: N/A

Host: HostGator
URL: http://www.hostgator.com
Monthly Fee: $4.95 (with 3 year registration)
Web Space Allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
E-mail Accounts: Unlimited
Server Uptime: 99.9%

Once you have completed your search and are done finding a reliable web host, it is time to register. You will begin by choosing your desired hosting package. You will be asked if you already have a domain name or if you will need to register a new one. In any case, you will have to fill out some personal information. Entering this information will register an account with the web hosting registrant. You want to have an account with the company that handles your web hosting so they can send you e-mail updates when your package is about to expire. Once you fill out your contact information, you will be asked how many years you would like to have the hosting plan for. For the majority of web hosts, their cheapest offer is with a minimum 3 year registration. If you feel that you will be maintaing your website for a long time, it is definitely worth it to choose the 3 year registration option. In most cases, you will save from $3 to $5 per month. You will also have the peace of mind knowing that you won’t be losing your domain and hosting plan, as it is automatically renewed each year. After you select the number of years you would like to register, all that is left to do is for you to enter your credit card information.

Registering an effective website address is an important but relatively simple step in getting your website online. Here are a few steps to help you get your domain registered:

1. Think of a good domain name.

The first step in getting your website live and online is to think of a good domain name. A domain name is your own unique address on the web that will be used to access your website. It consists of your unique identifier (ie. yourname) followed by a suffix (typically .com, .ca, .net, etc.). The example of this domain name would be: yourname.com.

How are some general guidelines to follow when deciding on a good domain name:

a. Easy to spell.

The best domain names are short, to the point and consist of your brand or company name. A domain name that is easy to spell will be easy to communicate and will be easily remembered by potential clients. Along with being easy to spell, you want the name of your company and domain to be easy to pronounce. This way when you are trying to communicate your website in person or over the phone, you won’t have to spell out every letter, but will simply be able to tell somebody exactly how to reach your website online.

b. Avoid slashes, underscores and other special characters.

Special characters such as slashes, dashes, and underscores make it confusing to communicate your website URL. Instead of being able to tell somebody what your address is, you will have to explain to them exactly where it contains a special character. It will make your life a lot easier to just leave the special characters out and keep the domain to being all letters or a combination of letters and numbers.

c. Check to see if your name is taken.

Sometimes another company or brand has already thought of that perfect domain name before you did, and you will have to regroup. Don’t get discouraged at this point. Run a search on any domain registrant website (such as GoDaddy) to see if the top names that you thought of are available.

2. Choose a domain name registrant.

Conduct some research around the internet for the best possible price when registering a new domain. Make sure to consider that some companies will offer you just the domain for a cheap rate, while others will offer you the domain plus unlimited e-mail accounts for a small amount more.

Here is a brief list of popular domain registrants and their starting domain registration prices:

GoDaddy.com: $9.99/year + special offers

Misk.com: $10/year

Siteground.com: Free with hosting package (starting at $6.95/month)

3. Register name.

Now that you’ve chosen your domain name and your domain name registrant, it is time to register it. On all domain registrant websites, you will start by searching your desired domain name to see if it is available (if you have not already done this in step 1c). After you’ve secured that domain name, you will have to fill out some personal information. Entering this information will register an account with the domain name registrant. You want to have an account with the company that handles your domain names so they can send you e-mail updates when your domain is about to expire. Once you fill out your contact information, they will ask you how many years you would like to register the domain for. Look to see if you will receive a better price if you register the domain for multiple years. If you feel that you will need your domain for a long time, it is a wise decision to register for more than one year at a time. This will allow you to not worry about renewing your domain and will prevent it from expiring. Now that you’ve selected how many years you would like to register the domain for, all that is left to do is for you to enter your credit card information and the process is complete.

Congratulations on registering your first domain name.