How to make web site optimal for Search Engines?

Search engines are dominating the online world when "online" word is pegged as key. When everything is online and above all influenced by search engines, the search engine ranking can spell magic for your business.

As soon as a question strikes your mind - first step you do is to log on to a search engine and type the keywords related to your query to get an apt result. The results displayed to us are picked from some related sites which are ranked high on search engines list. In more refined words, the sites which are well optimized for search engines and have some text in context to your query is displayed.

Talking relative to the search engines, Google is enjoying the lion's share of market followed by Yahoo and MSN. But what is the science behind how these search engines pick the related text, is itself a mystery. But how can we help these search engines to offer searchers the best result, is our cup of tea here.

Starting with the tips to have the best SEO for your site; first comes the quality of content. Why Google is leading the search engine race? Because it has always been successful to offer the best results related to query that satisfy the users. So better is the content, you are ranked higher on the search display result list.

The second thing that search engines assemble while displaying your site for a query is the snippet description attached to search string that prompts user to click the link or not. While searching for something, you also click some of the displayed result link and leave some. You also decide on the basis of snippet description attached with that query.

Besides this, while assembling the search result, search engines also look for Meta Description Tags, Alternative Text found on pages, Heading Tag or body text, Copyright information, and the keyword phrase which is being searched wherever found. So to do right SEO for your site, keep the above said points in check.

The next thing that people are really worried for their sites is the "page rank" on top search engines like Yahoo and Google. The search engines allocate a page rank to all web sites ranging from zero to ten. The higher is the number, the more traffic will divert to your site for any given keyword. Thus to increase the page rank, get links of those few sites which have high page rank on top search engines (Google and Yahoo) and also limit the number of links going out to other sites.

The next thing that can prove good or can destroy your intentions to increase SEO is the quality of incoming links. The top search engines like those sites that have natural link popularity, meaning that your site should be linked to wide variety of sites not linking just to one keyword like blogs or technology. You should be linked to relevant sites with varying link text else you can hurt your rankings.

Even the URL structure plays a key role in enhancing your ranking and SEO. Avoid long elaborate URL's with extraneous characters to make URL search engine and user friendly.

The last but not the least is "Site Navigation." For better SEO results and good traffic ranks, it is obvious that your site should be spiderable by the search engines. While spidering your website, search engines look for various things, if not up to mark can cause roadblocks. The things that can account for roadblocks are usage of Flash for site navigation, use of Java Script/DHTML for navigation, and image based navigation.

Website optimization or SEO is a very critical part of making your site popular and making you to be displayed in top indexed pages by search engines.