As discussed in this article, it is a good idea to build each of your pages around its own primary keyphrase, and somehow incorporate that keyphrase into your < title > tag. The question is, of course, what’s the best way to integrate it? The problem is that each search engine has its own unique answer.

MSN (aka Live.com) is generally thought to reward very high keyword density, and often grants top-five rankings to pages with 100% density in the title (that is, pages where the primary keyphrase is the only thing in the title bar).

Google, on the other hand, seems to make a point of devaluing pages on keywords that exactly match their < title > tag. This measure was most likely introduced as a way to fight search engine spammers who over-optimize for a single phrase, by excessively placing it in their content, headings, and title.

Overall, you need to make an informed decision about which optimization route you want to take for each of your sites. As mentioned in the algorithm summaries, MSN is a good choice for driving short-term traffic and revenue, while Google has a lot more potential for long-term sustainable content websites.

If you want to optimize for Google, my advice would be to go for title keyword density of around 50%, and no greater than 75%. For example, if your primary keyphrase is three words long, you many wish to add another three-word phrase to your title, consisting of secondary keywords.

When designing a website, you should try and have a text link back to your homepage on every page of the site. Flash and Java navigation is (usually) okay from a user point of view, but can’t be used by search engine spiders, meaning that you should always include a text link as well.

Where possible, use relevant anchor text in your home page links (dropping in a primary site-wide keyword or two), rather than just using a boring and non-descriptive “Home” link.

As the most important page in your site, there is no doubt that the home page deserves a good backlink from each and every page in your navigation structure. This is one of the easiest ways to create a good internal linking arrangement, and make it easier for search engines to index your site.

Keep in mind that this strategy isn’t just limited to your home page, but can also be applied to other important pages of your site. For example, if you have a blog and want to increase the ranking of a particular article, you could give it a side-wide link on all of your previous post pages.

Definately worth reading if you get a chance… Here’s the link.

http://www.webmonkey.com/06/16/index3a.html

The short answer is that meta tags are no longer a requirement, and serve very little practical purpose in SEO. This is because they serve absolutely no role whatsoever in the ranking algorithms of Google or MSN, and play a very small part in the algorithm used by Yahoo.

This does not mean, however, that adding meta tags is completely useless. Even though it doesn’t count towards ranking, Google sometimes shows it to users on SERPs (search engine result pages).

Meta keywords are, if nothing else, a good organizational tool. I for one am a great believer in the value of sketching out lists of keywords and keyphrases that you want to optimize for, and keeping track of them on a page-by-page basis. So what better place to put them than on the page itself? This is an especially handy touch for plain HTML sites with no database, where you have to edit each page individually.

Despite the fact that meta tags are virtually obsolete for ranking, there is no doubt that they still have a few useful side benefits. Whether it is worth it to add these tags needs to be decided on a site-by-site basis, and largely depends on the amount of time involved.

As long as you use them in moderation, meta tags won’t damage your rankings. They won’t help them either, however, so if you are adding them to beef up your keyword density, you will almost certainly be disappointed.

This is due to issues with the way search engines look at keywords. For example, I’ve discovered that a term like “What is WiFi” is easy to rank for with quotation marks, but people who search without quotation marks simply won’t find it.

The problem is that searching without quotes will bring up a list of every site that includes all three of those words. Given the fact that almost any content-based page will contain the words “what” and “is”, trying to rank for a term like “What is WiFi” is essentially just as difficult as ranking for the single word “WiFi” (not easy, by any means ).

In Google, there is the additional handicap that the algorithm completely ignores “little” stopwords unless they are in quotation marks. And since the majority of users search without quotes, trying to optimize for phrases that contain minor words is a complete waste of time.

Instead, you should try and optimize for uninterrupted strings of relevant keywords. A more specific dual-keyword phrase like “Verizon WiFi” (which I am currently #1 for ) is a much better all ‘round option that works with or without quotation marks.