Most search engines display results by showing a truncated page title and a description taken from your page title tag and the meta description tag. For good measure make the meta title tag the same as your page title. Your meta description tag should be a single sentence which accurately sums up your site, works together with the page title and contains some important keywords. Make sure your description is not just a list of keywords. It should be a proper sentence and be grammatically correct. Also limit your description to 150 characters at the most.

Remember that prioritised list of keywords and keyphrases we produced earlier? Simply enter these into the meta keywords tag. Aim for a combination of about 20 to 30 words and phrases. Never repeat the same keyphrase and never use any individual word more than four times or repeat the same word over and over in different phrases. You can however safely ignore the overuse of common words such as 'a', 'the', 'and', etc. Abusing the limits is known as keyword spamming and a search engine may refuse to index the page or ban your site from its listings altogether.

When entering your keyphrases into the meta keywords tag remember to separate each keyword or phrase with a comma and avoid putting a space after it. Some search engines are sensitive to word order, others just to the presence of keywords on a page. For some search engines, 'bed and breakfast Scotland' is not the same as 'Scottish bed and breakfast'. Therefore word your phrases in the way you think most people are going to type them in.

The first paragraph of your page body text obviously needs to be written with the reader in mind. However, try and make this paragraph work in harmony with your title and your meta tags. This means you should try and include as many of your keywords and keyphrases in your page, especially in the first few sentences.

All kinds of techniques have been employed by webmasters in the past to get ahead of the competition in the ranking stakes. A popular trick, used especially by adult sites, is to include a huge list of keyphrases on a page that are the same colour as the background. The idea is that the Web surfer doesn't see them but the search spider does. Many spiders are on to this trick and will penalise a page that employs it. As the bigger search engines get wiser to the tricks and techniques commonly used to get that lucrative top twenty spot the more often they tweak the algorithms they use to index the Web.

Some search engines are now using link popularity as a ranking criterion. This is all about how many other pages link to yours based on the notion if other sites link to your page, it might be useful. Google originally came up with this idea and its use is becoming more widespread.

Each individual web page should have its own tailor made tags to target its own content. However, do include your most important keywords on every page to reinforce your sites general theme and don't make your tags too long because this may dilute the effectiveness of your main keywords and keyphrases. Make use of the 'alt' tag in all your images. This is the text that pops up when your cursor hovers over a picture. Some spiders regard the contents of an 'alt' tag as text that they can use to index your page. This method is another crafty trick that the spiders are wise to, therefore don't over do it by making the tag too long or by repeating the same keywords over and over again.

My advice is that you should try and help search engines by making it as easy as possible for them to get a good idea of what your page is about. Use the Web to keep up to date with the latest search engine strategies and work hard to define a fine collection of targeted keyphrases for your site. Above all, give your visitors great original content. At the end of the day it is your content that your visitors have come to see.

Search engines limit the number of submissions you can make to them per domain. Check out the guidelines that each has with regard to submission numbers. Only resubmit your pages to a particular search engine if a listing with them does not appear after 4 to 6 weeks. Don't resubmit too soon.

It is claimed that 80% of Web surfers will not go beyond the top 30 results returned from a search. Obtaining a high ranking for your website is therefore to your advantage. For current comprehensive information and more detailed tips on search engine strategies visit Search Engine Watch.

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