SEO or search engine optimization is something that every web owner and creator should be aware of. Even if a website owner hires an expert to carry out the online marketing, understanding the very basics and how it really can improve a websites performance and popularity is important.

Sometimes search engines can ban a domain name for what is called spamming. This is when it contains far too many keywords (keyword stuffing) or key phrases, and when a black hat type of SEO has been carried out. Key words are highly important from a search engine point of view. Optimizing a website means starting at the beginning, and including key-words relevant to the business adds value and brings to the website the visitors it is targeting. In basic terms, website content should be built around those important key words, which can be expanded upon over time.

Any site should aim to perform better than its competitors and it is a timely job to keep it well ranked at the major search engines, such as Yahoo, Google and AOL. The search engines rely on this type of online marketing to judge a site and what it is about, and of course the people or visitors it is trying to target.

Despite this, it can never be a complete guarantee that the site will appear above competitors. Not only is the on-site content and its relevance taken into consideration, but also dependent on quality links into that website (back links or inbound links) that are also active and receiving clicks (click through rate), the number of hits it already receives (current popularity) and how regularly the site is updated.

Keywords should usually be included, in the very least, in a page title, in the first and last sentence, headings on the page and in meta tags which are found in the page html or coding. In addition to this, the meta tags are important with the html itself needing to be neat and clean so that search engines find it easy to visit and evaluate a site. This is fairly basic optimization and should be the very least work done.

Not only is this basic job vital, there are alternative longer term issues to carry out too. Another important thing to mention is that the HTML code that the site is written in needs to be clean and easy for a search engine to follow. Some pages that they do find hard to follow sometimes are pages containing, or built with, flash, frames or javascript. They also do not find pages containing lots and lots of text, or not enough of it, very easy to follow.

Some well ranking sites actually use plenty of off site marketing which is fairly important in building back links to the website from relevant sites. A long term project but one which can really help. A good way of doing this is adding domain names and descriptions including keywords to directories and search engines that are relevant to the business (e. G. A regional directory is ideal for a local corner store to be added to).

SEO is not only the best way to prepare a site and keep it well maintained, but it keeps a site relevant and up to date, and interesting to its human visitors, a hugely important part of owning and running a website.

Mike Gates is an online marketer and recommends HostGator for hosting. HostGator is the cheapest web host. HostGator coupons available at http://hostgatorcouponandreview.com/hostgator-coupon.html.