In the end of 2005, the big boss, the absolute supreme power for search, was Google which controlled an amazing 46 to 47 percent of every search done on the Internet. Yahoo was the runner-up with nearly 25%, and MSN was next at approximately 11.4% out of all searches. AOL declared a meager 6.9%, which still totaled an insubstantial 350 million searches. Google had an amazing 2.4 billion searches! In comparison, MSN is best for super fast indexing, while Google is sluggishly slow for site-indexing. Again, Yahoo is ranked in the middle of the two. Keep in mind, if you have a new site and you have your mind set on Google, don't disregard Yahoo and MSN, the other two major search engines which can bring in good traffic in the meantime.

Optimize your Site Key Words on Every Page Remember to set up each page of your website as if it were an entity unto itself. This boils down to using a unique heading for every page, with unique keywords targeted to any given page. Suppose you have a website for vitamins, with several pages for different kinds of vitamins. On your home page, or index page, you focus on general keywords like vitamins, health supplements, dietary supplements, food vitamins, and so forth. However, if the topic of the page is vitamin C, your target shouldn't be these generic words. Instead, focus on keywords that directly relate to Vitamin C; some examples would be vitamin c, c vitamin, ascorbic acid or benefits of vitamin c. The heading for any given page needs to start with the most important keyword for search purposes. Again, in the vitamin C example, name your webpage something that starts with Vitamin C, as opposed to, say, "What You Need To Know About Vitamin C." By designing and building your online site from scratch, it is possible to take this even further. The keyword you are targeting should begin your webpage file name. Again, with the vitamin website example, you should name pages about vitamin C with relevant names. For example, if you have a page that is about vitamin C and its benefits, you will want to name that page something like: vitamincbenefits.htm. That will make it easy to find in a keyword search. How can you tell, then, what the high-demand keywords are? Read on, and when you finish this article, there's a list of excellent free keyword search tools. No one will be able to access the title of your file besides you as the site owner and the different search engine crawlers. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the search engine, therefore it is unimportant if the title of your file is unpleasant to look at or say.

Keyword Saturation as Opposed to Content. You want search engines to pick up your page, of course, but keep in mind that the real traffic you want is people. Your site's content or copy, then, needs to be palatable to humans while at the same time bringing search engine robots to that page. Keyword optimization is kind of like a balancing act in this sense, but if you're ever in doubt, err toward the side of humans, not robots. There is no point in having traffic tromp through your site without doing anything (like buying something or signing up for your newsletter). If that is all the copy you wrote for search engine robots brings you, it is not worth anything.

Over-Optimization When you're optimizing for keywords, you should keep a few things in mind. What number of keywords or phrases should you aim for on any page, and what is the rate that they should be used per page? Well, keep in mind that you can indeed "over-optimize" a website! You might think the more optimization the better, but it isn't that simple.

Over Optimization During keyword optimization, there are, additionally, other important items to think about. What is the number of keywords/phrases you should put on any specific page and what is the number of times these keywords should been seen on this page? Alright, first of all you must comprehend that there is something called Over-Optimization for websites. While it might seem like more optimization is always preferable, the truth is that this is not always the case. The keyword density of a particular page needs to fit in a "sweet spot" for a given search engine (thought to be between 1.5 and 1.8% for Google, up to 3% for MSN and Yahoo with an ideal keyword density somewhere between these two), and search engine algorithms will red flag any pages that have a keyword density of more than 10%. This is what is called spamming and the search engines will instantly send a red flag alert.

What is the result for doing this? A new site won't get the high ranking you want, and established sites might even see a drop in their rankings. One more thing to keep in mind is that Google "sandboxes," or sequesters new sites until they've proven their worth. Why does this happen? The search engines are constantly in competition with each other to deliver the best results possible, and spam websites -- the kind of sites that are just one page stuffed with keywords -- want to subvert this to make a quick buck.

Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a Staff Writer for InfoServe Media, a website design company that provides custom web design. Visit today, or call 1 (800) 838-2203 for a free quote.