Keywords are the MOST important part of your search engine game. Keywords are the words that search engines use to index and rank your website. For example, let's say your website is about Snapping Turtles and your domain name is www.snapping-turtles-store.com. Search engines will notice your frequent use of the words "snapping turtles" and rank your website highly for this keyword phrase. Keyword ranking depends on 3 primary things:

1. Keyword Choice - choosing the optimal keywords is crucial! You want keyword phrases that are popular search terms in the search engines, and you don't want them to have too many competing websites that will outrank you for that desired keyword phrase. It's best to choose one or two keyword phrases and focus only on those throughout your website. A great tool for determining optimal keyword phrases is www.wordtracker.com. They have a free program to test their service plus a pay program for the full version.
   
   

2. Keyword Placement - the most important place to put keyword phrases is at the beginning of your domain name, page titles, page descriptions, and the first few lines of page text. Although the significance of keyword placement in website "meta-tags" has dwindled, it still doesn't hurt to place keywords here too. Place keywords throughout every page and in image "alt" tags for an additional boost.
   
   

3. Keyword Frequency - use your keyword phrase at least once in all of the places mentioned above. Be careful not to repeat them too often (more than once every few sentences), or the search engines may penalize you for "keyword spamming." Keyword frequency is determined by the ratio of keywords to non-keywords. A good tool for analyzing your keyword frequency and search engines rankings is Web Position Gold (www.firstplacesoftware.com).

Link popularity is one criterion of the search engine game that search engines use. Link popularity is based on how many quality websites link to yours. Quality websites have high traffic volume, relevant content, and a detailed description where they link to your website. Ways of building link popularity are:

1. Find quality websites to link with by searching your optimal keyword phrases in the search engines. Take note of the Top 10 or 20 websites that appear and contact the ones that complement your website and are non-competitive. High-ranking directories that relate to your subject matter are great sources for link popularity. For example, a high-ranking directory on "snapping turtle websites" would be a great place to list your website. They draw the website traffic for you and direct visitors your way.
   
   

2. Create a place on your website to exchange links with other high-quality websites. Be sure you trust the other websites, because after all you're recommending your website visitors to leave and visit their website.
   
   

3. Prepare a link intro that includes your website link and a brief description that highlights your keyword phrases. Whenever you have an opportunity to link with another website, you can easily send your link intro to the webmaster.
   
   

4. Write articles or other forms of information related to your subject matter. You can post these articles to your website as a way of attracting links, or you can submit these articles to other websites and draw visitors from links there.

To win the search engine game, you MUST submit to the Top 15 search engines. The Top 15 search engines direct over 90% of all search engine traffic. In order of relative importance, they are:

Yahoo!, Google, Looksmart, Inktomi, MSN, Open Directory, AOL, Netscape, AltaVista, HotBot, Fast/All the Web, Lycos, Direct Hit, Overture (formerly Goto), and Excite/WebCrawler.
(Note: Yahoo!, Looksmart, and Open Directory are not actually search engines but directories. For simplicity's sake, we'll refer to them as search engines in this article.)

You should ignore all the Internet companies and services that offer submission to over 400 search engines. While this sounds great, they're basically just a waste of time and a way of taking your money. Focus on the Top 15 and your search engine game will head in the right direction.

A "doorway" page is simply an information page created for ranking highly in the search engines on a particular keyword phrase. A doorway page serves two primary purposes:

1) To highlight your keyword phrase and rank highly in the search engines.
2) To provide quality information for your website visitor.

Be mindful of fulfilling this second purpose, otherwise search engines may banish your website for trying to trick their ranking system. Ideally, a doorway page is text-only and has few or no images, no frames, and no dynamic elements. Effective forms of a doorway page are a site-map page, an article on your website, and a completely separate website, with new domain and hosting, that is dedicated solely to your optimal keyword phrase.

Before you even begin the search engine game, make sure your web host provides detailed statistics on your website. Specifically, you will need keyword referral stats showing what keywords are referred to your website from each search engine. You can use these keyword stats to track the success/failure of your selected keyword phrases and what search engine moves are working. If your web host does not provide these kinds of stats, ask them how you can get them added or look for a new host.

In summary, search engine positioning is a game of many challenges. You test and retest your optimal keyword phrases, build your link popularity, ensure your listing on the Top 15 search engines, and create various forms of doorway page attraction. At each step you measure your results and learn better ways of playing the game. You have the choice of learning the rules and playing the game yourself, or hiring a search engine professional to play and win the game for you. Either way, the best results come when you thrive on the challenge of playing the search engine game and playing to win.