1. Choose the niche target of your website. Don’t just put up a site for travel. Make it a site for travel to Ireland. Better yet, make it a site for discounted travel to Ireland. Even better, make it for discounted family travel packages to Ireland. Each narrowing of the target reduces the competition.

2. Choose a domain name that relates to your target words. In the example above, I might want
traveltoireland.com. Unfortunately, someone beat us to that site, so now we have to play with some ideas. Maybe we can still get traveltoireland.net. Unfortunately, someone beat us to that one too. Don’t give up hope. There are traveltoireland.biz, traveltoireland.us, and traveltoireland.ws to look at. In fact, I just took a look and all three of those are available. If they weren’t, maybe we could have used irelandtravel.com or familytraveltoireland.com although that is getting a bit long…particularly if we want to put it on a business card or on a magnetic sign on our car.

3. Pick a title for your website that includes the basic idea and the words, keywords, that you hope people will search on. Don’t just stick up the words, however. Make it a headline. It will be the first thing the search engine and the human learn about your site. Make it a headline that will catch both their eyes…er…sensory apparatus. “Travel to Ireland on a dollar a day!”

4. Create a description that includes and expands the information and keywords stated in the title. Some search engines will display the first few words on a site, but some will display the description Meta tag. “Travel to Ireland does not have to be expensive. Learn how you can visit the Emerald Isle for as little as a dollar a day.”

5. List five to ten keywords related to your subject. Make these words that will appear logically in the content of the site. “travel, Ireland, travel to Ireland”

6. Provide logical, relevant, valuable content throughout the site. Make sure your keywords appear at intervals, but do not overuse them. Also make sure they appear in the first few lines of your site. “Welcome to our site where you will learn how to travel to Ireland without breaking the bank.”

These are just the first steps towards search engine optimization. There is more to learn, such as putting a statement with your keywords in headline form near the top of the page. You can find other high-ranking sites with content relative to yours who might be able to provide a link to your site, but don’t hope for it at first. They usually want to link to sites as powerful as they are.
The major key to search engine optimization still seems to be quality content provided in a consistent, rational package. Even some fairly simple sites rank well because they can provide the goods. However, a ton of broken links and a lot of coding errors coupled with horrible site navigation can make it difficult for the search engine to find its way around, much less recommend the site to its users.

Above all, do not stop with this small article. There are many sites offering information and even courses on search engine optimization. There are companies that specialize in search engine optimization for a fee. To get started, read some of the articles posted at sites such as EzineArticles.com on the subject. I just checked, and they have over 8,000 articles which mention the subject. Of course, some of those might not have anything to do with search engine optimization, but we knew that. That’s just the way search engines are! One important step in SEO is to have a professional evaluation of the effectiveness of your website and to have a good search engine submission tool. Both of these can be found at Apex Pacific.