There are many factors that come into play when looking to market your site via search engines. In this article I'll highlight the fundamentals and share a few "must haves" for any successful SEO campaign. Any time you run a search online, your results are prioritized based on several factors. these include:

How your site is built?

Is the code well written? Are you using conventional, easy to identify naming in your stylesheets (css)? Is there extensive use of flash on your site (flash content is unreadable by the search engines, although there are some workarounds to help) Is all critical data placed within the first 100 lines of your html code?

How is your content?

Is the bodycopy (text) on your pages rich with well chosen keywords and phrases? Are you utilizing these keywords in your page titles? Often during web design and development, in a client's rush just to get something online quickly, well thought out content is sacrificed in the interest of speed. With Search engine optimization well planned content is a must.

Meta content

No this is not a muscle building supplement. This is the "hidden" content on your website that users will never see but search engines scour and evaluate. Key meta-data includes meta-description (engines rarely look at meta-keyword tags) image-alt tags and page titles. All of this is code the user rarely sees but search engines scrutinize. All of these should be rich with keywords and phrases.

Link popularity

This is just like junior high, everyone wants to be popular and he who has the most friends wins. In evaluating your site search engines also consider how many inbound links you have (how many other websites are linking to yours). The engines figure that if dozens or hundreds of other sites are linking to you, then your site must be substantial and you get a higher ranking in peoples search results. Successful search engine strategies include plans to seek out partner websites that are willing link to you.

Well there are the basics. There are plenty of additional tactics including pay-per-click campaigns via yahoo and google but since this is a 101 conversation we'll keep it simple. If you have any questions about search engine marketing please get in touch!