Four essential components of Search Engine Optimization

1. Descriptive titles in your html docs. Don't bother putting your domain name in your document title tags. The domain name is already factored into your ranking because it is in the URL, instead use that real estate for whatever keywords you are targetting.

   
   Instead of putting "CheapThumbtacks.com" put "Thumbtacks, Push Pins, Small Sized Nails and other fasteners at low prices".
   

   
   

2. Keyword-rich text and headings in your actual document text. When striving for search engine optimization, be sure to be descriptive and pay close attention to the keywords you are targetting. The preceeding sentence is an example. You may be inclined to simply write "Be sure to", but this is an article about SEO, so I prefixed that sentence with "When striving for SEO, be sure to".
   

   
   You run the risk of your prose appearing more redundant, so you have to weigh this against the actual marketing message of your pages. You are writing for both people and search engine spiders, so you are performing a balancing act.
   

   
   Divide your text into logical sections within the page and use headings with your keywords to demark those sections. In the CheapThumbtacks example, you would have a heading for "thumb tacks", another for "push pins", etc.

   
   

3. meanginful "alt" tags in all your images This one is very much overlooked. People often code their webpages with a simple image tag using a cryptic filename:
   
<IMG SRC="/images/thbtk01_50_white.gif">

   and neglect the all important "alt" tag which spiders will use to categorize that image
   
<IMG SRC="/images/thumbtack.gif" ALT="white ceramic thumbtack">

   
4. Meaningful anchor text in inbound links This is the tough one, because you have less control over how other people link to you than you do over your own website content. A website that links to you with
   
   
<A HREF="http://cheapthumbtacks.com">click here</A>

   
   will do less for you than one that links to you with
   
<A HREF="http://cheapthumbtacks.com">thumbtacks and pushpins</A>

   
   

The other thing I told our customer was that if he was serious about improving his website's search engine rankings, he should seriously consider migrating away from using url forwarding and invest in a web hosting package and use a normal IP address/DNS record for his domain.

Search engines like this far more than deciphering framesets (which is how stealth redirection is implemented, the url forwarder outputs a frameset with one invisible frame and another frame that takes up the entire browser which loads your remote website inside it)

Things that don't give you a whole lot of search engine boost:

• Meta Tags: are no longer used to determine search engine ranking, but some search engines use them when deciding what to display beside your site when it comes up in a search results page.
  
• Search Engine Submission Services: I hope I don't get crucified for this. They're vapourware. And be very very wary of services that purport to guarantee you "page 1 placement" for your keywords. This is more an art than science and there are no guarantees.
  

  
  Some of the tactics offerred by some linkfarms and such to "improve" your rankings may work for a short time, but they may get you banned from the big search engines over the long haul. Not a favourable outcome.