Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of maximizing a website’s significance to search engine searches, usually performed using the major three search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo! This involves formative which keywords are most descriptive to what the site offers and working those keywords into the content and back-end code to make the site more familiar to search engines.

1 Give each page a very specific name. If a page of Bob’s online thingamajig store is dedicated to left handed widgets only, then the page should be named something like “left_handed_widgets.html” as opposed to some arbitrary name only Bob would recognize like “lhw.html.”

2 Register a domain name that uses keywords relevant to your product or site topic, because that domain name will be the root of every page URL in your site. If Bob sells widgets online Bob should register a name such as online-widgets.com or even bobs-widget-store.com. This way Bob’s website relevance to widgets is immediately recognizable to the search engine.

3 Avoid dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs are generated by database driven sites which create pages by using various script systems, usually as the result of an internal search within the site, such as the left-handed widget.

Tips & cautions

1. Search engines “crawl” websites to determine their bearing by following the web site’s external and internal links. It makes sense that the site’s various page URLs should be SEO friendly.

2. The problem with dynamic URLs is that the scripts creating them usually produce pages whose names are apparently full of gibberish, both to people and search engines.