1. Be sure the first few lines of your first paragraph can be used as a description of your page. Some search engines use these first few sentences as the search results description instead of the META DESCRIPTION TAG.

2. Put some less common keywords or synonyms of highly-used keywords throughout the main body text. Less competition will result in your site being listed higher on the search engine results page.

3. Name web pages after your most important keyword phrase. Separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores. If the keyword phrase is “search engine rankings,” then name the page:

www.yoursite.com/search-engine-rankings.html

4. Your graphics should be named after keyword phrases. Separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores.

5. Ask sites that link to your competitors to link to your site. To determine which sites are linking to your competitors, type “link:” followed by the competitors’ domain name into a search engine.

link:www.competitorsite.com