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Putting a match to the fuel that is PageRank.

The content. Before you create your META tags, look at the content of your page. As I mentioned above, by content I mean text. If you only have graphic elements on your page, get some text in there, and the more the better (within reason of course, don't have more than 50-100K of code for your page, too much is not all that great either…)

When you are writing your content, you should think about what people could be typing into the search box on Google.

Are people looking for:

• Graphics, illustrations, art, pictures, "pix" or images?
   
• Car/cars? (Google treats the plural and singular version of words as separate queries.)
   
• Web site/Website (The structure of words are also separate queries in Google.)
   
• Color/Colour (English US/English UK). Europeans are taught the British spelling of words.

Spelling:

• Since some people spell worse than I do, you can use commonly misspelled words on your Web site to get a jump on these people.
   
• Sometime people just don't know… is it Russell Crowe or Russell Crow?

>>> Perhaps using misspelled words on a business Web site where you are offering writing services is not all that clever… Using the term "cool pix" on a Web site where you are trying to sell 16th century paintings might not be all that bright either, even though you might get more hits from it. So think about your target audience and the impression you are trying to make.

The formatting of text.

When you write your content, note that Google treats the following types of text as more important than "normal" text (this varies in significance from month to month):

• Bold, Italics, Underline
   
• The H1, H2, H3 html tags
   
• Text right at the beginning and at the end of the document. (If you do your layout using tables, note that Google reads the content top-left to right (or in the order everything appears in the code itself.))
   
• Links with anchor text

>>> You should try to get your most important Keywords in these areas.

The naming of things.

The domain name is very important to Google! A domain name like: "Sithlord666.com" might sound really cool, but "Buypuppies.com" is more useful if you are targeting people who are looking for puppies. This way you get your important Keywords into the domain name itself, and whenever someone links to your Web site you automatically get those important "anchor-text" Keywords in there.

Until last month Google did not recognize (or did not give the same importance to) compound words like "Buypuppies.com" as it did to hyphenated domains like "Buy-puppies.com" But now it seems to give the same importance to both.

>>> A business Web site will have an easier time to establish (and users will have an easier time to remember) a brand name like "Books.com" than "Super-cheap-books-shipped-for-free.com"

Other things that might get search engines attention

How about:

• Naming folder, files based on Keywords?
   
• Naming images based on Keywords?
   
• Naming externally linked files based on Keywords?
   
• Naming sound files based on Keywords?
   
• Naming your CSS files based on Keywords?
   
• Naming you internal links based on Keywords?
   
• Using a keyword or two in the Alt-text for your images?
  
  Hyphens "-" are treated as spaces by Google, which give the opportunity to use them to your advantage. An item named: "puppies-for-sale" could be more useful than something named: "item2."

The density of Keywords in the content. Last but not least, do a search, for example "Russell Crowe", on Google and look at the top ranking page results, and where and how many times his name is mentioned on these pages…

The words you target have to be part of the page more than one or two times, at least if you are competing with other Web sites for the same keyword(s).

It might do you more harm than good to repeat Keywords in the text and tags too many times, Google could penalize you for it. Get the Keywords in there but still try to keep your use of language looking as natural as possible. If a human editor would not object to the content, Google will probably not either.

I'm not sure what the optimal percentage is for the density of Keywords, but I have seen numbers spanning between 5-8%.

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