Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the holy grail of websites. Gone are the days of "if you build it they will come," unless someone already knows that your website is there, then you are reliant on search engines like Google to direct visitors to it.

There are five key elements that you can control about your website to get it noticed by the search engines:

1. Accessibility

Make sure that your website code is W3c compliant and doesn't contain any HTML errors. If it has been professionally designed then this shouldn't be the case, but if you have built it yourself using an online package, dreamweaver, or even Word you may have quite a few. Try to limit the use of Flash it may look great, but search engines can't see Flash and so they wont given any benefit to this content

2. Site Key Information

Whilst not as important as they once were, you should make sure that your website has the key 'Meta Tags' stating the title and description of each individual page. All of the page titles and descriptions should be relevant to the individual page and should support a specific topic. You should have clear architecture with each page filed under a relevant section, and an easily readable sitemap.

3. Keywords

Choosing the right keywords to emphasis on your site is key to the success of your SEO campaign. It is best to use "key phrases" rather than just key words, and to focus on just 2 or 3 rather than a shotgun blast of everything you think someone might search for. Use the free Google Keyword Tool to help you find the phrases that your customers are searching for. Another great tip is to 'be local' instead of trying to be the top of the google rankings for 'MOT's', try instead for the key phrase 'MOT your town' e.g. 'MOT High Wycombe' as you have a much higher success of achieving this, and it is most likely that the person who finds your website actually wants your services.

4. Content

Don't bulk your content out with meaningless words and affiliate links to other peoples articles. Try to create unique, interesting content that your visitor is going to want to read, and that you are an expert in. Google is an 'intelligent' search engine, so try to think of it as any other human visitor and 9 times out of 10 you will capture the interest of both at the same time.

5. Inbound Links

We discuss this in greater detail in our section on "Online Directories," the basic premise is that you can convince Google that your website is popular by "borrowing popularity" from other websites. In other words if another popular website is telling its visitors to visit your website then Google will start thinking that your website is worth visiting too. It's a little more complicated than that, so don't just go signing yourself up to having links on any old website, try to keep it to related web sites so that the links are targeted and not perceived as spam or junk.