If you are setting up a website or blog, follow these simple rules to improve search engine rankings of your site. You can also follow these techniques if your website is not ranked high in search engines for certain keywords. Concentrate on the home page of your site and once you learn the techniques, you will be able to apply them to the other pages of your site that will have multiple high ranking pages.

1. Find keywords (or key phrases) relevant to your website. Go to the overture keyword selector tool (type key phrase overture inventory in Google) and check the popularity of the keywords you want to use. Avoid highly popular keywords. Highly popular keywords are very competitive and the least popular keywords are search engine traffic starved.

Select a dozen keywords and key phrases from the middle of the list. This is a very important exercise and you should spend at least a couple of hours, if not more, researching different keywords. While you are researching your keywords, check your competitors by doing a search in a couple of popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., using those keywords. Keep a record of your competitors' urls and other information because you don't want to waste your time doing the same search again in the near future.

2. Use the keywords you selected into the meta tags of your home page. Meta tags are located in the head section of a web page. Go to one of your competitor's website and select View and then Source from your web browser's menu to view the html source of the web page. You will see the meta elements.

The two important meta tags are keywords and description meta tags. Don't leave them blank. You can list your keywords, separated by comma, in the keywords meta tag. Construct a catchy description using your keywords for the description meta tag.

3. Use the keywords in your title tag. The text you use in the title tag appears in the title bar of the web browser. The title tag should be less than 64 characters long. Again, the key is to use a meaningful title using the keywords. Don't just make a laundry list of your keywords for the title tag.

The title tag and your meta description may end up in many search engine listings. So, spend sometime to make these two elements interesting, meaningful, and relevant to your site.

4. Use the keywords in top heading (h1) tags of your page. Use one keyword (or a key phrase) for each h1 tag. Use these h1 tags for the headings of your contents.

5. In the home page content, use bold, using the strong html element, to highlight some of your keywords.

6. Italicize some of the keywords in your page.

7. Use the keywords in alt tags of images. You should always use the alt tag for all images.

8. Encourage others to use the keywords for text anchors when they link back to your site. Better yet, publish your own short link text with keyword anchors, bold and italicized key phrases and give it away for link exchanges.

9. If possible, use the keywords in your domain name. Try different arrangements of the keywords to come up with an available domain name that you can register.

10. If you are using php or asp or any other web programming language for your dynamic website, make your url search engine friendly using url rewrite techniques. Search the phrase url rewrite in Google to know more about url rewrite.

Keep in mind these simple rules every time you want to launch a website. Spending a few days upfront in the preparation of your site will pay off in the long run with better search engine rankings.

The keyword research tips presented here are your building blocks for getting ranked higher in the search engines. Search engine spiders scan a page in a way that makes it important to place your keywords where they will be detected and recognized as a keyword, most importantly in the text, not in the graphics, so that your article will come up when someone searches for that keyword.

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word that is going to be placed in your article several times. When a spider sees that you have a word placed several times in an article, it will determine that your page may be useful to users that search for such a keyword.

Over Optimizing Your Articles...not good.

It is important to note that there is also such a thing as over optimizing your articles for particular words, this is known as "keyword stuffing". Do not overlook this useful keyword research tip. When you put the same keywords in an article too many times, a spider will detect that you are trying to trick it into placing your article high in the search engine results for that word, and will instead penalize your site by banning your site or a particular page.

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is how many times your keyword is placed in your article. Most use a percentage to determine how many times they will put a keyword in an article. For instance, if you have a 400 word article and want to achieve a keyword density of 5%, then you will need to have the keyword in your article exactly 20 times. This is way too much in my opinion. 2% is more reasonable. Each webmaster as their own density that they like to achieve based on past results. As long as you don't over optimize and you are making good profit from your rankings, then you can choose whatever keyword density you like. The best keyword research tip here is to use your keywords in a natural way. You don't want your readers to stop reading your articles halfway through it because they feel bored by a repetitious litany of the same keyword phrase.

The Right Density

No matter what exact density you choose, it is important to place keywords in a way that they are more prominent in the beginning and the end of your article. Having the right keyword density in your article makes it more likely that your article will rise in the search engine results and be seen by more web surfers.

The question can look like very stupid and having no meaning to it, but had you ever thought of that the catchy headline can make your posts look better. Many great articles go unnoticed on social bookmarking sites because their headline is not catchy enough. Your reader is going to decide to read your articles or not by your Headline and if it is not attractive enough he will not waste his time on article even though it is good article.
Your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a reader. With a good headline or post title you can force your reader with read me effect. suppose that 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece. The better the headline, the better your odds of beating the averages and getting what you have written would be read by larger percentage of people.
If your percentage of traffic is coming through social networking sites like tweeter, deli.cio.us, stumbleupon etc and your post title is not good enough then how can you get good traffic flow to your blog. People will  directly neglect your article/s causing you your potential readers.
There may a condition occur that your Headline appeals more from your post than that you are providing to the readers. In such cases again its your responsibility to write a good post with a good header.

I am ready with my blog ! I am regularly posting on my blog ! I am able to generate small amount of traffic ! whats next ???
Next thing comes in the way is quality of your blog.
What does it mean to maintain or improve quality of your blog?

Navigation

Navigation is nothing but a visitor or your reader can navigate(travel) through your web pages or blog. Easy navigation allows readers to get quicker to place where they want to go. If your blog is difficult to navigate people will be unhappy and will rarely visit your blogs. Make direct links to your home page, your visitor/reader can be able to travel through pages easily and without getting troubles.


Categorization
 
Consider yourself in the super market and the supermarket owner does not have maintained a separate sections for each categories of products then think that what would you do to find a particular item from that shop. The chances of finding the thing are very less unless you are very lucky or you would prefer to go to place where you can get that thing easily. Same is the thing with your blog, you should arrange your blog contents properly and better categorize them accordingly. Your reader should be able to find what contents he wants to read and should found his requirements quickly else he will leave your place(blog).

Ad Placements

About more than 95% people write blogs for making money by monetizing their blogs. Why not ? as you are taking efforts to doing it you should get revenue out of it. But placing advertise on wrong places on your blog will make it irritating to the readers or the improperly placed ads can cut their reading. You do advertising but place them separate from your contents and do not use your most portion of blog for advertising . It will not help you to generate revenue but it will surely reduce your readers.

Allow Comments

Allowing comments to your blog will make your blog readers to post their feeling, ideas and thoughts about your writing . Comments will help you to improve work and comment writers can be considered as the best critics for your blog if they give their neutral opinion.

Mistakes

Most common mistakes done by new writers are grammar mistakes. If you are making grammar mistakes in your posts and you are not a good punctual writer then you should work first on your English skills and improve your writing skills.

I am sure these points will help you to improve quality of your blog and will produce good results for you.

Do you want to become a recognized as a expert in your field?  Or you don't have any fields to become expert ? Increase your reading habits, that will help you a lot and will let you know about what can you do better or about what can you write better.If you have read 2-3 books on a particular subject, you should consider yourself aware of that subject more that 70-80 % people in the world know about that subject.

But what if you have read 10 or 12 books on that same subject, taken home study courses, internet trainings,  belong to a clubs and discuss information about this subject with your friends, relatives and family members everyday ? "You are on the way to become an Expert."

Points to remember 

Being an expert does not mean that you are knowing more than anyone else on that subject. Rather it means that you know the subject or the topic of interest more clearly and deeply than people who know little bit or nothing related to that subject.

You do not have to create or invent or discover anything new to become an expert. All you have to do is uncover or discover a better way to explain something that already exists. There is a famous Quote that says "Successful people does not discover new things rather they represent old thing with a new way ".You do so by rearranging , resizing or delivering your system in a unique or new way that makes sense to your audience about you subject.

Research

• The first step to becoming a recognized authority in your field is RESEARCH. What frustrates the customers in your industry? What are their biggest problems or challenges? what should be done to overcome the problem ?

• By researching the answers to those simple questions, you can begin to see what kind of knowledge is in demand. If you're able to acquire the knowledge that will alleviate frustrations and solve problems for people in your industry, YOU will be in demand.

• Don't limit your research to above questions, though. Ask as many questions as you can think of about your target audience, then seek the answers.

• Research your chosen niche as well. Study and put your knowledge into action. Just remember to keep your studies limited and focused on a specific subject.

• The second step is to organize and systemize your knowledge into a variety of formats that your target audience can consume and benefit from.

• One thing you can do is invent your own terminology. Make up fun, creative words that are unique to your information. This gives the impression that you have indeed created something new that people need to pay attention to.

• Another option is to post your certifications or credentials where people can easily see them and be impressed.

• Doctors, lawyers, dentists and psychiatrists hang their diplomas on their office walls to establish themselves as authorities in their particular field. You can do the same by posting your credentials on your website.

That helps your audience recognize you as an authority figure, an EXPERT.