When I am designing a website for a client, I often get asked about keywords, search engine placement and “how do I get onto page 1 of google?” I am not an expert in SEO (search engine placement), but as a designer and consultant it is important to know enough to get my clients website off to a good start.

For many of my clients, branding and design aesthetic is more important than a high ranking page. It’s always important to think about your website and search engine placement with in your overall marketing strategy. If you have just launched a line of high end handbags, your priority is visibility to social networks, trunkshows, magazines and other tastemakers. A kick-ass website that showcases your work is going to be more important than a text heavy website with a high ranking – but that’s just my opinion.

Here are the basics for optimizing your website for search engines:

1. Title: (Very important) Website title, one for the whole website
2. Meta Description: (Important) Unique to each page, this helps placement and reinforce content on the page. You can use the same description on each page if it is relative to that page. However, you can customize the description of each page which is useful in SEO (search engine placement)
3. Page content: Text should be relative to your products and/or services.
4. Alt Tags: Images should always have ALT tags, this is important for both accessibilty and for search engines, such as google.
4. Header Tags H1, H2, etc: These tags can be important as they inform the search engine what is important on the page.
5. Meta Keywords: These are no longer very important because very few search engines use them, google doesn’t. Still your might as well add them to your website, just don’t spend too much time on them.

For more information about search engine placement, search for SEO and checkout searchenginewatch.com