Optimizing a Site

There are certain things that will help your site reach a better position. Can you give a link?

General guidelines:

1. Use html markup on your pages. For titles use h1 and stong for keywordsfor example. This is important for Google.
2. Name your urls properly. For example instead of abt.htm, use about about_our_ice_cream_factory.htm. This will help especially on msn and yahoo.
3. Don't try to trick the bots. Don't overpopulate your page with the same keyword, especially don't use the mile long meta tags, the white text on white background trick, etc.
4. Try to make your site single minded. If you're about ice-cream, make sure you don't have pages about automobiles or politics. Specialized sites get better ranking and for a good reason.
5. Ask your friends to link to you, but only if their sites are related in their subject. For example many members linked to creativebits in their blogs and personal porti sites that are about visual communication. That boosted cb's page rank to 6. I'm very grateful for that. Put your site in your signature. cb will help to boost your page rank.
6. Try to avoid using Flash and too many images for the main content. Use html that is easy to digest by bots.
7. Use google sitemap to make sure all your pages are indexed properly.
8. Be patient and provide good content regularly.
9. Apparently somebody said the other day here that you should not submit your site to Google, but let it pick it up from another site.

I wrote a speculative post about this subject.

Make good use of those title tags! If you sell pet supplies, don't have your contact page title to be "contact us", make it be "contact xxxx pet supply store"

cool. thanks so much for all the help!