In order to achieve a high search engine listing, your web page should be able to persuade the search engine algorithms that its content is relevant to the search term being used by the search engine user seeking information.

There are several ways in which that can be achieved, although the best approach to take is to look after the basics and then at the major aspects of your web pages that the search engines are looking for.  The first point to be aware of is that search engines, such as Google, list each of your web pages separately.  They do not list entire websites, or domains.  Each individual page should therefore be optimized as an individual entity.

The basics that Google definitely look at are the title tags and the description and heading meta tags. Therefore, make sure that the title of the page is in title tags, and that the main heading is contained within H1 tags, with sub headings in H2 tags. I am not sure if H3 and lower headings do you much good, but use them rather than nothing at all.

The keyword meta tags are not used by the major search engines:  Google will determine the important keywords for your page from the title, headings and the text on the page.  The two major aspects of Google’s BigDaddy algorithm are relevance of the content to the search term being used and link density.

Relevance is determined not only by your title and heading, but also in the content.  Your main keyword should be used in the first 100 characters and in your final paragraph.  However, your page should be no more than 500 – 1000 words. Google does check the last paragraph to make sure that relevance continues to the end of the page, but might not pay too much attention to everything in between if you vocabulary is related to the main theme.

That is the basis of the so-called LSI aspect of the algorithm. It will check your vocabulary for words related to the main search term (keyword) used by the searcher, not only for the keyword itself.  Write as if you were speaking about the subject, and do not overuse your keyword or your page will given a poor listing, if it is listed at all.

Link density is very important, and even a page with poor content can get a good search engine listing if it has a lot of other web pages linking back to it.  The search engines take the view that if lots of other sites provide a link to your web page, then it must be regarded highly by others. There are weaknesses in this argument, but no doubt Google are working on them.  Reciprocal links, for example, and link farms are now under investigation, and if all your links are reciprocal (that is a link for a link arrangement),  you will not do well.

Article marketing is one good way of improving your link density, since you get one-way back-links for every article that is accepted for publication by each article directory.  You also have the opportunity of links back to your web pages from anybody who considers your article authoritative enough for them to copy it to their own website.  This is assuming, of course, that you have included a link back to your site from the author’s resource section of the article.

You can also gain links by submitting your website to web directories, each link generally being to your home page.  This is no bad thing, since home or index pages are normally those highest listed of all the pages comprising your website. Some directories offer free listings, and others, mainly those with high Google PageRank themselves,  charge. You have to decide if the listing is worth the cost, and also that your website is listed on a page that itself has a high PageRank. You get a share of the Google Page rank of the page that your link is placed on, not of the high ranking of the home page of the website.

Also of importance in your search engine listing is the linking structure within your own website,.  You can arrange that to provide as high as possible a PageRank to any particular page in your site that you choose. Most choose their home page to concentrate on, since if that gets a Page 1 listing, visitors will have the opportunity to visit your entire website.

The same can be said of any page, but the home page is generally the easiest to gain a high listing with. This is because it is usually designed round the strongest keyword, and your website URL normally gets more online exposure than an internal page.

These are the main steps you can take in your attempt to get a high search engine listing, and are certainly the ones on which most of your efforts should concentrated. Once you have done all that you can with these, then you can check out some of the more minor aspects of SEO. You can find out what these are by keeping tabs on the Google blogs, and the various other SEO forums that can be found online.