Search Engine Optimization is like shouting on the Internet

Only you don't make a sound.

When you optimize a site for search engines, you are ranking your site high up in the list when potential visitors search on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines for your site.

Optimally, excuse the pun, you want your listing to be on the first page and high enough on the list above the fold - the fold being the next section of the page when you scroll down.

Why? Because most people when searching for something rarely scroll down and even fewer go to the second and subsequent pages for the topic they are searching. You want to be as high up on the page as possible, even first, which is the best position.

So how do you optimize your site to increase your ranking on the search engines? Here are some things you can do.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases - think of as many keywords that accurately describes the subject, theme, purpose and topic of your site. Place most of those words preferably in the first three paragraphs of your blog posts or home page making sure your content is still meaningful and readable.

Take the same keywords and phrases and place them in the title and meta data tags in the HTML, CSS or PHP script of your web site or blog. Most blog sites have directions on how to do this or you can ask your webmaster to do it for you.

If you are not a literary type and stumped for keywords and keyword phrase combinations, here are free keyword tools from seobook.com:

• Google's Search-Based Keyword Tool
• Google's Traffic Estimator
• Google's AdWords Keyword Tool
• Microsoft's Ad Intelligence (which is a plug-in for Microsoft Excel)

I like Google's Adwords Keyword Tool because it shows you which keywords are used the most by users of the Google Search Engine. You can put in one or several words and the tool will tell you what words get the highest hits on their search engine.

For example, if you put in literary books the following keywords come up with the highest hits:

books
literary books
literary criticism books
literature books

Give it try. You will be surprised the keywords people use to find things on the Internet.