Here are seven tips that will improve your website’s search engine rankings:

1. Create accurate, descriptive page titles (title tag).
2. Use the page description meta tag and have different (unique) descriptions for each page on your site.
3. Make sure your site is easy to navigate.
4. Have good content and don’t overload your copy with keywords — you should be creating web content for your site visitors not for search engines.
5. Make your URLs easy to understand — use relevant words and try for easy to remember filenames.
6. Use alt tags to describe your images.
7. Try to build inbound links back to your site, but make sure they are quality links (more about that shortly).

I could go on and on, but I don’t need to — in depth information on SEO best practices can be found at Google’s Webmaster Central, where you can find SEO tips and a PDF titled “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” Bing also has a set of Webmaster’s Tools and best practices for SEO.

Just remember that SEO is not something you do once and then abandon. You have to work at it, and pay attention to what works, abandoning what doesn’t.

Now about those inbound links …

Getting a lot of inbound links to your website can help it rise in organic search rankings, but Google wants those to be legitimate links. For instance, if you have an online book store and book publishers and reviewers are linking to it, those would be legitimate links and would increase your site’s visibility. But inbound links to your book selling site that originate from link farms are not legitimate. You know those web pages, the ones you stumble across that are nothing but a list of links? Those are link farms. And you know those emails you get, where people ask you to trade links (“I’ll link to your site and you link to mine?”) — they’re not legitimate links in Google’s eyes, either. They call that “black hat” optimization, and Google hates it.

To find out what happens when you practice “black hat” SEO techniques and get caught by Google, read The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, an article that tells the story of how Google responded when J.C. Penney was caught using paid links to increase its organic search rankings. It’s a long article, but worth the read (thousands of others must agree as — at the time of this post’s writing — it was the most popular emailed article on the NY Times website).

“If you own or manage a website, you are responsible for that website’s security. Compromised websites can infect visitors with badware, and are commonly blacklisted by search engines, web browsers, and security vendors. Many legitimate websites are the targets of malicious hacking attacks, during which code linking directly to badware is inserted onto an otherwise innocent, but poorly secured, website.” (StopBadware.org)

On a regular basis, all website owners/administrators should check their sites for badware by using these tools:

• Google’s Safebrowsing Diagnostic Tool: To test your site, use the following URL, but replace “example.com” with the name of your site:
  • http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=example.com
  • If I wanted to check my site, I would enter: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=rmfcommunications.com

• Check to see if your site is listed in the Badwear Website Clearinghouse at StopBadware.org.
• View your domain’s site report at McAfee SiteAdvisor.

Hopefully, your website will pass these diagnostic tests. However, if you do find badware, you’ll need to remove it. You can find tips for doing this at StopBadware and BadwareBusters.

WordPress users can find tips on keeping WordPress installations secure at “Hardening WordPress.”

Once you’ve removed the badware from your site, you should request a review of your website from the services that have issued warnings: Google, StopBadware, and/or SiteAdvisor. If you don’t, visitors to your website may see the following warning: “This site may hurt your computer.”

And that is the source of your problem: a website that looks good in one web browser, might not look good in another web browser. I call this the “Browser Woes.”

Let me explain.

A web browser is the software program you use to view web pages; you’re using one right now to read this article. Many people are surprised to learn that not everyone uses IE. In fact, there are many web browsers available — the most popular are IE, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. Complicating matters is the fact that not everyone uses the most current version of a browser, so while you might be using the current version of IE (8.0), someone else might still be using IE 6.0. Websites also perform differently on different platforms (Windows, Linux, MAC OS, etc.).

Experienced web designers know that they have to test websites to be sure they work and look good in, at least, the most popular web browsers. When I’m creating a website, I use software to simulate how it will perform in various browsers. I also test it on different computers — both Macs and PCs. But what if you can’t do that? How can you test your website? Submit it to BrowserShots. Here is how the service is explained on its home page:

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Browser shots is easy to use: enter the URL of your site and select the web browsers and platforms you want to check. Within 30 minutes, you’ll get a series of screenshots comparing, for example, how your website looks on a PC using Google Chrome to how it looks on a Mac using Firefox. Browsershots also allows you to click on each screenshot to see a larger image.

If you’re satisfied that your website looks good across the most popular browsers, you can launch it to the world. But if you see a problem, you’ll have to determine what is causing it, correct it, and resubmit the website to BrowserShots for another check.

If you notice that your site looks good in Firefox, but not IE (this is one of the most common problems web designers face), you might be tempted to simply slap a disclaimer on your website — something to this effect:

“This site works best in Firefox 3.0. Download it here.”

Don’t do it. You’re asking your visitor to take an extra step to view your site. And there’s a good chance that she might leave and go to a competitor’s site. Instead, fix the problem (try searching the web for help if you can’t figure it out on your own) or, if you can’t correct it, revise the website so the problem is eliminated.