Here is my wrap-up of the most useful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tips. These tips are purely for content writers. Web designers and developers have another set of rules that they must adhere to when designing and coding webpages.

1. Choose keyword phrases
   The very first step before you do anything else is to choose keyword phrases. These should be phrases of two or more words. Single keywords don't work, e.g: Instead of "trees" use "native trees, potted trees, tree nursery". Try and get in to the psyche of the person who is trying to find your services on the web, and try and guess the keywords they would choose when searching. Don't choose keywords that won't appear at least once in your website, they won't be considered
2. Include your keyword phrases in your page
   Now get your copy-writing hat on and write some text that includes at least some of the keyword phrases you have chosen in step 1, e.g: "We sell a wonderful selection of native trees and other potted trees in our tree nursery. Come and have a look around!" This copy should be at least 200 words long and must be displayed prominently on your front-page to be considered by search engines, just adding a keywords tag or hiding the text somewhere won't work.
3. Include your keyword phrases in the meta-tags
   Include at least a couple of your chosen keyword phrases in the Title, Meta-Description and Meta-Keywords tags, but don't go overboard. The text must still read well (except in the case of the Meta-keywords tag). Here are the suggested lengths for the meta tags:
   TITLE: 50-80 characters
   META-DESCRIPTION: No more than 250 characters
   META-KEYWORDS: No more than 1024 characters

Here are some links to SEO tip pages:

• http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm?print=1
• http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html