The web is full of companies that are jumping at the opportunity to provide SEO services to website newbies. Many companies charge as much as $2000 dollars a month just to make your new site friendly to Google, Bing and any other major search engine.

The truth of the matter is that building a SEO friendly website is really not complicated and quite inexpensive as long as you stick to a few basic rules that so many people forget.

To start with, the <title> </title> tag wording is extremely important during the design process. Some SEO experts have said that the <title> tag on any given website can influence the search engine ranking results up to 60% which is huge. By simply ignoring what is written in this tag you can send your new website to an early death.

What is generally recommended with <title> tags is to put 5 to 7 keywords that describe the contents of the website. For example, you are creating a website that sells apples and oranges. The following wording in your <title> tag should NEVER look like this:

<title>This website sells apples and oranges</title>

This would be an AWFUL description to use for your website because you are wasting keyword space and it looks pretty boring as well. A much better example would be something like this:

<title>Buy Apples and Oranges Online</title>

Also remember that your Meta Name tag is also an important factor that search engines often use to find out what your website is all about. Here is an example of what a Meta Name tag looks like.

META NAME="description" content="My website sells apples and oranges. We also offer bananas from time to time."/>

The Meta Name tag should have just a couple of sentences describing more in detail what your site sells but don’t overdo it. I have found that repeating certain keywords in your Meta Name tag description can get your site penalized by Google, Bing and Yahoo. Keep your description simple and make it sound natural.

Your next step in creating a search engine friendly site will be to create high quality written content for your home page. You want to write a few paragraphs explaining to your visitors what your site is and what it promotes. Here is where you can explain to your visitors why they should trust you and what you can offer them that other competitors can’t. Again, make this sound natural if you want to avoid getting penalized. A BAD example of poorly written content that will hurt your site is the following:

“Thank you for visiting ApplesandOranges.com. We offer apples and oranges for sale so that you can get the best prices around on all your apple and orange needs. We know how people like apples and oranges so our apples and oranges are guaranteed to be the tastiest around.”

You will be surprised at how many “web SEO experts” use this poor style of writing in order to attract search engines even today. Ten years ago this did actually work but now it is a guaranteed way to get your site penalized.

A much BETTER example of quality website text writing would look something like this:

“Welcome to ApplesandOranges.com. We are great source on the Internet to find apples, oranges, bananas and even more. We understand how important it is for our customers to have the highest quality fruit and the best prices. That is why we stand behind everything we sell 100% so that you can purchase exactly what you need without every worrying about what you will receive.”

The difference in quality website texts and complete junk is pretty easy to identify once you know what to look for so make sure your content is written in a way that looks professional and impressive.

Believe it or not these three areas are the main areas to focus on when creating a new website. Backlinks from other quality websites are important for the future growth of your website but is something that really should not be worried about in the beginning. There are plenty of websites on the Internet that rank under some pretty good keywords while having few or even no backlinks whatsoever.

Also keep in mind that once you create your site, it can take Google, Bing and Yahoo about 2 to 4 weeks to actually index your site and another 3 to 6 months before you will actually see it pop up under any relevant keywords.

During that time, it is extremely important to promote your website by creating articles on your site related to the main theme of your site. Also remember to create an “About Us” page on the site which is pretty important in letting people find out more about your company as well as establishing your site as a reputable place to visit.

If you need a good reference site to go in order to see what search engines like then check out one that I recently created, VPS Web Hostings. You can “right click” with your mouse on the site and then go to “View Page Source” if you are using Firefox or “View Source” if you are using Internet Explorer. That way you can see the encoding of the site to get a better idea of how to build your website.

Thanks for reading the article and good luck on your website adventures.