Here are some tips to help you get to the top of the main search engines, ie google, yahoo, msn, and live.com

1. Do not buy a new domain unless you really need to do so. Search engines rate the website they length of time they are owned. You will have to recreate all of the ratings and rankings for the new website as well as redirect the traffic from your old website. This creates a complicated situation when you have experienced the highly rated site in the past and expect to have the same amounts of traffic and rankings with the SEOs.
2. Optimize your new site for your targeted audience not the search engines. The search engines are seeking keywords and phrases while your may not be want to include specific information within your site. Sounds somewhat strange yet there are website owners that do not want to use keywords or phrases within their site since they feel it clutters their site. Target the audience by using blogsites and forums the potential clients will use. Locate those sites and join where you can then use those contacts as new traffic to your site.
3. Research the keywords and phrases you want to use within your website to target your market. Use sites such as KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker, or Google’s Keyword Tool to find what the internet users are using for their web searches in relation to your website. Avoid the common terms since they will become obsolete.
4. Design the website architecture and navigation based on the research of the keywords and phrases. Use categories that use the same information to maximize your website within all the search engines. List within the website specifically the type of service and products you are selling. Be detailed to make the search results more effective. If you sell a certain brand then list the brand name in the webpages.
5. Make your website crawler friendly meaning your site has the ability to gather traffic by having exclusive information directed at your audience with alternative meanings of the words and phrases. Everyone uses different terms do broaden your traffic results by using multiple meanings of words and phrases.
6. Add internal links and clickable images to your website. Add detail descriptions with each link and image so the site visitor will know to use them to get to where they want to go. Make the site user-friendly as much as possible.
7. Write an interesting and intriguing website filled with interesting facts for the site visitor. Target your visitor’s interests with the information you write in the contents of the website to drive the traffic to your site. Avoid using keyword phrases at the top of the pages without the content included in the webpages. This creates a sloppy website and not going to achieve more traffic that will buy your products and services. This will only cause frustration for the site visitors.
8. Verify all the links you have added to your website. Too many sites do not verify the links and end up losing traffic or customers. It creates a frustrating feeling for anyone to click a link and have it give them an error message. Provide adequate links to keep the visitors to your site happy with the information you provide them.
9. Use different keywords. Avoid using the same keyword too much. There are so many different words to use with the same meaning so use the dictionary to find a synonym to broaden the keywords and terms you use in the written content of your site. Update your website content occasionally with new terms and content to keep a fresh site. This is also a process to use when you discover you are drawing traffic to your site. Fix what is not working and improve your site, which you should be monitoring at least weekly for traffic.