SEO: the five essentials

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has come of age. Like any new specialty, the jargon can seem confusing, but getting ‘eyes to your site' has principles that are no more complex than a price promotion in the weekend paper.

Here are 5 essentials when applying SEO:

1. Google rules. You don't.

The code on your site needs to support the Google crawler – when it visits, there should be no doubt about how you want to be perceived. Images mean very little to a search engine, so focus on what has now become ‘search engine-friendly' copy.

2. Titles are important

The title tags and Meta tags are the code that is not displayed to a browser, but read by the search engine. These tags are made up of words (called terms) - they should be relevant to what you think people will search for to get to your site.

3. Content is king

Fresh content is a major turn-on for search engines. Every time something changes on your site, it leaves a time code. That's why you will often find a news item for a topic ranking quite high in your search – that's because if Google thinks you have fresh, frequent content, it will visit often. Blogs are great to increase ranking – they give you fresh content without the effort. But at the end of the day, you may need to – horror of horrors – write something original.

4. Reverse is the way forward

Google places a lot of importance on how many inbound links you have (these are links from other sites to your site). Although these can (and sometimes should) be purchased, the challenge is to create a site that people will want to link to.

5. When you're in the sandbox, take a penalty shot.

For the first six months, Google will not rank you – it's called a ‘sandbox'. During this interim period, you will need to invest in paid-for ads (called Sponsored links on the right hand side of your Google screen). All the major search engines have advertising programmes that are affordable even to the small start-up.