Every now and then I like to fluff up the pillows and put my head down, so to speak, to get back to the basic techniques of search engine optimization.

Over the years, SEO has changed considerably and what worked back in 1998 doesn’t work today and can even get your site banned for spamming activities.

Let’s take a look at the Search Engine Optimization Techniques from yesteryear…

~1998

• Titles were still important back then, but feel free to stuff them with as many keywords as you want – and it didnt matter if they were relevant to your site either
• Meta Keywords – Many search engines looked at these first!  Can you believe that.  A simple way to rank for Britney Spears!  Just fill this meta keywords with all variations you can think of it
• Content could contain lines of links too.  So could you meta description tag.  You could do whatever you wanted back then with no risk. 
• Of course, your customers still wouldn’t like your site, but who cares you were getting 250 000 hits a month!

~2010

• Titles are still high on the agenda for search engines, and using a proper SEO technique to optmize them is crucial
• Your main keyword must be at the front of the tag
• Use a synonym or money keyword in the middle
• end with your company name for branding purposes
• Meta Keywords are not looked at by most of the major search engines.  Rumour has it Ask still looks at the tag, but their market share is less that 15% in the US, and non existent in Australia.
• Meta Description is largely ignored as a ranking factor, but can have large effects on conversions.  Still it is good to have your keyword in there and a call to action, such as click here to buy online etc at the end of the line.  Keep it concise though, 2 lines or so, 150 characters.  Also, remember that Google and other search engines may only display a portion of it or not display it all, opting for a paragraph or segment of text that’s on the page itself
• Content – the king of ranking.  Still, to this day, many believe that content is at the top of the algorthym food chain.  The main course!  Keep your content fresh and try make it unique – veyr hard to do, but even if you take an idea or concept from one place you can always make it yourself
• Content Structure is a big technique when it comes to search engine optimisation.  Use heading tags in order – h1, h2, h3, even though some suggest there is more value in the other h tags than there is in an h1, it is still good to try keep them in order.  Also, try use only one of the top three tags, the other ones you could use more than once, but within the same parent tag  – dont jump from an h3 to h4 to h2 back to h4.  it just looks messy.  If you dont like the ‘style’ change it or ask your designer to.
• Paragraphs should consist of more than one sentence, and pregerably up to three or more, and each paragraph can contain your keyword or a synonym of iit.  The main paragraphs are the first one, the last one, and one somewhere in the middle
• Use bullet points to point out facts or features or benefits
• Use images too – I lack in this area, but it is good to use images for your website visitors more so than for the search engines.  A picture is worth a 1000 words
• Grammar and spell checking is important.  And make sure you are checking with your country / language enabled.  US english is different to UK which is somewhat different to Australia etc etc 
• Local – Local Search didnt exist back in 1998 and has become a major factor in todays world of SEO.  Although ranking well in the Local Listings won’t mean you rank well in Organic listings, it does have a huge impact on website traffic.  Mainly in the trades and tourism industries

Well I think I covered most of it here, at least the basics and the differences.  Remember the one unspoken rule – write your content for your customers, not for the search engines.  And always be fresh!