Search Engine Rankings

SEO, here I go?

[madcat]

Well, I haven't had time to focus on this area until today. I guess it actually took a client giving me a call about not showing up in one of the search engines when typing certain keywords to get my hardcore attention on it. So I posted here because I need a starting point. Sorry, I realize it's well covered in the Search Engine section; just need a few quick and dirty intro points.

What are the top five things I need to begin fine tuning my websites for better ranking in the search engines? For example, if I'm a bakery in North Carolina- and I type 'Creamy Cakes in North Carolina' into Yahoo! or Google or MSN...I get up as close as possible to the front.

Links to the basic info would be great too! Thanks.

[Birdman]

>>For example, if I'm a bakery in North Carolina- and I type 'Creamy Cakes in North Carolina' into Yahoo! or Google or MSN...I get up as close as possible to the front.

I think the best way is to choose all the important phrases and then make a page for each one, with the phrase in the title, meta description, header and sprinkled about the page.

Of course incoming links with your keywords in the anchor text will give you a very good boost.

Those are probably the most important factors IMO(feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

<added>Google plan [webmasterworld.com]</added>

[madcat]

That link was exactly what I was looking for, thanks.