Lets start with a commonly misunderstood concept: Search engines don’t rank websites; they rank web pages.
Many people assume if they optimize their website for a number of keywords then all search traffic will go to their homepage. Actually the opposite is true; search engines look for relevant pages, not relevant websites. Search engines don’t just “think” in terms of your site as a whole; they mostly care about the page or pages relevant to the keyword searched for.

To optimize your site, instead of thinking globally, mentally break your site up into different parts and pieces. If you want to rank high for a particular keyword, you probably will need a separate page focused on that term if it is not relevant to your homepage.

Basic Page Optimization

Google looks for these things to identify the theme of a web page:

-Page Title: The page title is the text that appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser. Google uses the page title (also called the title tag) to identify pages and show users the relevance of the page. The page title also shows up as the link when a search result is returned. Keep title tags short and precise, between 8-9 words. Every page should have a different unique and relevant page title.
-Metadata: While meta tags aren’t as important as they used to be, including your main keywords in your page metadata can help Google differentiate between different pages.
-URL: The URL is the web address of a web page. Including relevant keywords in the page URL can help your rankings.
-Text: The content of the page should be relevant to the topic mentioned in your title tag.

Think of it this way: Being number one in the search rankings is important, but if you’re number two and you’ve optimized your content for the user, you’ll probably get more repeat visitors and sales than if you create pages focusing exclusively on getting better search rankings.

If you’re developing a new site, be sure your site is set up properly from the ground up. Make sure you can create title tags for each page, name each page with a separate URL, and include page specific metadata. The last thing you’ll want to do is to go back later and correct any basic site structure problems that you could have done right the first time.

Take Advantage of Internal Links
Internal links are links from pages on your site to other pages on your site. (In this case I’m referring to links within your text, not to navigation bar links.) You can improve your page rankings by linking directly to pages on your website by using one of your keywords as the link text. Google will follow those links and know your page is relevant for that topic. You’ve probably noticed Wikipedia uses internal links extensively; whenever a word is used that has a relevant article somewhere else on Wikipedia, that word gets an internal link.

Get Relevant Inbound Links
Inbound links are links to your site from other sites. Relevant inbound links are links from sites that contain content related to your site. If you sell computer hardware, an inbound link from a software site is relevant; an inbound link from a pet supply store is not.

Your goal is to get as many relevant inbound links as possible. Find sites that provide related products or related services that don’t specifically compete with you. Ask for an inbound link to the relevant page.

Check Out Your Competitors
Search for your keywords and check out the pages that rank highly. How many times is the keyword used in the text? How is the title tag written? Which keywords are in the URL?

You can also see how many inbound links your competitors have. On Yahoo, enter the text “link:www.(nameofsite).com” and you’ll see all inbound links to that page. Those same sites may also be willing to link to you. If multiple pages ranked in the top 10 have links from similar sites, go after getting those links first – those sites are probably trusted sources.

Get Your New Site Noticed
Google will eventually find your new website, but you can speed up the process. The best way is to get inbound links from trusted sites; when Google crawls those sites it will follow that link to your site – and you’ll get noticed.

Above All, Consider Your Visitors
Google looks at a variety of factors for ranking your pages. Content is important, but don’t add new content just to get Google to visit.

At the same time you’ll get a sense of how well your entire site is performing. If you have 400 pages and only five are indexed, you likely need more inbound links and optimization on the non-indexed pages.

Then make intelligent changes to improve your page rankings. Change your title tags. Change the content so your keywords are featured. Add internal links where appropriate. Get more – always get more – relevant inbound links.

Rinse and Repeat
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. To drive traffic to your pages, make improving your site an important part of your weekly routine. Get your basic site structure right, keep collecting relevant inbound links, and provide good resources for your users… and the search engines will love you.

Chris Bennett is the President and Founder of 97th Floor, a leading edge SEO Firm specializing in Search Engine Optimization, Reputation Management, Social Media Marketing and Blog Optimization.