For people to be able to reach your site when they are searching for content or keywords depends totally on the ranking of your site in the search engines. Higher the ranking your site can have in the search engines, higher is the rate of success of your website.

High rankings on the search engines is very important because recent surveys have shown that 80% and above of new visitors to any site, reach there because of search engine query. Hence we can deduce that for visitors to reach your site, you need to have high search engine ranking. Given below are a few steps to improve your ranking on search engines and optimizing the placement of your site:

1. Design for Specific Search Engines -While designing your website, aim to get a high ranking in the top three search engines- Yahoo, Google and MSN. So knowing the criteria on which these search engines rank site is very important. Given below are the current tips to get good placements for your sites on the three big search engines:

2. You should know your target audience. You should know the kind of keywords that your target audience will use for searching content that is available on your website. This can be found out by doing some basic research on the internet. The keywords may not be your site name, but some way related to the site and the content offered therein. Audience will have some questions, whose solution they will be looking for. As a site owner you will need to know the questions whose answers your target audience will be looking for.

3. Meta tags should be used. Meta tags are commands you can place in the html code on your web page. It is on the basis of the Meta tags in your HTML code, that the search engines categorize your website into different categories. Two important Meta tags are:

i. Keywords Meta tags

ii. Description Meta tags
The keyword meta tag includes the keywords from the page and the description meta tag should give a description of what is there on the page. The words used here have to be direct, to the point and without fluff. If the search engine does not find the keywords in the Meta keyword line, then some search engines may not list the site.

To get a better exposure and placement on the search engine, make sure you have a different Meta description tag on every page and remember that the keywords given in the keyword tags have been used in the page content

4. The Title tag should be made optimum: HTML title tag on your website has a lot of importance and is given high weightage by the search engines. Title meta tag is the first element to be scanned by the search engines, therefore the presence of a title is a must. The title should be catchy, should have the keywords that your target audience will be searching for.

To get a better placement the title tag should match the headline text and different pages of the site should have a different title tags, because pages that have the same title tag will be ignored by the search engine.

5. Page Headlines should have Keywords. Page headlines are important for the search engines as well as for the visitors. Page headlines should contain short and crisp keywords and phrases and avoid generic words and fluff. To get a better ranking use strong page headlines and repeat the same headline in the title tag as well.

6. Text should be keyword rich and interesting. To rank websites and pages the search engines actually count all the words on a webpage, and then rank these words by frequency of use on a particular page. More a word or phrase has been used on a page, higher it will rank on the search engine, so if you are aware of the keywords that your audience will be using to search for content on your page, then use those keywords more frequently on the web pages. For a better search engine ranking pack your content with keywords, avoid fluff and meaningless words and phrases that may get you penalty from search engine administration.

7. Images should have ALT Tags. Even images on your site should have a tag, as the Search engines are also indexing sites by the images found on the site. The ALT tags on the images are catalogued by the search engines. So while putting the ALT tag also describe the image by using a keyword or phrase.

8. Links should have Title tag. The links on your site should also have a title tag, because the search engines also look at the links description with a short keyword or a phrase. Most sites still have not got down to using a link title tag, so it would be a good idea to quickly get the links on your website title tagged to gain the advantage over others.

9. Provide a Link Trail. The front page or the home page of your site should provide a maximum of two level trail to the other pages of the website, because the search engines follow the links on the front page that lead into your site. If a link trail is not there on your site, the search engine may not go beyond the first page of your site. It is also important to note that the same meta tag on all your pages may cause the search engine to ignore all the pages beyond the first one. For better search engine ranking the link trail should be so arranged that you are never more than two clicks away from any page.

10. Avoid the Penalty Box. Search engines penalize sites that do not follow the rules laid down by them by not indexing or ranking the sites. They want website owners to keep in mind the following points:
a. Avoid Keyword spoofing - entails using keywords that are not related to content of the site
b. Avoid Keyword spamming - pasting copies of the keywords hundreds of times on the page just to get high ranking by repeated use of keyword.
c. Avoid using Numerous doorway pages - This entails using hundreds of index pages that just point to the site to increase the traffic to the site
d. Avoid Link Spamming - submitting links to the millions of link submission services
e. Avoid Page Redirects -Entails making pages that will redirect the visitor to your website. It can cause loss of ranking
f. Avoid Frames on Main Page - Sites that make use of frames while construction is viewed by search engines adversely. It is not a major penalty, but causes loss of ranking
g. Avoid Flash Movie on Main Page - It is not a heavy penalty, but causes loss of ranking For better page ranking, focus on titles, headlines, text, links, and images on the page, because search engines are intelligent software and can determine what the website content is all about. Avoid using practices that can lead your website to penalty box.

11. Check for errors. The website should be checked for spellings and html checker before submitting it to search engines for indexing, because too many errors can levy a penalty. For better search engine ranking make sure that you have run the spell checker and html checker on your pages, because if once penalized, the search engine will take time may be even six months to revisit your site. Also once your site has been ranked, then you need to maintain the content so that the search engines continue to give you high ranking.

12. Submit the site manually. Submit your site manually to the top search engines, because at times the automatic programs do not work and many search engines can penalize you for using automatic submission programs.

Making your sites compatible to the various search engines will pay off because search engine rankings is what is going to direct the traffic to your site.