Last week we looked at some basics of Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimzation is the practice of tweaking a website to make it appear higher in search results through Google, Yahoo and similar sites.

First, a little warning. Whenever you are optimizing your website, keep in mind that you are doing so to draw more traffic to your site. The end goal is to get more visitors - so don't make your site unfriendly to people just so you can make it friendly to the search engines. Your first goal should always be to make your site easy to navigate and informative or enjoyable.

Second, this week we'll look at on-page search engine optimization. This is the technique of formatting your web page content to be higher in search results. On-page optimization does not work broadly, like getting sites to link to yours or maintaining canonical URLs. Instead, it allows you to focus on particular keywords or phrases and increase your results for those particular phrases.

Let's Start It From The Top

The first part of your page to optimize for search engines and for bookmarking and linking is the title tag. Although whatever you put between the <title> and </title> tags is not seen on the actual web page, it is the most important tag in HTML for Search Engine Optimization. If you take a look at the top of the browser you're in right now, right next to the Firefox or Internet Explorer icon is the Title of that web page.

Many sites don't pay much attention to this tag - but it is one of the best ways for search engines to know what a page is actually about. Check your station or show's site right now. Does the title of each page differ? Or are they all the same "99.7 - The Greatest Hits!"?

Each page should have a title that is reflective of its own content, not just the general content of the site. That does not mean that the site's name should not be in the title, rather that both the site title and page title should be listed together. Whether you're creating individual pages or you are using a Content Management System (CMS), you can make your page title look like this: "Page Title | Site Title : Slogan" or something similar. This way you serve search engines by putting important keywords in the title tag as well as humans.

When people have a bunch of sites open in tabs (if you don't know what tabbed web-browsing is - then download Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 - it makes web browsing much, much, better) - the only way you can tell what pages are open in tabs that are not active is the page title. In addition, when someone bookmarks a page - the name placed in the bookmarks is the page title. Since one of the best things a user can do for your site is to bookmark it (it means they want to come back), do them a favor and give them a page title so they will know what the page is when they glance at their bookmarks a few weeks from now.