Each page (especially in the first instance, your home page) should contain website meta elements (usually referred to as title tags, keyword tags and a meta description tag).

The title and description tags are what you normally see in search engine results giving a short insight into the content of each particular website page which is why it is important to make sure you use keywords that are consistent with the text content of that particular page.

Find out more about the importance of website title tags

This is then closely followed by the actual text content of the page and any internal or external links to more information relevant to the actual content.

Next you need to get it seen by the search engines, which can normally be accomplished in these next three steps.

1. Create a recognised sitemap that can be followed by the most important search engines such as Google, Yahoo & MSN.
2. Get links to your website from another website that has already been crawled and ranked by a top search engine (ideally a website with similar content to yours (do not pay people to link to your website as paid links can sometimes have an adverse effect on you rankings ( read Google's view on paid links )
3. Register your website with as many of the major search engines and directories as you can.

• Adding your site to Google
• Submit your site to Yahoo
• Submit your site to Bing (MSN)

Once you have completed these tasks you can concentrate on the aesthetics of your website and try other ways to promote your business while you wait patiently for the search engine optimisation process to take effect.