In this article, I’ll cover the basics of search engine optimization for professional, amateur, or hobbyist web designers. Most of these tips only take a minute or two to implement, and could greatly increase your search engine traffic immediately.

Enough of the fluff, let’s get down to business.

Use a 301 redirect

Use a 301 redirect to add (or get rid of) the ‘www’ to your domain. This is important, because most search engines consider www.domain.com a separate website from domain.com.

To add a 301 redirect that removes the ‘www’ from your domain name, and directs all the traffic to one domain add this to your .htaccess file (should be in the root directory of your host):

RewriteEngine On
rewritecond %{http_host} ^yoursite.com
rewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Note: this will add a ‘www’ to your domain if it wasn’t typed by the user.

Use your <h1> tags!

Search engines like Google treat H1 tags as more important than other content on your site. Use them appropriately. They should describe the content on the page the user is on, like for instance, ‘Company History’, or ‘Products and Services’.

Don’t Use Images For Text

Text in images don’t get read by search engines at all, so be careful what images to include, and include an alt description wherever possible.