Making basic alterations to a website to improve search engine performance is not rocket science. Here is a quick guide to the factors that can be easily manipulated yet yield big improvements. They are worth bookmarking or printing off, so that they can be used in the future as a checklist when creating new pages or reviewing old.

1) Keyphrase Research & Optimization - Before you can implement any of the optimization tactics mentioned in this article, you'll need to know which keyphrases you are going to optimise your site and the pages within it for. Once you know what keyphrases you are going to target, everything becomes a lot clearer.

You should be able to get a rough idea of target keyphrases from the content of your site, because if there's not any content to base optimisation around, achieving good search engine rankings will be difficult at best!

Another common mistake is targeting keyphrases that drive the most volume. It's important to target keyphrases that relate to your website, and the more defined they are the better. Using keyphrases that could attract 120 high targeted (convertible) users to your site each year is much better than targeting a highly competitive broad phrase that is only vaguely related to your business.

2) Page Title - As things stand, this is one of the most important on-page elements you can optimize. Every page title should be different, and full of keyphrases related to the content of each page. Search engines only tend to display the first 65 or so characters, so it's important that you get the most significant keyphrases to the beginning of the page title.

As the page title is displayed in the search engine results, it must make sense and entice users to click the link. Striking a balance between readability and keyphrases density is tricky but a skill that will improve with time.

3) Meta (Page) Description - Although the meta description is not actually included in search engine algorithms, as it is displayed in results pages, it is still important that it is optimised. Similarly to page titles, the meta description should be page specific, and contain text that is relevant to the keyphrases that page is targeted.

Space is limited to around 160 characters, and it can often be a challenge to fit all the information into such a small space. If no meta description is entered, then search engines will grab a chunk of on-page text, regardless of whether it makes sense or is relevant. To avoid this happening, ensure every page has a meta description.

4) Content - Content is the best way to attract visitors and links to your website, so it's important that you spend sufficient time on it. Search engines love content, so the more of it there is on your site the better. Although content is less important now in search engine algorithms than at any time in the past, I suggest making sure each keyphrase your targeting is mentioned roughly every 100 words. But beware - don't keyphrase stuff! Search engines will pick up on it straight away and possibly black list your site.

About the author: Tim Jones is a digital marketing consultant, currently working for Hertfordshire Search Engine Optimisation specialists Distinctly Digital. Distinctly Digital is a Hertfordshire Digital marketing Agency that specialises in Search Engine Optimisation and PPC. You have full permission to reprint this article provided this box is kept unchanged.