Search engine optimisation is the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a website, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.
To get listed correctly in the search engines, each page of your site that you want listed needs to be optimised to the best of your ability. Since the keywords that you decide to target will be used throughout the optimisation process choosing the right keywords is essential. If you choose the wrong keywords you will not be found in the search engines. If you are not found in the search engines how will anyone find your site?

Search engines send automated computer programs (called robots or spiders) to crawl the Internet in search of Web pages. Basically these spiders follow links to travel from URL to URL. When they visit your Web site, the robot indexes (or records) the text of your page or pages (if it is a deep crawling spider) and stores it in the search engine's index. Later, when a user enters a search query at the search engine's Web site, the search engine scans Web pages in its index for pages that provide the best match.

• Think "specific keyword phrases" not "keywords". Why? Due to the extreme amount of competition for general terms in the search engines, if your keyword phrases are too general it is very unlikely you will rank well in the search engines. You stand a far better chance to rank well for specific phrases where there is less competition. The resulting traffic, since it is more highly targeted, should also be much higher quality too!
  
• Try to think like your target audience. What would they search for when looking for the page you are optimising? It is very easy to fall in the trap of coming up with a short list of what YOU would search for, but what about everyone else? They will not necessarily use the same keywords as you. You should try to come up with as many keyword phrases as you can think of that relate to the page you are optimising. Try asking a few friends and family what they would search for when searching for a site like yours.
  
• Check out your competition for ideas. Do a search using keywords that you already know you want to target and click through on the top sites that come up. Once on the site view the source HTML code and view the keywords they have in their Meta tags - this should give you many more ideas! Make sure to only use keywords that relate to YOUR site or page.
  
• You should develop a list of keyword phrases for each page that you optimise for the search engines.
  

Using the correct keywords will ensure that your site is readily accessible through search engines, but there are several things that you can do to try to get your page listed higher on a search engine results page. This is called considered "spamming" by search engines. Basically, you should never try to trick a search engine in any way, or you risk being blacklisted by them. Since the majority of your traffic will come from search engines the risk far outweighs the benefits in the long run.

Below are things you should NOT do when optimising web pages.

• List keywords anywhere except in your keywords meta tag. There are very few legitimate reasons that a list of keywords would actually appear on a web page or within the page's HTML code and the search engines know this. While you may have a legitimate reason for doing this we would recommend avoiding it so that you do not risk being penalized by the search engines.
  
• Use the same color text on your page as the page's background color. This has often been used to keyword stuff a web page. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
  
• Use multiple instances of the same tag. For example, using more than one title tag. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
  
• Submit identical pages. For example, do not duplicate a page of your site, give the copies different file names, and submit each one. Search engines can detect this and view it as spam.
  
• Submit the same page to any engine more than once within 24hrs.
  
• Use any keywords in your keywords meta tag that do not directly relate to the content of your page.
  
  
  

Keywords used: Pqalmz (made up word), NSW Underwater Hockey, Kingscliff TAFE

My goal was to have my site indexed in google.com using the above keywords. Originally there were no listings with the word "pqalmz" and 743 listings with the phrase "NSW Underwater hockey". The keywords were added into the "meta" tag within the HTML of the site as the reference for googles spiders to index the site.
Two weeks after submitting my site to google.com, my site was still not being returned by google. I re-submitted the site again and approximately four weeks after that I was the only response on "pqalmz". I did also get a return on "NSW Underwater hockey", but I was listed somewhere after 1000 repsonses.