1. Basics
What is the positioning of websites?

Basically it is to get your website out on the top of search results from search engines. This means that if your page is about medicinal plants, for example, when people type words into Google or any other browser you appear at the top of results lists.
Why is it important to search engine rankings?

Mainly because that way you get lots of visits (most of the views of a site come from search engines) and also because such visits are really interested in what you offer. Do you think a person who comes to your herbal page through a search engine, before it has had to bother to look for things like “medicinal plants”, “natural medicine”, “alternative medicine” and so on. so you think you are, at least moderately interested in your products. Of course, it will be more than a person who sees an ad for your website by chance without having desired.
What should I do to position a website?

This question is difficult to answer, and certainly would write a book, but if you read this page you will find a brief guide to the main things you can do to position a website in search engines, in addition to those you should not do if not to be penalized for them. Obviously there are many more but these are sufficient to begin to achieve a long-medium term. Remember at all times that this process is not fast in any case, and that to achieve stable results in the time it takes months of work.

Now, before you start talking about these techniques, it should be clear and preconceptions about realistic goals on what we want to position our site:
Operation of a form

First of all, may be useful to understand how a search engine when indexing a website, that is, add a site to the database of a search engine, so you can go in their search results.

To index the web pages that are on the Internet, search engines use some applications called spiders (or spiders, robots, etc.). Who regularly visit sites that are already stored in their databases in search of new content, changes, links to continue or pages that no longer exist (in this case to delete). All new pages that you visit the robot that detects changes, etc, is keeping the database and get most of them keep up.
Keywords or keywords

They are one of the most important things to consider when talking about search engine rankings. Are those words entered by users into search engines to perform searches. That is, are the words by which we will find.

For this reason, the key word analysis is a very important step towards the search engine rankings. If we aim to the right keywords, we are wasting time. In this sense, it is always important to consider the following, only more general words (and even not so general), for example, “computers”, offer a lot of competition, ie that many pages trying to appear at the top when someone’s looking for. Instead, users are getting better information seekers and rarely used general words for more specific phrases that they yield results most relevant to their needs. So when talk of keywords would be best to refer to key phrases and, therefore, guide our efforts to position phrases and not single words. This will give us better results.

Fortunately, there are various tools on the market that will help us decide on which keywords (phrases) key work on improving our website positioning on search engines. Among them, one of the best known is the Wordtracker Keyword Generator (English), you can use the keyword tool from Google. In both, you can enter keywords that interest you and the program will return a list of similar words that can be analyzed in various ways.

A final point to consider in terms of key words and phrases, is to decide how much we use. We must seek realistic solutions, but in general, for each web page with enough content that we have (it is understood as information, images, links, games or advertising), we recommend using one to three keyword phrases. It must be emphasized here that it is advisable to use different words or phrases for each web page, depending on the specific content of each. Also, get better results if we put our effort into sentences which, though less sought after, have less competition, highly competitive phrases because they will be very difficult with the search engine rankings, so it will not be very effective.
Focusing on the major search engines

Currently, Google is the undisputed leader in search engines (at least in the Hispanic market). No exact data, but about 70% of searches were made through him, and if the count included Yahoo and MSN, covering about 95% of the total. Therefore, the main thing is to position itself in these three search engines, since it brings are the most visits. For each of them there are specific techniques, if you want to know, you may find it useful to visit the forums xeoweb.
Have patience and seriousness

Is increasingly taking into account the age of sound mind and age of the domains that bind us, so we do not really consider important (so to speak) until you relocate the set time on the internet display our evolution. Typically, from 18 months old will be sufficient. Therefore, we must have patience and gradually work to go getting us a place on the Internet and search engines to take us seriously.
2. Techniques and tips from search engine positioning
Providing quality content

Currently, content is highly valued by search engines for their search results and especially the unique content. It is therefore another key positioning in search engines. This is because the search engines when their spiders crawl your website are added every word and then try to relate them to the user searches and throw their results. But in addition, promotes quality content that other websites that you merit in linking you, just because they have good information on your site. Getting links from other websites, as we shall see, is very important when positioning your page. Besides these advantages, we can add that quality content is one of the most valuable weapon to entice visitors as you are to offer your visitors what they are really interested, so it is very likely to return.

When you compose your page do not forget to include in the text consistently keywords you chose above, provided that you keep meaning to your page and not notice that they are placed in a forced, and so on. The contents should have a density of 2% to 7% for each keyword or phrase used. Do not try to write your keywords too many times in the text because it can be considered spam and penalize your page (prevents the density of each exceed 20%). A good way to see the keyword density of your page is keyword density & prominence.

Getting good links

The links point to a page are very important in web positioning in search engines, because they interpret as a kind of vote at that site. But not all links are useful for this purpose, the most important are natural links, ie those that are achieved through the quality of Web content spontaneously. Without being suggested by ourselves.

However, the natural listings are not the only valid for the search engine rankings, links from directories also can be useful. Although these will not increase too much traffic your website will help over time to move up, if they are good directories (eg Dmoz) in content and type of links they do. And we must avoid, if possible repeat the same title and description for every directory you Web demos high, because the most important are the natural listings, and so did not appear. On the other hand, if you have a website with much good content, it can be interesting to articles for other pages within your same issues as the links are achieved and are highly valued by search engines, also come in handy for web promotion (usually on the item page that comes from other sources indicates the author’s name and address of their website).

When receiving a link from another page, look at how they do it well. That is, to look out at the “anchor text” (the link text) and the type of link. The anchor text should include a keyword related to your page. For example, a web of Mediterranean, it is highly desirable that just be “Mediterranean cuisine” the link text and not “click here” or “link”. Also, pay attention to the code of your link, that looks like this:
<a href=”http://www.tupagina.com”> Keywords </ a>

Or if an image:
<a href=”http://www.tupagina.com”>

<img src=”logo.gif” alt=”Palabras clave” /> </ img> </ a>

Above all, make sure your link is not done with javascript, because search engines can not read and do not face any good positioning. Javascript links are more or less like this:
<a href=”javascript:http://www.tupagina.com()”> Link </ a>

Also beware that they have not included the attribute “nofollow” inside the tag <a>, as these links are not followed by search engines.

Finally, say that it is important not to get many links at once, but to go quietly working on this aspect (for example, get 10 links the first month, 15 second, 30 third, etc..) To avoid the search engines interpret this as we are trying to manipulate their results and penalize us.
MetaTags

It is common to think that search engines give great importance to the MetaTags, in particular the meta keywords and meta description, but this is not true. These goals are virtually ignored by search engines, since they have become pure spam in many cases. However, although not help the search engine rankings may be interesting to continue to add to the description, since some of them into account when displaying results. If you want to add metatags to your website, can be helpful the metatags generator available on this page.
Title and heading tags

They are labels that do take into account for the search engine rankings, as they give them enough importance. It is imperative to add a title to each page, but try not to exceed 60 characters to give more density to your keywords.

The heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc..) Can also be useful in web positioning eb search engines, so you can fit in them some of your key words or phrases, always in moderation and consistency to avoid spamming and be penalized.

Include a site map

Advisable when the site is large or difficult that search engines can follow the links in the menus (for example, by using javascript or flash, because they can not read). The site map should be put text links to all pages of the site, the search can thus access all of our website. However, do not put more than 100 links per page, because it can be penalized.
Avoid using flash, PDF files and javascript as far as possible

Avoid unnecessary use of flash files, the search engines have a hard time indexing and in most cases do not. The same happens with pdf files, which have fewer problems but the former may also create difficulties in indexing. For its part, the Javascript code presents another problem for search engines as most can not follow the links they contain, so if your menu is done in javascript probably get only index your main page.
Stick to web standards

Validate our pages according to standards indirectly help us to search engine rankings as validating our pages we are reviewing possible bugs that can cause problems for robots to index our pages, or they are not correctly the user. The easier it put the robots to index your site better. To achieve this goal, the manuals thoroughly reviewed the W3C (the organization that creates web standards) and use your validator.
Maximum size of pages and links

The magic number for both cases is 100. Not more than 100 links per page (better not close) and not more than 100 Kb weight. If you put more than 100 links on a page you run the risk of being penalized in search engines, so your position will fall drastically, or even erased from the database. Try not to exceed 80 links to be sure of not doing things wrong. The weight of the page if over 100 Kb many searchers do not typically index, moreover, the heavier the longer it takes to load, which is not advisable for the user.
Monitor the web, continuous positioning

Monitor the web and their positions on major search engines is a useful strategy to detect any loss of positions. To monitor positions are programs and websites that make it easy, for example, the Free Monitor for Google. However, when controlling the search engine rankings, one must bear in mind that often the sudden fall of positions or the disappearance of our pages, especially when the site is new. This need not be bad, by contrast, is common and normal. If after a few days the situation has returned to normal you can start to worry.

Furthermore, the issue of the positioning of websites, constantly out new things and become obsolete earlier, so it may be that what you found useful at the time, now does not work for nothing or even harm you. Reason enough to keep up on this issue and renewed continuously.

3. Tactics penalized in the search engine rankings

The criminalization of Websites that perform unethical practices to position themselves in the first search results is a strategy used by search engines to provide more interesting results to its users. When it detects that a page is taking actions not permitted, penalized, which could include losing positions make searches or even eliminate the results and de-index. Among the reasons that exist to be penalized, we have:
1. Hidden text.
2. Webs duplicate.
3. Links artificial.
4. Cloaking and doorways.
Hidden text

It basically consists of placing text aimed specifically for search engines is not visible to users in order to obtain better search engine rankings. Webmasters who engage in these practices, dedicated to writing words to fill your site and gain higher density there. For the user does not see, it is common to put the same color for the text and background.
Webs duplicate

This is to create websites identical (with the same content, etc.) to get links for the site that really wants to position. This technique is quite frowned upon by search engines, so it must be avoided. Also, be careful when changing web address itself not to leave the site online in both directions could be penalized for having duplicate content.
Artificial links

It consists of artificially increasing the inbound links to a website. It can be done in several ways, all of which will prove harmful to our website sooner or later:
Make spam in blogs and signature books, writing on them with the sole intention of leaving the link to the web.
FFA and link farms: These are pages dedicated to provide links to other pages, either paid or free, but that over time are severely penalized by search engines, and linked pages for them, being just pages with thousands and thousands links will do nothing.
Cross-linking: making chain links with known or other websites so that all links to all forming a circle. If the search engines detect that the only reason for these links is to get better positioning, they can penalize.
Cloaking and doorways

The cloaking is to make different sites depending on who visits it. Thus, the webmaster made fully optimized pages for robots and separate pages for users to obtain high rankings in search engines. When a robot tries to track the page is identified as such and is redirected to built specifically for him, so does the normal visitors.

The doorways are a special case of Cloaking, where optimized pages are made for the sole purpose of obtaining a high search engine ranking on search engines. Normally, when the user tries to access them is redirected to a “real” through a javascript link (the search engines can not read), while when the browser accesses the page is allowed to navigate it and unable to read javascript link stores the page optimized for it.

Although these techniques may seem attractive, do not use, given that current browsers implement new detection methods for them, so sooner or later your pages will be penalized.