I allways tell clients that having a great web site without doing any Search Engine Optimization and Marketing is like having a great looking brochure sitting in your desk drawer.

Here are a few items that are very important to increase the Search Engine value to your site. These are not directly related to a Joomla or Mambo site but to every site on the web.

Things like the "title" of your site are very significant when it comes to search engines as it's generally the first things they see. Having a descriptive title instead of your domain name as a title like most sites are the way to go..here is an example:

Instead of my site title being: "Joomlaco.com"

For a more search engine friendly version I use:  "Free Joomla Templates, Joomla directory and Resources" as my current title. A more descriptive title will give you a better chance of getting a position and traffic if someone types that phrase into a search engine. The title changes with every page so it is important to have a separate descriptive title for each page.

Your "Meta Description" and "Meta Keywords" are very important.

META Tags are used as part of your HTML code.

Some "Spiders" use the information contained within META Tags to index your Web page. In most cases a Spider will grab only the first few words, sentences or paragraphs and use those words as the description and keywords for your Web page. META Tags on the other hand tell the Spider what information to use.

When properly constructed you can actually control how many search engines display your Web page in their search results. We're sure you have used a search engine in the past and found the description to be anything but informative. With META Tags you can have the search engine display your Web page description the way you want it displayed (within reason of course). You can also help people find your Web page by providing keywords that describe your page and help drive traffic to your Web site.