We’re all familiar with the concept of search engine optimisation or SEO, however many of us don’t have a clue of the basics. In keeping with our thoroughly generous attitude we’re offering you a few things to look out for to improve your search engine rankings.

Page Rank
Keep an eye on your page rank using some basic tools such as Google Toolbar. Page rank is Googles way of determining the importance of a web page and what better way to check this than straight for the source.

Keywords
Be aware of your keywords and make sure to place them across your URLs, text and image names. Be aware of words you want people to search for that best describes your site. Don’t stuff with keywords and 'over do it', as if you do you’ll be penalised. A great way to determine what words and phrases your audience are using to search for your product is via Google's free keyword tool.

Links
Internal links are extremely important. Link back to yourself, internal integration to your archives and site is the best way to improve page ranking. Creation of a site map also helps with rankings. A listing that links to all the pages of your site will aid SEO and makes it much easier for Google’s spiders to search your site – the fewer clicks the better.

URLs
Make sure your URLs are friendly, this also aids Google’s Spiders. For example it is a lot easier to tell what www.porkpie/crust/filling means than what www.porkpie/42sf34cjfwe means.

Flash
Avoid Flash, Frames and Ajax on a site as they offer you nothing for SEO purposes at all and appear as just a big image – so avoid them like you would Jim Davidson at a Black Panthers meeting.

Image
Give your images detailed descriptions to aid SEO. Start with your image names: adding an "ALT" tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description. Add captions to the area immediately around the description for best effect.

Content
Regularly updated content that provides apt and informative information is the best practice for readers and SEO alike. Integration of a blog on your site will ensure this is the case, once it is updated regularly. Distribute this information across social media with links; this should increase your click rate and also your SEO ranking.

Relationships
Link to other sites and ask the web master in charge of them to return the favour and link back to you. This will mean you improve your SEO. However, make sure your site and the site you link to have a good reputation as too many links irritates readers. Also, if the other site uses bad SEO tricks you may also be penalized – so be choosy with whom your friends are.

All of these little tips are easily achieved, don’t involve much prior knowledge yet if applied can make huge differences to your sites rankings.