Search engine optimization is the practise of optimizing a site in order to get higher ranking on a search engine. The issue is often that steps to improve search engine ranking are done after the site is up and running. This blog post will go over a few simple steps that can make a significant impact on how well your EPiServer site ranks on a search engine. It will mainly focuse on improving Google ranking called PageRank. This blog post can also be found on EPiServer World

There are 3 major goals: 

• Being relevant for a subject
• Having a good PageRank
• Being crawlable

Goal 1
Being relevant for a subject means that a search for your field should return your companies web site. A search for CMS should return EPiServer.com.
By putting the right content on your page you can tell a search engine what your site is about. Remember to put the most important information first and to use html tags for defining headers. The most important thing is using links internally. The links to other pages on the site should be relevant and named after the content. A good practise is to name the links after the pages title. The page name in the web adress whould be the same. Try to have each page unique with relevant information. Avoid redundancy and focus on using sections to help users. Repeating some keywords in a text is good but it is important to not have it too many times or too few. Every third sentece is what I recommend.  

Goal 2
PageRank is calculated through counting the number of inwards and outwards links and their "quality". PageRank can be shown for a site using add ons
for IE and Firefox. All sites will not have a PageRank calculated for them. This does not mean that the site is not indexed but that the site does
not have many inward links. The PageRank algorithm works sort of on reputation. Each link is like saying that you think that site is relevant in the content in which the link appears. Having outward links also help increase your PageRank. Try not to have too many outward links and that these links are also relevant to the subject.

Creating outward links are not hard, while inward links are. A few places to start would be adding your site to your countries yellowpages, wikipedia,
yahoo categories and on your costumers websites. Do NOT create your own "fake" sites with links to your site. Google and other search engines are smart and
will pick up on cheaters. Press releases can be helpfull if they include the websites link and are published online. Another major factor is the quality of a
link. Try having high ranked sites pointing at you and pointing at high ranked sites. If you have a site only in Swedish then remember to
try to get links from Swedish sites.

Goal 3
Being crawlable means that all the information on your site is gatherable for search engines. Try to have a simple site structure with no circulatory links. Using the EPiGoogleSitemaps improves the way search engines index your site.

These are only some ways of getting better results on search engines. 
1. Good inward and outward links
2. Relevant internal links
3. Good content
4. Can the search engine find you

Playing with inward links is tricky and dangerous. Search engines pick up on cheaters so remember to have relevant links.