Top SEO tips to improve your ranking.The importance of good search engine practise cannot be overstated. In these hyper-competitive times, a complacent approach to search engine ranking is not an option. Every website needs to impress search engines like Google and Yahoo, after all, the higher your site ranks, the more business traffic you’ll get.Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of impressing search engines. As the term implies, you need to optimise your website for search engine approval. Your competitors will of course be doing the same; so ready or not, you are already involved in a fierce SEO battle. To help you out, here are some valuable tips to help you win the day.Make the search engine gradeSearch engines assess your site content in order to determine your ranking position. When a potential customer searches for a product or service, you want your site to appear as near to the top of the results page as possible. Think about it, how often do you actually click through to the next page of results when searching on Google? It’s therefore imperative your site at least appears in the top ten.So, what are search engines looking for when they assess your site content? Search engines deploy a ’spider’ to crawl through the pages of your site. The data collected is then used to build an accurate picture of how relevant your site is to any given search term. Hence, your site is ranked upon its relevance to what people search for.Metadata appears at the top of a HTML page (in between the and tags), and its here that your keywords reside. Simplicity dictates that keywords should be relevant to your site’s name (as seen in the URL), theme and purpose. But, there are some other aspects to consider when optimizing your site:1)    Firstly, establish which words people use when searching for your type of site.2)    Try to use keywords your competitors haven’t used.3)    Think about whether your site has a unique niche which it can exploit, such as a service or location.4)    Remember, people aren’t machines – they type all sorts of phrases when searching online, so it pays to think creatively.5)    Also, use keywords for your link text – never use ‘click here’.The task of SEO is NEVER complete Search engines rank sites by periodically assessing their content. This is kind of like an infinitely recurring exam, so your site needs to be ready for every fresh appraisal. Search engines not only examine your metadata – they also delve into your content to check whether your metadata is consistent and genuine. The days of using irrelevant metadata (such as the names of celebrates) to attract hits are long gone – search engines have more than enough power to effectively police such misuse.These days, search engines are very hot on content. Stagnant sites fare poorly with search engines, as they indicate an inactive site. So, it’s vital to keep your content fresh. However, you should never duplicate your content from another site. Always create original material and endeavor to create fresh content as often as possible (at least once a month).Good SEO is FREE – so here’s some more tips1)    Make sure you buy all the available Top Level Domain (TLD) extensions (i.e., .com, .co.uk, .biz, .info) for your brand name.2)    Use unique and relevant titles on every page of your site.3)    Validate your sites, so spiders can crawl through faster.4)    Keep your pages under 1 kilobyte.Hopefully this post will help you along the often rocky road to search engine success. Please let us know if you’ve got any SEO tips you’d like to share. In the meantime, good luck in the search engine battlefield.