Ajax is a great tool for keeping your site speedy, because it lets interactive features operate independently of the page as a whole. What that means is that the user can make a choice by ticking a box on the page and only the part of the page that is applicable to the choice will reload. You might remember the bad old days when a visitor interacting with a page required the entire page to reload. So use Ajax and make your visitors happy.

PHP is an open-source scripting language that outputs HTML. Because it is open source, people are always extending it and adding functionality, and you can do so too if you’re of a mind to. While you don’t have to become an expert on HTML, it’s not a bad idea to have some minor chops with these techniques. If nothing else, it will help you communicate your needs with your web designer more effectively.

The words contained between the <title> and </title> parts of your header are what shows up in the browser address bar when they see the website. For example, if your title tag reads “cool jewelry and accessories” then those words will  appear in the address bar of the browser when you go to your site instead of something like “cooljewelryandaccessories.com.”

Your title tag should contain key terms you want your page to be found for by search engines. That title will show up in bookmarks as well as address bars. Different search engines use different title lengths in your meta description. Google shows 69 characters (spaces included) for a title tag. Yahoo will show up to 72 characters (spaces included) for a page title, unless it’s a PDF, in which case it can be up to 75 characters. Bing shows 65 characters including spaces for page title tags. Ask.com shows 69 characters for a page title.

You can get the best mileage out of your title tags in meta data by including keyword phrases in a short page title of 65 or fewer characters, even though some search engines show more than 65 characters.

Adding text link navigation in a column on the left hand side of your page means it will be one of the first things a search engine crawler reads. These links should include targeted keywords.

Footers are the content at the bottom of a web page that give information about the author, copyright, and navigational links. They should be brief and not crammed with keywords, because this only dilutes the importance of each individual keyword. Footers should use anchor text and link to the most important internal pages. Make sure your footer contains a link to your sitemap.

Internal text links are great for getting your pages crawled. They are simply links placed within your content to other pages of content. The reason they are given weight is because they imply that the link is relevant to the site’s overall content.

Note that these are not “quick fixes” that will rapidly move your site to the top of the first SERP. They are long-term methods that will help your pages organically float upward in the rankings and more importantly, hold their position once they make it onto that first page.