Your website and SEO (search engine optimization) are interrelated. Most of the initial SEO happens when you are getting your website designed because there are many structural aspects that directly impact your SEO efforts. It doesn't mean you cannot search engine optimize an existing website, but it's better to start at the design stage.SEO is not just a search engine game, although it is mainly done to attract traffic to your website from the search engines.

SEO, especially "white hat" SEO, aims at making your website as user friendly as possible, and if your website is user friendly, it automatically becomes search engine friendly. This because the search engine spiders your website like a visually impaired person's browser, where every audio output depends on the way you have organized your content. So if you have organized your content well, a visually impaired person can make greater sense of it, and if a visually impaired person can make sense of your web page, the search engine spiders can too.Here are a few SEO steps you can take on your website.

Content near to the top

Make sure your main content is as near to the top as possible. This is because it's easier for the search engine spiders to get it and then index your website accordingly. Put all your CSS definitions and JavaScripts in an external file and get rid of needless code.

Light-weight, content-rich pages

Such pages are very important for your SEO because the search engines love websites that have lots of relevant content and that load fast. A spider visits your web page for a fraction of a second, and if this time is wasted on loading JavaScripts, Flash animations and heavy images, your main content remains neglected, and you don't get the rankings your content deserves.

Keywords in the navigation

Make sure your navigation, whether it appears at the top or by the side of your web pages, contains your keywords and phrases as anchor texts. For instance, if you have a page, say, linking to your web design services, it should appear as Web Design Services rather than Our Services, that doesn't tell much about the page it is linking to.

Keywords in titles and headings

Don't stuff your titles and headings with keywords needlessly, but use them creatively. Stuffing gets your pages, or even your entire website, blocked by the search engines.

As you can see, all these SEO steps on your website take place as your website evolves. Your website SEO is an ongoing process.