If you’re creating the layouts for your own sites but want to make sure that everything is on the up and up as far as search engine optimization is concerned, consider implementing these five basic SEO tips:

1. CSS (style sheets), extensive Javascript code and other scripts should be placed in external files, then called via includes in your main HTML page. This prevents bloat, which means your site will load faster — always favorable when considering your visitors as well as search engine bots.
2. Always use the ALT attribute for images. This’ll enable mobile device browsers and those users who turn off images in their browsers to know what the image is about. Also, the use of ALT attributes in images (and the TITLE attribute in links) has SEO benefits, particularly if you use keywords in the attributes.
3. In addition to using the ALT attribute for your images and TITLE attribute for your links, use relevant keywords or short descriptions for image file names and download links. This makes sense not only for your visitors, but also for search engine bots.
4. Use heading tags, particularly H1, H2 and H3. Highlight important text and distinguish sections of text from one another with heading tags, and emphasize any keywords that are in them to search engines.
5. Keep the use of Flash to a minimum. Or, if you absolutely must use Flash, make sure you have plenty of non-Flash content on your site to draw in search engine bots and visitors. Remember, search engine bots can’t parse or index Flash, so it’s important to have traditional HTML/XHTML content available.