The Best and Easiest Google-Friendly Change to Your Web Site

No matter who you are or how much you pay for web site advertising, free search engine traffic is probably responsible for a big part of your business. So why make your web site so hard for search engines to figure out?



Luckily, it seems like in the recent years people have paid attention to SEO, moved their sites over to CSS, abolished "table" and "font" HTML tags, started using the H1 tag around their titles... and in general, moved the main content of their site as close to the top of the HTML document as it can go.



"But Robert," you tell me, "I have a bunch of fancy JavaScript and CSS at the top of my site that I don't want to get rid of."



That's ok, you can keep it. Just stash it away in another file. By that I mean... if you were lazy and included your CSS right in the HTML document like this:



(style type="text/css") (!-- CSS code in here --) (/style)



Copy all that text out and delete it from the HTML page.



Remove the "style" tags and the "(!--" and "--)" stuff. Open a new text file, paste the text from the clipboard in, save the file as "layout.css" then save and upload to your web server.



Now, back on your HTML page, place HTML code like this:



(link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.example.com/layout.css")



When someone loads your page in a browser that tells them to look to the URL http://www.example.com/layout.css for the CSS info. But when the search engines crawl your site they will see a nice, clean, simple layout.



You can do the same thing with JavaScript. Say these are your "script" tags:



(script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript") (!-- JavaScript code in here --) (/script)



Do the same thing, copy the JavaScript code but NOT the "script" tags themselves or the "(!--" or "--)". Erase the original from the HTML page. Paste the stuff you copied into a new text file and call it something like: "functions.js"



Upload functions.js and in the spot you had your JavaScript code use this:



(script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.example.com/functions.js")(/script)



One important thing to remember is that NO JavaScript code can be placed between the "script" tags if you use the "src" parameter like that.



So remember: use H1 tags, use meta description tags, and use CSS, but make sure you include your JavaScript and CSS stylesheets in separate files otherwise there's no point.

Revising Your Site - What Happened To My Search Engine Placement?

As of September, Smartads went through what so many have done
before. I changed the entire site. I knew what it meant. It
means that your search engine placements your probably so
proud of are probably going to be lost in the process.



Sad but true. See, search engines are getting smarter, not only
are they getting smarter but they do what you do. When you
change a design, typically you change it for a couple of reasons.



1) You don't like the design anymore

2) You've learned knew tips on how to optimize your site better

for search engine placements.

3) Your revising your services

4) You baught an old domain name



Whatever it may be, you're changing something. Now it won't
happen right away but eventually, if your site already has a
good search engine ranking, then search engines will find out
what you've done.



But "se's" aren't human? That's correct but they were built by
humans. Most se programmers realize that eventually something
changes and since they want their search engine to be the best,
they try to recognize your changes right away but there's only
one problem.



What do they do with the listings you have right now? Well, let's
say for instance you are attempting to change everything for the
better.



Now let's also say that you HAD a page title called "good rank".
Search engine's previously know and still think that your page
is all about "good rank". Moving along, your new page information
is about "Getting a better rank". Your old placements are now
wrong in the eye's of search engines. They now realize that
something has changed. So what are they going to do?



Dump your old listings and start over! Ouch is right. So why
would you ever want to change your site if that's the case?



Well here's some food for thought: Yes, you may loose your
existing rankings but your roots are growing. Your new pages are
growing bigger and better than before, it just takes a small
transitional period to take effect.



For instance, within Google, Smartads had over 580 pages found
when looking at all the links to smartads. Since we changed the
whole site, there was a 2 day period were none of them were
listed anymore. Normally, I would of gotten scared right away
if I didn't know that my site had changed.



Not 4 days later, not only were my pages back but the old rotten
pages that weren't being used anymore got dumped and the many
new pages got listed. All in all around 680 pages now. That
was a jump of around 100 pages were added. Cause and effect.



Here's another example for you. Most of us know about link
popularity within Google. You've put all your effort into
promoting your main page. Within all of the links that you've
had placed on other sites, you gave your link title "Great Ranking
Services". Once google saw your link, it started looking to see
whether your information on your site is relevant to "Great
Ranking Services" and awarded you appropriately.



Moving along a little, you've not only changed your site but
you've also changed your link title to better fit the new content
on your main page. The new link you now add on other sites reads
something like this; "Boost Your Search Engine Rankings".



Before you changed your site, you got a GREAT rank for "Great
Ranking Services" when people searched online.



Here's the catch. Now that your promoting a new site, a new
page, new content within your page, the old content relavance
goes straight down the drain. Search engines have recognized that
everything has changed and are not paying any attention to your
old links anymore. Yes, they still help your link popularity, but
they don't help your content relevance.



See, search engines are consistently trying to improve their
content relevance. That's what people want. If they search
"gidgets & widgets", they expect to get the best results for
"gidgets & widgets".



In Conclusion:



If you plan on changing your site, be prepared to suffer for a
small amount of time. Prepare yourself for the worst because the
best is yet to arise and prevail.



I understand that we all want better search engine rankings and
just be ready to do what ever it takes, even if it means loosing
your old se placements for some newer, fresher ones.



I hope you enjoyed my article, for more of my articles, simply
follow the link below!



Best of luck to you!

Flashy Web Site Designs are Bad for Business

Have you heard yourself saying, "I don't understand? I have
a gorgeous site, a really cutting-edge splash page with a
flash introduction, up-to-date technology, I paid a small
fortune for this site, and I'm getting plenty of hits but
no one is buying or staying in the site."



Well, you may be one of a growing number of businesses,
both large and small, who believed all the hype about the
latest in new technology. Many business owners want their
website to have that cutting-edge look, and so will ask for
things such as animation, music, flash, and other "bells
and whistles" that would be detrimental to their site.
These extras are probably driving potential customers away
because they increase download time and are not search
engine optimized.



In the rush to join everyone else on the Internet,
businesses have ignored vital steps in the process of
getting their business on-line. They assumed that because
everyone else had gimmicks such as a splash/intro page,
this was the right way to go. The result: businesses chose
design companies who readily took their money and who
designed exactly what the client wanted without clearly
focusing on marketing goals. To be fair, oftentimes the
graphic design company has no idea that a site designed
with all the latest technology doesn't necessary translate
into a site that has the functionality that an on-line
business needs. This is because the graphic design firms
specialize in graphic design, not in marketing. Many
graphic design sites are full of splash pages, scrolling
text, animation, etc. They use these tools because it
allows the graphic designers to display their creativity
and their knowledge of these "bells and whistle."
Creativity is good but all the latest cutting-edge
technology translates into a lack of functionality to
effectively market any on-line business including their
on-line presence.



When having your site designed, remember that first and
foremost, you are building your site to increase prospects
and sales. Don't look for a graphic design firm that
believes all you need to do is get in the search engines
and place banners to be successful. Don't hire a designer
that is new to the Internet--meaning they have years of
print design experience but have just decided to expand
their horizons to the Internet. Don't hire a graphic
designer that doesn't have a professional copywriter or
marketing person on staff and don't hire a graphic designer
just because they are the cheapest. Remember, cheap can
cost you money--you get what you pay for. Hire a
marketing/design firm that understands the difference
between form and function and can apply it in a marketing
perspective. Remember, many of these latest bells and
whistles are very expensive and your site may not need them
to be effective.



There are several elements, that when pieced together give
your on-line business proper form and function and provide
you with a fighting chance of succeeding. Hand this to your
designer before you begin:



INDIVIDUAL PAGE SIZE

While every day more Internet users
are signing on with DSL, satellite, or cable modems, the
majority is still using dial-up access. Dial-up is the
number one way people access the Internet because of one of
two reasons: DSL, satellite, and cable is not available in
rural areas or they cannot afford the extra costs
associated with these cutting-edge technologies. What this
means is that the majority of your potential customers will
download pages at 3-4 KB per second versus the 0-1 KB per
second with DSL, satellite, or cable modems.



What does this mean? Studies have shown that if a web page
doesn't load in 8-10 seconds, you will lose 1/3 or more of
your potential customers. The total size of a page should
not exceed 30 KB including text, graphics, JavaScript,
animations, HTML, etc. The absolute maximum recommended
download time is 30 sec over a 28.8 modem, which is 15 sec
over a 56k modem. Anything longer and you've lost your
potential customer.



Even though your logo, fonts, colors, images, etc. are
necessary for your brand, it is important to use them in
such a way as to not cause your pages to load too slowly.
If the page does load too slowly, then your brand is in
jeopardy because customers remember the bad far longer than
they remember the good. To keep top-of-mind awareness, it
is necessary to pay attention to these details as they,
too, are part of your brand. Another aspect of pages
loading too slowly is loss of revenue. Customers come to
your site to see what you offer and they need an overall
experience that will stay with them and make them want to
recommend your site to others.



SPLASH PAGES/FLASH INTRODUCTIONS

Research is necessary to any business as this allows a business
to track what is happening. Therefore, research has
generated reports about splash pages and flash
introductions. These reports have indicated that these
particular pages are not popular with the buying public.
They are, however, extremely popular with designers
and people who want to keep up with the
latest technologies. This raises the questions, "Who is
buying and who will give a return on investment?" Is it the
buying public or the designers and the people who want to
keep up? Obviously, the answer is the buying public.
Therefore, it is a no brainer that a web site needs
functionality for the buying public's needs and not for a
business owner's or designer's ego. Unfortunately, many
business owners are talked into a splash page by the
designer simply because it allows the designer to be
creative and, of course, the extra revenue for the design
company. If you have or are thinking about having a splash
page for your on-line presence--DON'T. They take too long to
download, they don't provide your potential customer with
enough information, and there's nothing there for the
search engines to spider. Remember, potential customers are
in your site for one reason only and that is to see what
you have to offer them, get the information they're looking
for, and to potentially buy.



A flash introduction is just as bad for an on-line
business. Although I love flash personally, I do find times
when it's a pain and often leave the site before seeing
anything else. The rule of thumb to remember is to keep the
number of clicks a potential customer must make to get to
the information they are seeking is three or less. For
every added click with a splash page/flash introduction,
you are running the risk of losing that potential sale
which decreases your return on investment.



In conclusion, it is in your best interest to avoid the use
of splash pages/flash introductions. Have actual text that
your customer can read and the search engines can index. If
you really want to have innovative technology on your site
and are willing to pay the added costs, offer it as an
option. Have a hyperlink to a flash introduction on your
home page that people can choose if they have the time or
like flash. Another option is to create a parallel site
that potential customers who covet the latest technology
can access. By doing this you will see an increase in your
sales and search engine traffic.



HYPERLINKS

Hyperlinks are extremely important for search
engines to index your site. These are what the search
engines follow to find all the pages in your site and index
them. However, if it isn't a true hyperlink then some of >
your site may become invisible to the search engine.



Remember use a true hyperlink. While 90% of most browsers
will recognize JavaScript hyperlinks, they don't give
search engines anything to follow.




BODY TEXT

Search engines can only index text. Therefore,
graphic representations of text or large graphics are
useless unless you have alt tags attached to them. Even
then, search engines don't like long descriptions in every
alt tag. Thus, to get the full potential of a page, it is
necessary to have content that search engines can index.



Content is also your calling card to your potential
customer. A recent study/survey (according to MarketFacts)
has shown that one of the major reasons people go on-line
is to gather news and/or information (87.8%). Another study
by Forrester Research, Inc. showed that the highest-ranking
reason people go back to a web site is high-quality content
(75%). Consequently, body text/content is necessary on
every web site over lots of eye appealing graphics.



When laying out the content, it is important to keep in
mind continuity. When a designer uses complex tables
(multiple nested tables), frames, and other design
elements, it breaks the flow of the text on a page.
Although we see the page as flowing nicely, search engines
do not. They see the code as unrelated fragments instead of
part of a continuous sentence or paragraph. Thus, every
table or frame breaks the flow of text.



Consequently, the simpler the page design, the better for
your search engine ranking.



Keep in mind the following research when designing your web
site and how it will function (according to Forrester
Research, Inc. as posted on
http://www.quickinfo247.com/304895/FREE).



High-quality content: 75%

Ease of Use: 66%

Quick to download: 58%

Updated frequently: 54%

Coupons and incentives: 14%

Favorite brands: 13%

Cutting-edge technology: 12%

Games: 12%

Purchasing capabilities: 11%

Customizable content: 10%

Chat & BBS: 10%

Other: 6%



This tells me that when building a web site, potential
customers and repeat customers are looking for three basic
elements on a site:



1. Good content.

2. Good navigation/site design.

3. Fast download time



SUMMARY

Every single design element affects your web sites
functionality and marketability--from the decision about how
the navigation will work to choosing the right colors,
fonts, graphics, content, HTML code, and more. These will
not only influence potential customers but search engine
indexing as well.



Therefore, a business plan and marketing strategy that
includes the above elements for your site will increase
your chances of succeeding on-line.



Are you ready to be successful?

Please stop designing web sites backwards! Choose keywords and keyword phrases first

I am firmly committed to encouraging and assisting
companies and organizations to get on the web and to do
so successfully. Despite the dot.bomb debacle, the
Internet remains the most significant mega-trend of our
age and its
usage continues to grow and spread at an amazing rate.



Notwithstanding its growth, and the growth of new skills
around it, I continue to be amazed at the daily sight of
web sites that have not only been designed backwards,
but not even been properly finished. Many such sites
have been
designed by big design and consulting companies
charging mega-bucks for their services.



If you want a web site that builds your brand, creates
leads or sells your products, services or ideas, the first
thing you need to ensure is that you have thousands,
preferably tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors
flocking to your web site each month.



Unless you have a large budget to market the URL of
your web site, your visitor traffic is going the depend
heavily on your search engine listings. Whether or not
your web site appears in
the Top 10 results offered by search engines to
visitors searching for the kind of product,
service or information you offer, is a critical
issue.



Even with a big advertising budget, the majority
of visitors to your web site are going to come via
the search engines.



> Search engines - one thing in common



Search engines vary in the algorithms (formula)
they use to determine the relevance of web
sites. But they all have one thing in common -
their search results are based on the
'keywords' and ‘keyword phrases' that
searchers type into their search boxes.



Despite the vital significance of keywords in
attracting visitors to a web site, most designers
and their clients insist on choosing keywords as
the last stage of the design process! Effectively,
they sort out the 'look and feel' of the site, insert
the text and then check their text for keywords. If
they remember to do so at all.



The bottom line is that, in terms of effectivness,
they are designing web sites backwards!



To achieve high search engine rankings, by far
the most effective web design process involves
very carefully choosing the keywords and
keyword phrases first, and then designing the
look and content of the web site around the
selected keywords. Keywords and phrases
must be selected for every page of the site, not
just for the index or home page.



Why design forwards? Because search engines
judge and rank your site on the basis of
keywords and keyword phrases. Choose the
right keywords and use them right, and you will
get high search engine listings and high visitor
traffic. Without high visitor traffic your web site is
bound to fail.



> Choosing the 'right' keywords



What are 'right' keywords? Obviously they are
specific to each site and each page. To be able
to select the right keywords for your web design
you need to get yourself deep into the brains of
typical members of your target market.



What words or phrases would Mr, Mrs, or Ms
Searcher use in trying to find a web site offering
your products, services, information or ideas?



> Anny's Hideaway



Imagine you own a guest house called Anny's
Hideaway. Would your would-be guests be
searching for Anny? If they were, they probably
would not be looking for what you have to
offer! Would they be searching for Anny's
Hideaway? Not unless they had heard of your
establishment and had remembered how to
spell your name!



Words and phrases like guest house, accommodation,
bed and breakfast, country lodge, and words that
describe your location, or what you have to offer (fishing,
tennis, bowls, yachting, gourmet meals, great wines,
fireside
chats?) are more likely to connect you to your target
market.



Even when you have selected your list of keywords your
work is not done. You still need to check your choices. Is
there a high demand for your selected keywords
(frequently searched for)? And what about the supply
(how many pages do search engines have to satisfy the
demand)?



The best keywords and phrases are those with high
demand and low supply. They can be found for any site.
But it takes time, effort and skill. And it cannot be done
last – after the design is complete and text written. By
then it is too late!

10 Important Web Design Tips: SEO Friendly Website

A website should firstly be searched out by visitors before talking about attracting or retaining those visitors. Nowadays, a “well designed website” does not only relate to a web site’s visual attractiveness but more importantly, how friendly it is with search engines.

Below are 10 SEO friendly website designing tips where web designers should pay attention to during the early stage of their web designing process.

1. Avoid creating menu on the left-hand side of a website . If unavoidable, an alternative way is to put some text with rich keywords at the top or above the left-hand menu so that this text will be the first thing to be read by search engines.
   

   
   

2. Headlines are rated more important than the rest of the web page by search engines . To take advantage of this, you should have your keywords in the page headline. Since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format its style to make it smaller.
   
   

3. Every page should contain the “title” and “description” tags with good keywords to describe the page content. The number of words for the title should not exceed 9 and that for the description should not be more than 20 words in order to keep within the limits of most search engines.
   
   

4. Try not to use Flash when possible . Flash cannot be read by the search engines to date and will cause slow page loading time and makes people run away. If you really have a reason to use flash, try to make it smaller (e.g. as a flash header) and leave other area of your website for keyword-rich content.
   
   

5. Think twice on how to use graphics . Make them relevant to your content and use an alt tag with relevant keywords for search engines to read as they cannot read graphics and also for your visitors so that they can have something to read when waiting for the graphics to load.
   
   

6. Do not only use images to link out . You should always use text links to link out to important content on your web site. Spiders can follow image links, but like text links more though.
   
   

7. Avoid using frames . Some search engines cannot spider web pages with frames at all. For the other search engines that can, they can have problems spidering it and sometimes they too cannot index the web page.
   
   

   
   

8. Avoid using too complex tables when laying out your page but to keep them simple for the spiders. There are some search engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the navigation bar is too complicated.
   
   

9. Use external Cascading Style Sheets and Java Script files to reduce page size and make the download time much faster . It will allow the spider to index your web page faster and can help your ranking.
   
   

   
   

10. Use standard HTML . Software such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver or a WYSIWYG editor will often add unnecessary scripting codes that will make the page larger than is needed and make it harder to crawl. It will sometimes add codes that can't be read by search engines, causing the spider not to index the page or not index the whole website.
    
    
    If to use, you should use those web page creator software wisely with a good understanding of html so that you may manually avoid or even delete those unnecessary scripting codes.
    
    

Tips for Making Your Pages Search Engine Friendly

Your web site may look beautiful to your eyes, but what about to the "eyes" of a search engine? If you can understand how a search engine "sees" your site, than you can design the site or make the necessary changes so that your site will get a higher ranking in search results.



The first thing to consider is that search engines do not see pictures or other graphics. If you have rendered some very important text (loaded with keywords) as an image, a beautiful multi-colored gif for example, the search engine will not index these keywords. There are some wizard-oriented web creation tools that may automatically change your text into a gif or jpg image. It may look like text to you, but not to a search engine. Thus, you have to weigh the relative importance of good images against the need to give the search engine something to chew on, some "spider food". Usually a balance has to be struck. At one extreme are pages that contain only images. For example if you have an entry page with a beautiful image of the ocean and a beautiful sunset with one word saying Enter. It may be dramatic looking, but it is not very interesting for a search engine. Similarly sites that are only Flash images, don't give anything for the search engine's "spider" (robotic gathering tool) to gobble up and put into the index. If you want to use Flash, consider making a hybrid page, one that has some elements, such as informative text, of normal HTML and a section in Flash. Keep this in mind and make sure that your important concepts and keywords do appear on your pages in a text format.



However as pictures and graphics are very important, there is something that can be done to optimize them for search engine recognition. You can put an alt tag or alternative text on each image. The search engines will read this text and index the words you have entered. Thus if you have your company's logo at the top of the page Acme Widgets, you can write and alternative text: "Acme Widgets, California's first producer of Electronic Widgets". Put your mouse over the A1-Optimization logo at the top of this page and you can see the alt text which I used for this image. Search engines will see this tag and the tag will also appear when your web visitors put their mouse on the image. Whenever you have an image, take the opportunity to put an alternative text tag. But remember that, although the alternative text tag is indeed indexed by the search engines, it is not given as much importance as other text elements.



If you really have some important text that you want emphasized then use the heading tags, h1, h2, h3, h4 etc, and make use of bold text. These heading tags and text rendered in bold font are given more importance by search engines than other text because headings are thought to indicate the main concepts of your page. The heading tags may not look as nice as a gif image, but if they contain important keywords then whatever you think you may lose in beauty by discarding them, will be returned to you in better ranking positions in Internet searches for your important keywords.



The second thing to do is to Put your important text near the top of the page. Suppose you have put your company's logo (Acme Widgets) at the top of the page, as a gif or jpg image. Underneath it you might put some text reading: "California's first producer of Electronic Widgets". If California and Electronic Widgets are important keywords for you then you have started off your page very well. In fact, some search engines use the first paragraph or phrase as the description that is shown in search results. So if the first paragraph or first phrase really says a lot and is attractive it may entice someone to visit your page. (Getting a top result in a search engine is one thing, but remember someone has to think that your page is interesting enough to visit if they are going to click on it, and the description shown by the search engine may be the deciding factor determining whether they click through to your page or to your competitor's page)



But, what is the top of the page? It seems obvious but search engines do not see or rather, read pages in the same way that our eye sees the page. Recently I built a web site for someone and then looked at the first search engine results for that site. I saw the words "Choose your language" as the description. (The search engine took a phrase from the navigation bar on the left hand side of the page, where surfers were invited to choose which language version of the site they wanted to see). This happened because search engines have to go through the table structure of the site. In order to align the different elements (text and pictures) of a site, designers often divide the page into tables. If a site is divided into two vertical tables, one for the left hand navigation and one for the body. The spider will first read everything in the table on the left before going to the table on the right. I corrected this problem by putting a pithy, keyword laden descriptive phrase in the left hand column just above the navigation elements. So, make sure that your important phrases are in places where the spider will see them before they reach other less important phrases. If the table structure on your page is not giving the right picture to the spider, then you should make the necessary modifications to correct the problem.

Designing a Website So the Search Engines Will Like You

Before you go and spend big money on a professional website designer, or start designing yourself, read through this article and make sure that you or your designer knows how to design a website that the search engines will like.



Being a web designer myself, I know firsthand what they teach you in college about being a good designer. While I learned all of the important design concepts like color theory, the importance of graphics and white space, ect ect, I came away knowing nothing about how to actually design a site to get ranked in the search engines.



Because of the lack of training in design schools, there are many, many web design companies out there today that know nothing about designing a web page properly.



It wasn't until I started doing some research that I realized there was a whole world of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that I didn't know about. Most designers love to make your site aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they use newer technologies like Flash design or really graphic intensive pages. While these techniques make your site look pretty they are not practical if you ever want a visitor to find your site in a search engine.



Here are some basic concepts to learn before beginning your website design.



**Flash**



I know it's tempting to have an all flash site because lets face it they look really awesome. The problem with having an all flash site though, is that it is basically nonexistent to the search engines.



A flash source file is embedded in the html and therefore offers no content to which the search engine spiders can look at to rank you. Unless you are already well known in your particular industry or have a very identifiable brand (think Pepsi or BMW) then you should not use an all flash site.



But what if you really, really want to have flash? Here are some ways around this problem.



First, you can create two websites for your visitors. An HTML version and a Flash version. You can let your visitor decide where to go. That way you won't leave them frustrated if they have a dial up connection and are not surfing with broadband. There is nothing that will tick your potential customer off faster than having to wait ten minutes just to view your fancy flash intro. By having both versions available you also give the search engine spiders a content rich HTML site so they can rank you accordingly.



Secondly, you can add flash components in your main site to give off some cool effects without taking forever to download. For instance, I have seen a lot of websites lately where the top header portion of their site is made in flash or their buttons are done in flash to make them stand out more. These are two good ways to use flash without overdoing it. Just make sure that your body copy is keyword rich to offset the flash.



**Keyword Placement**



This next part assumes that you already have researched and gathered targeted keywords to work with. If you have not done keyword research for your services or products you are selling, then you have some work to do before this next step. You can check out http://www.westmarketing-design.com/articles.htm for more information on doing keyword research.



There is a phrase that you will hear in the SEO world and that is “keyword rich text”. This simply means that when you write your body copy for your website that you need to word it a certain way so that you include your keywords. Now that doesn't mean that you insert a keyword every other word. The search engine spiders consider that to be spam. What it means is that you give your body copy a lot of thought, making sure you have keywords placed within your copy that make sense to the overall service or product that you are selling.



Here is an example of a keyword rich paragraph selling an information product on public speaking. The keywords are in quotes.



Are you interested in becoming a better "public speaker" or improving your "public speaking skills"? You can become a "paid public speaker" and make lots of money for "speaking in public" to a wide variety of audiences. Learn all the latest "public speaking tips" and tricks, including learning how to "overcome stage fright" and "add humor" to your presentation.



All of those keywords were researched and found to be very targeted to the phrase “public speaking”. Now I went a little overboard in my keywords for the example, but you get the idea.



There is another phrase called “keyword density”. This refers to how many times a particular keyword or phrase is found in one website page for every 100 words.



You walk a fine line between having enough keyword density to having too much and having the search engines consider your site to be spam. Be aware though that not all search engines are created equal. Some might like a keyword density of 5 percent, while another one might favor 7 percent. I suggest testing your copy for a month or so and keeping tabs on your search engine ranking. If you get high ranks, keep your copy the way it is, but if it is lower than you want, try tweaking your copy and keyword density to see if you can get the desired ranking.



**More Places for Keywords**



There are other places that search engine spiders look for keywords besides your website copy. If at all possible try to get a domain name with one of your keywords in it. For instance if you sell dog collars, a name you might want for your website would be www.dogcollarsales.com or something like that. It might take some thinking and some time to come up with a related name that someone hasn't already taken, but it can be done.



Another good place for keywords is in your page title. Instead of putting the name of your business which most people won't know, instead place a keyword rich sentence or phrase. Using the dog collar business example again here is a title page you could use.



Dog Collars – We sell dog collars and other products for your beloved pet.



It clearly tells the search engines what the page is about. Remember that the title of your website is indexed by the search engines and is part of what is shown to someone who is searching on that keyword.



So if I typed in dog collars into my search engine, the title from above and my meta tag description would show in my search results. Make sure you put some thought into your title.



This rule also applies to your meta tag description which is also viewed when a search engine pulls up your site. Make it only one or two keyword rich sentences. The meta tag keyword has less impact today then it did a few years ago, but I still recommend adding a few keywords. Don't go overboard and write out 50 keywords or your site will be considered spam to the search engines.



Most websites that are designed today rely heavily on graphical content and not much else. Another tip on keyword placement is to try to place a keyword rich sentence near the very top of your page. Some people have spots for banners and such at the top of their pages, this is the same kind of idea and can be made to look pretty and not out of place. This is important because the search engine robots start at the top of your page and work down. The closer to the top of the page you have keywords the more the search engines will think your page is relevant.



**A Frontpage Trick**



Search engine spiders will look at a block of text and if any words or phrases are typed in an H1 size then they consider that phrase to be of the utmost importance to the page. This is a great place to have a keyword look very important to the search engines.



Now for those of you who don't know, an H1 size is pretty big and would definitely stand out on your page and can oftentimes look a little ugly. There are ways around this if you know CSS well, but if you are designing your site yourself and have no clue what CSS even is then I can help you.



*This tip is only for those of you who are using Frontpage as your web editor.*



You can show the search engines that the text is in an H1 size, but then change the size of the text back down to whatever size you want instead. Here's how you do it.



In Frontpage select the text you want to use and set it to an H1 size. Then go over to the font size drop down and change it to whatever size you want to use. It's that easy.



Now one drawback to using this technique is that there will be empty space around the phrase that is designated as an H1 size. Basically it is still taking up the same amount of room it normally would, it just doesn't look so blatantly obvious. This technique is best used for titles of paragraphs or break points in paragraphs, so that it won't look weird to your visitors.



**The ALT Tag**



This design tip is a pretty clever way to get an extra keyword or two into your site. The ALT tag is an HTML tag that is used when you want to give a written description for a graphic element on the page. It was designed initially so that if someone couldn't download your pictures, they could see an alternative description in text describing the picture.



Instead of describing the picture you can place a keyword in the alt tag instead. Here's an example of what the HTML code would look like.



img border="0" src="myimage.jpg" width="640" height="150" alt="keyword phrase"



These are just a few proven techniques when designing your site to improve your search engine ranking.

How Can My Design Affect My Search Engine Rankings?

Directory editors will actually review your site and be critical of issues that you might not be.


Spiders must easily be able to navigate through your site to be able to index all of your pages.


When directories or spiders become confused or slowed because of design issues, your page becomes less relevant.



Site Structure:



Keep all of your important pages in the root directory.


Name pages after important keyword phrases (After you have researched your keywords).


Name directories after important keyword phrases.


Include a site map that includes links to all of your pages. Include a keyword rich description for each link that is relevant to the page you are linking to.


Create a customized 404 page that fits the design of your main pages and includes links to all of your important pages -- especially your home page.



Navigation:



Keep your navigation, to the right of your pages, in the middle or at the end of your pages. If you have your navigation on the left your page or at the top, this will be the first thing that a spider will see. You want your body text to appear to a spider before your navigation. Doing this will make your body text appear to be more relevant.


Navigation should be simple and easy to understand and hard to get lost within your site.


Heavily cross link all of your important pages.


Include a link to your home page on all of your pages.



When Creating Your Pages Always:



Make sure that your pages are compatible with all browsers 4.0 and above.


Create comfortable, appealing designs.


Be sure that your pages are neat, clean and organized.


Use high quality, optimized images.


Include a company logo.


Be sure that your pages are fast loading -- even on a 28.8k Pages should never exceed 75K


Include quality content within your site - Pages should contain from 200-1000 words. A good average is about 600 words.


Text should be easy to read.


Use text links as opposed to image links.


Make sure that there are no broken links in your site - monitor this regularly.


Include copyright information.


Include a contact page.



You May Want To Consider:



Using Cascading Style sheets. By using CSS, you are specifying certain factors such as font, color, paragraph style, ect. all in one place of your page instead of throughout your page. By doing this, you will make your content appear to be more prominent throughout your pages. Keep in mind that all CSS is not compatible with the Netscape browser.



Always Try To Avoid:



Splash intro or welcome pages. Your home page will be the most important page of your site and should include quality content.


Flash - A majority of major engines will not index flash sites. Editors may be critical of heavy or slow loading flash.


Frames - Most major engines can not read frames. If you must use frames, include important body text within a tag.


Animated graphics - Slows load time and can be annoying to some visitors, editors and spiders.


Heavy graphics - Slows load time.


Low quality graphics - editors will be very critical of this.


Sound - Slows load time and can be annoying to visitors and editors.


Dynamic features - Spiders can not crawly dynamic features such as a drop down menu.


Java Script - Spiders can't read JS and it gets in their way. Spiders can become confused by JS and it can make your important text appear to be less relevant. If you must use JS, move it to an external .js file.


Java Script Links - Spiders can not crawl links in Java Script.


Image Maps - Spiders can not crawl the links within image maps.


Spelling errors - Directory editors will be very critical of this.


Broken links - Spiders and editors will be very critical of this. Check this regularly.


Pop-ups - The will slow load time, confuse spiders and annoy editors and visitors.


HTML errors - Bad HTML will confuse spiders and cause browser compatibility issues.



Never:



Submit an unfinished site.


Submit a site that includes words such as "Under Construction".


Include text on your home page that says something like "report broken links here". Include a phrase such as this on your contact page. Never on your home page.


Include illegal content within your site.


Use hidden text/links, tiny text/links, same color text/links as the background - this is considered spam and you can be banned from major engines and/or directories if you do this.


Use clear or transparent images.



Now What?



Now that you have designed your web site with search engine spider criteria in mind, you have taken the first steps to prepare your site for higher rankings but don't stop here! This is just the beginning. Next, you will want to thoroughly research the search terms that you are going to target -- afterall, you don't want to choose keyword phrases that no one is ever going to search for! Then, you will need to work on a link building campaign so that you can gain some publicity to your site and begin generating some traffic while making your site more and more popular each day. Move on to developing you content so that it revolves around your search terms and target market and then onto your meta tags, titles and descriptions. Finally, you may be ready for your final submission date and begin to see your efforts pay off!

Search Engine Friendly Design

Search engine consultants and website designers are often called in at different times to work on a website development project. Rarely do the two ever work together, which is very unfortunate. With this being the case, many search engine marketing consultants have seen their client's rankings plummet without hope after a website redesign. Vise versa, many designers have seen their exceptionally created and beautiful website designs destroyed by an SEO-focused optimization. This does not have to happen!



The ongoing argument between search engine optimizers and website designers has always been focused around one simple question… who serves the greater purpose? The search engine optimizer will argue: what good are great looking, flash-enabled, and graphic-heavy websites if no one will ever find and appreciate them. The website designer will counter with: what good are websites capable of attracting 1,000 new visitors a week if not one visitor sticks around long enough to convert. The fact is that the search engine optimizer and the website designer are both correct and are both equally important in the website development process.



The process is simple. When an Internet searcher enters a keyword or key-phrase into Google, Yahoo!, or any other search engine, they demand that the search engine provide them with adequate and relevant results. That same Internet searcher, when entering a website, expects certain website characteristics, such as a design and layout that best represents the products or services it provides, an easy-to-use and understandable navigation, and a complete fully functionally website. Nothing less should be expected. So, if both are equally important than where does that leave us… with something I like to call “Search Engine Friendly Design.”



A search engine friendly design is nothing more than a well-balanced combination of both, search engine optimization and professional website design. In addition, a search-engine friendly website should also be in tune to the average visitor. It is very important that every page of the website be designed and written with its visitor's best interest in mind. Let's face it, if you're not appealing to your website's average user, than all efforts, including design and promotion, are lost.



A savvy designer, one who knows what search engines are looking for, can design websites without compromising their appearance and usability. Here are a few examples of how:



Text vs. Images - Its common knowledge within the search engine marketing community that search engines are blind to layout and pictures. Often website designers, trying to add creative elements to their website, will implement large graphics and flash files, not realizing that their actions may actually be inhibiting the website's promotion.



Seeing as search engines will most likely be the primary source of any website's traffic, I would highly suggest adding a search engine marketing consultant to your development team, especially during the beginning stages of your website design. As a good search engine marketing consultant already knows, it is very important to develop and maintain a website that has plenty of content, enriched with relevant keywords.



Navigation Menus - Website navigation schemes, such as JavaScript drop-down menus or Flash banners, can really help to create a unique and visually pleasing website design that is sure to help it stand-out amongst all other websites. Unfortunately, these same creative elements also make it extremely difficult, and in some instances impossible, for search engines to properly crawl the website, therefore limiting the website's search engine exposure.



There are, of course, solutions to this that will appease both the website designer and search engine optimizer. As a suggestion, consider using standard rollovers and/or CSS formatting to develop a graphically pleasing navigation menu. Unlike most JavaScript menus, neither standard rollovers nor CSS will "hide" your website's links, allowing search engines to freely crawl and index your websites pages.



If a JavaScript navigation menu is truly needed to attain the desired look and feel of your website, than consider adding text-based links elsewhere on your website's pages, such as the bottom. Bottom navigation schemes consisting of text-based links are becoming very common now-a-days, as they ultimately provide your website's visitors, and search engines, with another source for navigating. Another suggestion would be to develop and allow access to a sitemap containing all of your website's pages.



Flash vs. HTML - Flash is a pain in the sides of all SEO consultants... but it doesn't have to be. It is possible to mix Flash with HTML to create a search engine friendly website that still allows for a rich media experience.



My suggestion for when developing a website using Flash is to create separate pages, those in Flash and the others in HTML. Not only will you be giving your website's visitors a choice of which version he or she would like to view (which most will appreciate), but you will also be giving your website the chance to be indexed and ranked through your HTML versions. A very good compromise if you ask me.



Dynamic Websites - Depending on how your particular system is configured and how your website's dynamic pages are created, the use of dynamic websites can either be a great thing or a very terrible thing. Because dynamic web pages are data-based driven and are created on the fly, they are usually assigned URLs containing very large and strange looking parameters. These parameters, amongst other reasons, are needed in order to sort products and generate a central navigation for your website's visitors. At the same time, these parameters make it very difficult for many search engines to crawl, follow, or index your website's pages.



My suggestion to this problem is to consult with your development team, and your search engine marketing consultant, and have them consider developing your content management system using either ASP (Active Server Pages) or CFM (Cold Fusion). Either one of these "dynamic scripting languages" has the possibility of converting the URL's query string from "?" (which will usually stop a search engine from indexing the page) into "/". This process, and a few others, maybe all that is needed in order to give your dynamically driven web pages the opportunity to be indexed.



In my experience, designers who understand these and other common search engine friendly design issues are perfectly capable of designing around them, without sacrificing their design or future search engine rankings. As long as the designer and search engine optimizer come together in the very beginning, as opposed to after the website has been created, than finding a compromising solution to each of their needs should not be a problem.

Design A Spider Friendly Site

To be successful in the search engines it's important to design your web site with the spiders in mind. Using the latest in web page design is not generally the best way to go. Spiders don't view web pages like humans do, they must read the HTML in the page to see what it's about. Below you will find tips on how to best design your web site with search engines in mind.



Do not use frames at all. Some search engines cannot spider web pages with frames at all. For the other search engines that can, they can have problems spidering it and sometimes they too can't index the web page. Do not only use image's to link out. You should always use text links to link out to important content on your web site. Spiders can follow image links, but like text links more though.



Use external JavaScript files instead of using Java Script code in the HTML document, using Java Script in the HTML document will make the page size much larger. Using an external Java Script file to do the job will reduce page size and make it easier for both spiders and browsers to download the page. Using Cascading Style Sheets can reduce page size and making the download time much faster in most cases. It will allow the spider to index your web page faster and can help your ranking.



Avoid using web page creators such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver or a WYSIWYG editor. Software such as that will often times add scripting code that is not needed, making the page larger than it needed to be and making it harder to crawl. It will also add code that can't be read by the search engines, causing the spider not to index the page or not index the whole web page. It is better to use standard HTML. Adding code that they can't read or have a hard time to read can lead to major problems with your ranking.



Try not to use Flash when possible. Flash cannot be read by the search engines to date and will cause download time to slow a bit. If you do decide to use Flash anyway, make sure you add text to the web page, so the search engines have something to read and find out what your web page is about. It will also allow your visitors to have something to read while the Flash file loads. Also don't use Flash as a way of navigation, as I said before spiders cannot read Flash.



It's important to add a site map to your web site. Not only will this make it easier for internet surfers to get around your web site, but it will also allow spiders to find your site's content easier and index your web page sooner. The site map should contain text links and not image links.



I highly suggest that you look at your web page with a Lynx browser because this is similar to how search engines will view your web page. There are other tools on the internet that will allow you to view your web page without a Lynx browser, but see a web page just like it, so you may want to check those out as well.

Fight For Online Visibility

Would you like to prevent Internet users from visiting your website? You may feel that you're asked a silly question. But then think about why so many investors are silently watching how their web projects are doomed to invisibility from the outset despite nobody wants to conceal his or her own website from the public.



History



In the Internet's Middle Ages - eight to ten years back, everything related to the Web was extremely expensive, from Internet access to web design and programming to hosting, and creative folks built their first websites mostly from a perspective of future opportunities. The then start-ups tried to attract their audiences by interesting information and colorful pictures in hopes that the visitors will find their web pages somehow, through ads or otherwise, and remember the useful Internet address (URL) or add it to favorites in order to come back again and again.



But times have changed. Now, with almost forty million of active domains and twenty million of websites, the archaic approach to entering any online market doesn't work. It's no longer enough to have nice graphics and useful information on web pages and drive some additional traffic to a site via banner ads. To be visible, websites have to compete fiercely for search traffic. Those players on the Web who don't understand new harsh realities are just losing their money and online niches to rivals.



Power of Search



Today's Internet users aren't inclined to compile lists of useful web addresses and then copy and paste or type in domain names like "www.your-greatest-website.com." Of course, an average web surfer has a number of pages bookmarked in the browser, but when it comes to searching the Web for information, products or services, the user goes to a search site and type relevant words or phrases in a search box. What would you do if you needed, for example, a vacuum cleaner or the latest news on a Cabinet reshuffle in Myanmar? Yes, you visit your favorite search site and type in your key search terms there, say, "vacuum cleaner" or "cabinet reshuffle myanmar." The search site will display you its search result page or pages with many links to the information you need. It's simple and effective.



The search sites have become an integrated part of the overall Internet industry and can be classified into two major groups: search engines and directories. The search engines use special programs; so-called spiders or crawlers travel the web, scan web pages and include them in search engine databases. Contrary to the search engines that store information about web pages, the Internet directories are supported manually by human editors, have no automated programs and list websites by categories. Google, MSN, AltaVista, AOL and AlltheWeb are the most popular search engines on a global scale. Yahoo! and DMOZ (ODP) are particularly noteworthy among global directories. Yandex and Rambler - each has a search engine and a directory - have actually captured a search market in Russia and other CIS countries despite they now face tough competition from Google. There are local search sites at the deeper regional level as well. Ukraine, for example, has UaPortal.com.ua and Bigmir.net (directories), and META.ua and Sova.com.ua (search engines) that are besieged by competition from the likes of Google, Yandex and Rambler.



Whatever marketing researches you do, whatever sophisticated web design and programming technologies you apply and whatever great website you launch, your web project will always remain hidden from your target audiences unless your web pages get into search engine databases and are listed among the first 30 search results. Every online business comes to this conclusion sooner or later. Sometimes it happens too late when designers has already sucked in all website budget and sacrificed potential search traffic for expensive and unnecessary graphics or codes.



Lost in Design



Did you ever happen to talk a web project over with a design studio? Seasoned website owners know there are five points which you will be reverted to, no matter what goals you actually wish to get. These sacred cows are "logo, programming language, colors, graphics and site structure." When you ask designers about visibility of a website to your target audiences, its projected positions on the search engine result pages and whether their design concept improves or worsens those positions, you always hear something like "... our team ...creative approach ...newest technologies ...clear design ... harmonizing colors" and so on which return you to the above five dogmas. If you aren't strong enough to resist the spell they used to cast over a client, you'll became addicted to graphics and forget about your primary objectives - visibility to Internet users and high rankings in search engines. Among those who fall into the trap of misunderstanding their own goals are not only newbies, but also experienced folks whose websites have plummeted down in search engines from Top10 to invisibility since they unreasonably agreed to "upgrade" their "obsolete" content-rich recourses to splash pages and inner pages heavy on flash animation and programming codes.



Now it's time to look at how it works. Oh, sorry, how it doesn't work.



Tolerance to Invisibility



There are top needs such as job, health, foodstuffs, car, etc. that millions of citizens depends on in their everyday life, be it in Kiev, Moscow or New York City. Also, we know there are a lot of websites that offer relevant products and services via the Internet, especially in large cities. The point, however, is how reachable and effective the service and product providers are online. To learn whether online resources meet the needs of an average consumer in different cities, we can describe some of the most likely queries with keywords or phrases and type the keywords in a search box of search engines.



For example, let's take Google.com and Google.com.ua that can provide powerful search on New York City and Kiev. If you type "new york city jobs" or "jobs in kiev" (the latter in Russian or Ukrainian, of course) in the search box and hit the Enter, you'll get millions of search results on New York and more than hundred thousand results on Kiev, with the first 30 relevant to the search query in both cases. It's OK; website owners in the recruitment industry do pay attention to their online visibility and traffic to their sites in many countries worldwide. When you're searching for "online food shopping," you can find a lot of online stores in New York, but the Kiev Top 30 results include no direct links to the websites that sell foodstuffs - just free classifieds and links to listings at the Internet directories. It's not bad for the New York shoppers who can choose among one and a half million search results on foodstuffs. But when it comes to other industries that cannot show so many results, say, dentistry, the Kiev and the New York web resources demonstrate almost the same trends; a majority of the dentistry sites have no direct links from Google's search result pages and are searchable only through classifieds and listings at directories, if any. Many of them have slow-loading pages unfriendly to both search engine spiders and Internet users. What did the website owners think about, when they invested in those packages of pictures and programming codes that could never get even a click in the shadows of the competitors? They didn't think. They just listened to their web design contractors.



Here is a classic example. The Kiev web developers who provide outsourcing services say that their best clients are among US small businesses and Ukrainian large companies. Why? Because there is no need to follow rigid requirements in terms of website promotion and visibility, and a contractor may expect a higher fee-to-time ratio. The US clients think an easy availability of broadband services within their country gives them a reason to ignore some common requirements and to believe that huge pictures and codes could also be cool for the dial-up and international users. On the other hand, the Ukrainian key clients often neglect an online visibility issue, as they believe their brand names are widely known both regionally and globally. That's why they trust their contractors absolutely and never draw up the specifications themselves.



The vast majority of website owners around the globe still don't bother imposing limits on graphics and programming codes and don't care about website specifications, especially visibility issues such as keyword and competitor analysis, web page structure, web promotion (http://azurel10n.com/web-promotion-faq.htm), etc. You can launch your web project that way too, but think about what you'll really get: a functional site with tens of thousands of monthly hits or an unreachable online presentation in an Internet-compatible format?

Search Engine Optimization Strategy: Website Design Techniques for Search Engine Ranking Improvement

It is a must for you all to know, how do search engines work. Search engines are not human and they don't scan the pages as we do. They are just robots, which work on the codes and mechanism implied upon them. If you have a small business website and are trying to close sales on a single visit from a customer, it is advisable that you don't make a rich media enhancements like flash animation and excessive graphics, which result in slow page loading time and makes people run away. Established players or business, which are concerned on spreading awareness about their business rather that selling a single standoff product usually uses high media enhancements.



Proper website design is the key to a higher search engine ranking. Before you begin to construct your website, take the time and consider the design elements those are essential to both the viewer and the search engines. This will also contribute in determining the ranking of your website. Design your web site so that every page contains “title”, “description”, and “keyword” meta-tags. These tags are the basic road map for the search engines. When a search engine enters your web site these tags prepare the spider for what to look for on your web page. They prompt the search engine for what words you feel are important and to use them in the ranking process.



The layout of your web site becomes significant to higher search engine ranking. Placement of text in the optimal positions on your website becomes paramount, so if the search engine ignores the meta-tags – which many are starting to do because of abuse and spamming – then text placement will become the first impression that search engine robots would read.



Spiders of the search engines crawl on the web page and index your website. You have to be very clear about your requirements. Keep all your content optimized for all the major search engines. Though all have almost a similar mechanism, you can even learn about how all search engines work, and then design your web content in accordance. For example, Google has a specific set of rules, which it uses to index web pages. It can be learnt from Google itself and you can put your content with the specified guidelines. This is a time consuming process but as you know: "No Frill Without Drill". You can also hire specific companies that can optimize your website to specific search engines.



Viola! You have achieved your dream of learning some key aspects of Internet marketing.

How To Design A Search Engine Friendly Website

There are many websites that fail to target their required traffic, even if they've had some search engine optimisation work done. One of the main causes for this is simply because the website isn't search engine friendly.

This is a basic essential that needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at the outset – think of it as the foundation to establishing your search engine optimisation strategy.

This article aims to highlight the areas a web designer should think about and incorporate into their design for search engine effectiveness:



1. Search Engine Friendly Pages

It is important that when you design your website you not only bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also what the requirements are for search engines. Best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don't really care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash movies are, or how snazzy your javascript is. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be nice and easy to read. Now from this I don't mean adding ‘comment' tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in, i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag, are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines don't like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to get to the core areas that can help you page's ranking. Therefore careful planning and positioning of your page elements is required.



TIPS:

·If you're using table for laying out your page then make them simple and not too complex.

·Avoid using frames.

·If you need javascripts for navigation purposes, then use smaller scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different file.

·Think twice on how to use graphics – make them relevant to your content and use the Alt tag for all images.

·Position the main content of the page before the images, or at least with the images nested between the text.



2. Keywords

Having good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage.

One of the best tools for this is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), which allows you to identify good competitive keywords for your pages.

In general the range of keywords associated to your pages can be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 10-15 keywords. You can always export the results to Excel and try out other competitive keywords if the ones you selected initially do not produce any noticeable benefits.



TOP TIP: Wordtracker offer a one day subscription to their service from which you can squeeze nearly 2 ½ days worth of use! Here's how – Sign-up for the service on the evening of Day 1 (the service will be available almost immediately so you can start searching for your competitive keywords straight away). You will also be able to use the service for the whole of Day 2 and strangely for the whole of Day 3! Enough time to get some good keywords for a lot of pages!



3. Content

Many search engines look at the main body of the page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within the text.



TIP:

Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page within the main body of the page.

Always try and ensure that the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using the ‘heading' tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.



4. Page Title

This is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected.

Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes the page content.

To keep within the limits of many search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn't exceed nine.



5. Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description.

This is the text found under the META Description tag and is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when writing the description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before the user has even opened it!



6. Graphics

We've covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasising the importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s).

Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn't overpower the textual content of your page. As a general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio (70 text/30 images).



7. Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on the web that'll create your site map instantly.



8. Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it's always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page on your website.



Following the basic suggestions above will help lay the foundation to apply further good search engine optimisation advice which will make the difference in your overall search engine ranking.

This finer area of SEO is beyond the realm of this document and will require further investment based on individual needs.

10 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tips for HTML designers

Web design and SEO component



Search engine optimisation has been a hot topic for a while.
Many owners understand that without professional SEO service
their investments in websites are likely to fail.



It is typical though to see a professionally designed pages that miss or

ignore the SEO component.



Web designers have plenty of things to take care of or worry about.
Static or dynamic, ASP or PHP, HTML or XHTML, browser compatibility -
this is just a very short list of problems they face. Being busy with their primary tasks web designers often miss search engine
issues.
That can be a primary reason for many websites and web pages not to appear
in search results at all.



Although SEO should be performed by specialists, some initial
efforts can be applied during the web design stage.



10 Tips for Web Designers



1.Do not miss the Title tag.
Although it is optional, it has a maximum weight for search engines.
SEO specialists spend hours researching and creating good titles.
Do your client a favor - if SEO is not budgeted for make sure that
every page you work on has a meaningful title.



2.Do not miss DESCRIPTION meta tag.
All meta tags are optional. Be aware that description is second important SEO
issue. Try to match it to title.



3.Make sure that title and description are located within HEAD.



4.Do not use dynamic pages if you can.
The project architecture may dictate usage of PHP, ASP etc.
However search engines are reluctant to index them.



5.JScript is fun to use but it makes it harder for search engines to understand
the content of the page. If you need just a menu highlight try to use style instead of
script.



6.Pages with Flash are difficult to optimise for search engines.
How about web sites that are built on Flash?
They impress visitors. However how do visitors find such websites?



7.Utilise style sheets.
Most of modern pages use style sheets. Very few utilise them effectively.
That is why web pages are overloaded with HTML attributes.
That makes them heavier and slower in load.



8.Search engine look for text - not images. If possible use text rather than image.



9.Text of the page should be at least 250 words. Search engines do not score pages
with just a few sentences.



10.Text of the page shouldn't be very lengthy. To make search engines happy
stick with the page size of 15KB - including images.