| Top Web Hosting Provider of The Month: |
 |
| Visit Bluehost.com | Read Bluehost Review |
|
|
| >> Web Hosting Geeks // Web Hosting Articles // SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
|
|
 |
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 maximum 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: 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: 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: 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. Arif Hanid arif_hanid@ambleton.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Link Popularity: Why Its The Best Investment You Can Do For Your Business More and more search engines rank your web pages based on the number of links that point to your web site (link popularity). Google uses link popularity as its most important factor in ranking sites. The Benefits of Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) If you're going to sell any type of product or service online, you're eventually going to have to optimize your Web site for the Search Engines, in order to boost traffic and sales.Many years ago, it was quite easy to draw effective traffic, as a good content-driven site, with good products, was enough to get a Web site ranked highly in the Search Engines. Keyword Density And How To Use It To Keep Traffic Flowing To Your Site! Generating high traffic to your web site can be costly, or not, depending on time and effort you commit to the business.One of the easiest, least expensive and most effective ways to get visitors is via a concept called 'Keyword Density'. Google is Quickly Changing... Google is quickly changing.. The Two Most Important Things You Must Do For Google Top Ranking Attaining a top ranking in Goggle or any other major search engine nowadays is a herculean task indeed. But webmasters are archieving this enviable position continuously. SEO Expert Guide - Ongoing Monitoring of Results (part 9/10) In the Guide, you have, so far, learnt how to plan for and execute a search engine optimization and promotion strategy. However, this is not a one-off process, but an ongoing and iterative process, where you tweak and refine towards ever better ranking. 3 Principles Of Google When online "Use it. Use it. Google Rankings - Achieving a Top 10 Position in Google - Part 1 Achieving a top ranking position in Google is every webmasters dream. Unfortunately very few ever make it high enough for it to make a big difference on their traffic volume. Keep Your Web Site Content Relevant Visitors and search engines love content-rich web sites, but just having a lot of content on your web site is not enough. It all has to be relevant to a main topic with each page or section of the web site having a specific theme (And yes, this includes any resource or links pages the site may have). Blogging, Spamming, and Blog Spam Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. Search Engine Optimization - A Must As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. Rock Your Rank With a Dynamite Text Link - Yahoo Directory Explodes Rankings Last week a client called me excitedly exclaiming that their Google PageRank had jumped a notch and their targeted keyword term now ranked #23 (up from #45) for their competitive search phrase. I asked the client if he'd been notified by Yahoo that his site was now included in the index after we had submitted it three weeks ago. Do the Robot! Everyone should realize that the search engines (sponsored ads aside)are not tools for advertisement, they are meant to be tools for everday web users. Users who search the web are looking for information, thats it. Google has an Achilles Heal - Will Their Competitors Notice? Even though Google Revenues continue to soar, the hidden problem that may stifle growth and may even allow Yahoo or MSN to overtake the paid search market in the future lies in two critical phrases: Customer Support, and Customer TrainingApproximately 40% of the small businesses we have surveyed have tried Adwords in the past and failed, and some of them have tried multiple times. In some markets the percentage is closer to 60%. Get a Number One Google Ranking With This Simple Technique You probably do this already - complete regular searches in Google for your key phrases and see how high you rank. It's well known that the first three results are far and away the sites that get the most clicks. SEO - Google Sitemaps Explained Once again I seem to be writing about Google. The reason Google keeps cropping up in these articles is that:Google is a innovative company always coming up with new ideas to keep one step ahead of the competition. Google Adsense Optimization Tips There are plenty of tips to help you enhance your adsense revenue in the net, and I'm always seeking for new points. Today, I come back to the Help section of my google adsense account and find treasure there. Submitting Your Site to Search Engines and Directories Regardless of which type of business you currently have, you will definately want to have a website and begin marketing it on the world wide web. After you have designed your website, the next step is to ensure it is properly "optimized", meaning that it's body text(the text you see), title and meta tags(the text that you don't) all have the words you are trying to be found for on the search engine results. Basic Search Engine Promotion I can't tell you how many times people have asked me, "How to do I get my site to come up in the top ten of the search engines so I can get hits and sell my product?"What they really want to know is, "How can I get people to show up to my website without spending any money on advertising my site!"People usually don't like my answer because accomplishing a "top ten ranking" on any search engine always requires careful thought along with a significant amount of work.Three types of "Search engines" abound on the Internet. Keywords, Choose Them Wisely By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword phrases, are extremely important in having search engines display your website. So how do you choose them? Guess? Ask a friend? Check successful competitors sites? There is a better way!First let's digress.
|
|
|
|
|
| © 2004 - 2008 "Web Hosting Geeks" | Web Hosting Reviews | Customer Reviews | RealMetrics Reviews | Hosting Articles | Directory | Partners | Contacts Over 7000 articles: web hosting, web development, domain names, ecommerce, web design, site promotion, ppc advertising, seo, site promotion and many others. Web hosting reviews, ratings and awards are not based on any incentives or commissions. Names and trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. A direct link to Web Hosting Geeks (http://webhostinggeeks.com) must be provided in order to use any of the above information. Contact us for more info. Partners: Hosts by speed, Cheap Website Hosting, Free Website Hosting, Cheap Web Hosting, Top 10 Web Hosts, Top 10 Web Hosting Deals, Best Website Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Adult Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discussions, Dedicated Server Reviews, Best Web Hosting, Web Hosting Discounts, HostProfessor.com, rsuog, halyava, PHP Website Hosting Services, Web Hosting Reviews, Hosting Uptime, Best Web Hosting Reviews, Cheap Webhosting, Web Hosting, Flash Templates, CMS Templates, Web Hosting Reviews, Website Hosting Reviews, Web Hosting Providers, Best Web Hosting, Top Web Hosting, RSUOG Web Hosting |
