Complete Online Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide - Web Internet Marketing Tutorial

Google Upgrades on Punctuation Search Results

2012-01-23T12:44:00.001-08:00

Google has updated its search results for searching symbols and punctuation marks like, comma, full-stop, carat, and many more. These punctuation marks will now return search results. For now all I can see Wikipedia on top search with definition and details for particular punctuation mark.

But there is one symbol, asterisk (*), for which Google does not show any result.

Latest SEO Techniques and Tips

2012-01-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization is not same as it was few years ago, trends in SEO are being changed drastically. So what are those SEO techniques which make a website optimized for Google.

Some of the basic components in SEO remain same like Title, Description, and Keywords tag. But content is what makes your website a fully search engine friendly as well as user centric.

Following are some latest SEO Tips that can help to make a website optimized:

Content: keyword oriented but not irrelevant and excess of keywords.

Social Networks Share/Link buttons: Social networking share and link buttons are being very popular these days, which is an easiest way to spread out information about your product or services.

Videos and Images: It does not affect much of SEO but it gives user some time to spend on your website, and videos help to engage users on a page.

User Feedback/Reviews: Getting feedback and reviews from user is the best guide to optimized your website for your customers.

Google Analytics Visitors and Goal Flow Chart Visualizations

2011-11-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Google has announced two recent updates in Google Analytics reporting formats. Now you can find flow chart visualization for visitors and goals section in Google Analytics. These two charts will allow you to visualize how visitors navigate through your website.

Visitor Flow – will be available under Visitors section, which will help you to visualize the navigation pattern users take to your website. This flow chart will include main entry or landing page, exit page, and pages in between.

Goal Flow – will be available under Goals section under Conversions, which will help you to visualize the navigation pattern users take to complete a Goal Conversion. This flow will includes all the pages between landing page and Goal conversion page, which similar to current Goal Funnel feature under Goal Conversions. In addition to that you will have ability to check more detailed information about visitors’ navigation pattern.

These two reports hopefully will be available to new Google Analytics interface this week.

Find more about this … http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/231901209

Google Analytics Home Page Meta - MISTAKE

2011-10-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Google - The giant in online search and always talk about search engine optimization techniques and how to implement meta tags properly, has a biggest mistake on Google Analytics' home page meta. It has two meta description tags for this page, and if you check the source code for this page you will find first meta description tag comes before Title tag.

check out screen shot I just took:

I thinks that's really funny! :)

Note*- It might be changed when you look at their page.

Make a Mobile Friendly Website

2011-10-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

More people are surfing on internet using smartphone or other mobile devices. So the importance of website's layout on mobile devices has become very important issue to make a website user friendly. According to a survey - 35% of American adults own smartphone like iphone, anroid, and many others.

So making a mobile or smartphone friendly is one of the major item in your marketing checklist for your website.

When you think about making a website mobile friendly think about following items:

Smaller screen sizes and slower bandwidths
smaller images and fonts
content per page
Mobile Style Sheet (Mobile CSS) gives a way to change your website's layout to fit on mobile devices
or having a separate mobile version of a website.
Adding Meta view port tag, which controls the layout and dimensions of a website on mobile devices or smart phones

More coming on how to make your website a mobile or smartphone friendly website.

Linking Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics

2011-10-06T09:48:00.001-07:00

Google has announced to allow users to link their Google webmaster tool data with Google Analytics. Google webmaster tools includes three reports based on webmaster tool data, that will help to create better SEO reports and analyze website traffic in a better way. These three reports will be under new section called "Search Engine Optimization" under Traffic Source in Google Analytics.

These three reports will be:

Queries: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily queries
Landing Pages: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily landing pages
Geographical Summary: impressions, clicks, and CTR by country

To use this feature you need to link your webmaster tools and Google analytics accounts.

How to Link Webmaster Tool and Google Analytics Account:

Login to your webmaster tools account
Click on "Manage Site" link next to site you want to link to Google analytics and Click on "Google Analytics Property" link
Select the web property you want to link with the website, then click Save.

Google's Panda Update Analysis

2011-06-25T18:39:00.000-07:00

Google's latest panda update changes the way SEO was a few months back. It is like being more realistic and practical than relying on some old theory. Now it is not about adding tones of content and links to your page but about making a website customer friendly.

Look at the video from SEO

Sitemap Auto Discovery

2008-11-04T22:07:00.000-08:00

If you think you need to make a sitemap and submit it to all major search engines to tell them about your website, then there a shocking news for you all.

Now all major search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo etc. announced support of “autodiscovery” for sitemaps. Now you just need to specify the location of your sitemap in robots.txt file and search engines will find it automatically.

Following is syntax to use it in robots.txt:

Sitemap: (URL of the sitemap)

Add above line (with exact location of sitemap) to robots.txt.

But presently not all search engines support autodiscovery for sitemaps, but soon all search engines will start supporting it.

Free Website Hosting Not For SEO

2008-09-04T23:51:00.000-07:00

Selecting a good website host provider is the foundation block for your online business, so it should be strong.

Search engine bot/crawlers don't give any importance to sites with free host. So if you are thinking for implementing SEO (Search engine optimization) on your website then big NO to free web hosting providers.

Free Website hosting has some disadvantages, when it comes to search engine optimization. See Below:

Sub-Domain or Split Domain Names - Free website hosting providers usually offer you site with sub domain (split domain) name. So it is not good SEO practice to have a sub domain on your website. Another big disadvantage of having a sub-domain is that many URL submission providers don't accept sites with sub-domain or split domain pages.
Banner and Pop-up Ads - Search engine spirders (bots or crawlers) hate pop-up Ads that free hosting providers always offer. Most of search engines don't read pages with such banner or pop-up ads.
Low Bandwidth - In free web hosting you will get a limited disk space and band width which is again a major drawback.

So it is very important to Choose Reliable and Secure Website Hosting Service Provider.

Social Bookmarking - A Powerful Internet Marketing Strategy

2008-07-17T00:18:00.000-07:00

We all know back links to a website is always beneficial and a most effective way to get high search engine rankings. Bookmarking your content on popular social bookmarking websites to gain back links. But keep track on because some bookmarking sites give link with "nofollow" attributes.

When we add our link to these social bookmarking websites every time we get a back link. So it is suggested to bookmark your updated content in popular social bookmarking websites to get more and more back links. Be sure to make your personal bookmarks public so that search engines and people can access them easily. There are some social bookmarking websites that are with nofollow or using redirected dynamic links, but still it is useful because human eyes can use these links to visit your website.

There are some online tools for automated social bookmarking such as socialmarker, socialposter and many more. So get your website/blog listed in most popular social bookmarking websites to get high rankings and traffic.

SEO Friendly Searchable Flash

2008-07-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

In past, search engines were not able to read content (text, links) from flash (.swf) files, which caused frustration for web developers and flash web designers. Web designers faced challages to develop or design a flash based website. They need to do lots of hard work to make flash content available to search engines in any other way. But now scenario is changed search engines are now able to extract content from flash files.

According to Google and Adobe, now google's new flash indexing algorithm is able to read content in flash files i.e., text and links to give more visibility to flash content. Adobe has worked to make flash content searchable by Google and Yahoo.

Google's imporved flash indexing algorithm is presently able to index textual content and links from all kinds flash (.SWF) files like flash banners, flash menus etc. but there are some limitations like Google's new flash indexing algorithm is not able to extract content from non-textual (images, buttons) components in a flash file.

Some other limitations to index flash files are:

Google is not able to read flash file if your flash file is loaded via JavaScript.
Google is not able to read external content loaded in flash files during execution like some html, xml content from external resources.
Google is unable to read content written in Hebrew language or Arabic language in flash files.

So now web designers and developers are need not to worry about their flash content

Local Search Engine Marketing

2008-06-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

As search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM) growing fast, everybody looking for different ways to get high ranks on major search engines and increase their online business. Marketing your website by local search engine and directories submission is one of the most way to get found by local audience/customers. Local search engines are also called regional search engines which target audience from particular region.

Local search engines work great if you are targeting some particular region for your online business. Major benefit to submit website to local search engines and directories is very specific and targetted visits which mostly likely ready to convert into sales.

Local search engine marketing basically includes:

Local Search Engine Submissions
Local Directory Submissions
Local Yellow Pages Submissions
Local Classifieds Listing

Some common steps for local search engine optimization and marketing:

Search and make a list of local search engines and directories
Start Submission to these local search engines and directories
Always full and accurate address to submit
Never forget to give contact number, fax and email Ids in your listing
Use google map to display your geo-location with full path preview
Choose most relevant category to submit website
Use targetted keywords in title and description for submission

These are most common tips to market your business online.

Tracking Clicks with Google Analytics

2008-06-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics is the most popular traffic and visits tracker for websites. Google analytics uses Urchin tracker to track visits on particular website. Using analytics we can't just track visits and page view but we can track every click by visitor. We can track click on text links, images or other non html components.

Tracking a visitor click is very simple. we just need to call urchintracker: a javascript function with the component (image, text link etc.). To call urchinTracker function we need to use OnClick event for that particular image.

For example see below example to track clicks on an image:

Code for Legacy Tracking Code (urchin.js)

<img src="/images/rss-icon.jpg"
onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/RSS-FEED');"/>

Code for New Tracking Code (ga.js)

<img src="/images/rss-icon.jpg"
onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/RSS-FEED’);"/>

Following is sequence of process occurs:

When a visitor click on that particular image the browser captures click

The browser response to click by executing urchinTracker code.

urchinTracker function creates a pageview in Google Analytics with name '/RSS-FEED/' under Content > Top Content Section (see below snapshot)

You can use this method to track click on almost every component on the web page like pdf files, email link, register button or other.

Keywords Search and Selection Tips

2008-06-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

The keyword selection process is the most crucial part for optimizing a website for search engines. Selecting effective keywords for website is very important.

So here are some effective tips for keyword selection:

Build a Keyword List: Create a list of keywords related to your product, services and theme of the website. Use popular keyword selection tools like wordtracker, overture, google keywords tool and more. Try use all combinations and synonyms for every keyword. When searching keywords always prefer key phrases instead of single keywords, because narrow (long tail) key phrases have better chances to give high search engine rankings.

Sort Keywords : After searching good keywords now sort them according to their search count (how many people search for particular keyword) and competition (how many websites listing in major search engines).

Selecting Keywords from List: If website is a fresh website and have lots of competition in its domain then start with narrow keywords i.e., low search count and less competitive keywords. Generally long tail keywords (key phrases) have low search count and competition after selecting those keywords go for regional keywords (if you are targeting specific regional audience/customers).

Magic of Misspelled Keywords: Using common misspelled keywords can also be helpful to get good search engine rankings. These misspelled keywords can be used in META tags which are not visible to users. Search engines consider some common misspelled keywords for listing relevant web pages. But consistent use of such misspelled keywords can be harmful.

Constantly Watch Keywords Search Count and Competition: Keyword search and selection is not just a one time process you need to keep watching keywords trends and performance and keep it on going process to search and change keywords accordingly.

So do not waste your efforts for searching and selecting huge number of keywords, be specific.

How to Optimize a Dynamic Web Site

2008-06-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

There are lots of misconceptions about optimizing a dynamic website, usually we listen dynamic websites are not at all search engine friendly websites and they can't have high search engine rankings. This is not true dynamic websites can be search engine friendly if designed and developed with care from starting by keeping SEO techniqes in mind.

Dynamic websites are basically database driven websites created by using some server side side scripting. There are some problems with dynamic websites that makes them difficult to be read by search engine crawlers/bots.

Following are some basic problems with dynamic websites:

Virtual Dynamic Pages - as dynamic websites are database driven websites and dynamic websites do not have physical pages on server. So it is difficult for search engines to read content from dynamically created web pages.

Complex URLs - Dynamic websites usually have dynamic URLs with lots of query strings. e.g., domain.com/products.php?id=1233

Search engine bots treat URLs with query strings as never ending series of links, that is not crawlable.

Difficult to Give unique meta tags to dynamic pages.

Following are some tips to optimize dynamic websites :

URL Rewriting - Covert all your dynamic URLs contain query strings to search engine friendly URLs (static URLs). Convert domain.com/products.php?id=1233 to domain.com/products.php/id/1233/

Create Static Search Engine Friendly Pages - In addition to all dynamic created pages it is good practice to create search engine friendly pages with good keyword rich content in it and links other interal pages. Give descriptive and keyword rich title and meta tags to these static pages.

Use CGI Scripts - To make URLs search engine friendly use CGI scripts to put all information in querystrings to some variables.

Create Static site Map - Create a static HTML site map for all static and dynamic pages (physical URLs). If you have lots of pages then never make sitemap too long split it into multiple pages.

Do Link Exchange - Get inbound links from related websites to increase link popularity for the website. Check here for choosing a good link partner

Using these tips you can make dynamic website a search engine friendly website and get high rankings on search engines.

Choosing a Search Engine Friendly CMS Software for Website

2008-06-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Content Management System (CMS) have been in use to make it easy to develop and manage content rich websites. These CMS tools give very user friendly interface to manage component on any web page of the website on the fly. There are huge number of CMS softwares available on the web, and very few of them are search engine friendly CMS softwares. There are some problems in using CMS to design a website like usually cms softwares have dynamic URLs with query strings, not able to give different meta tags for indvidual pages. There are very few CMS softwares have truly search engine (SEO) friendly functionality. But some of them like joomla cms has capability to put some Add-ons to make it search engine friendly CMS software. So before choosing a CMS software your should know what a SEO friendly CMS tool should contain.

Following are some common features which CMS tool should have to make it truly search engine friendly CMS:

Search engine friendly titles - CMS software must allow different title tags for indvidual pages.

Unique Meta Tags - CMS should allow to give unique meta tags for every page on the website.

Static URLs - CMS should have feature to create custom static search engine (SEO) friendly URLs.

301 redirection functionality - CMS tool should have permanent 301 redirection feature.

ALT Attribute for images - A search engine friendly cms features to give keyword rich ALT attributes to static images in web page.

Customized CSS capability - A cms should have feature to customize CSS according to needs.

Easy to manage folder structure - Linking and navigation structure should be easy to manage and understand.

I would love to have some comments and experiences from individuals about different CMS softwares available in the market.

Criteria for Choosing a Good Link Exchange Partner

2008-05-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

In the process of link building, the most tedious task is to choose good link partners to exchange your link. The process of link building has many benefits, good link building campaign can help you to increase traffic on your website, increase your link popularity on search engines and boost your search engines rankings. It is not like that you can exchange your links with any website. There is some criteria that helps to you to choose a good link partner.

Following are tips (criteria) for choosing a good link exchange partner:

Theme and service Relevancy - While searching for link partners you should pick websites with same theme and domain for services/products of your site. It is worthless to exchanges link with a tourism website if you are providing web design and development services.

Page rank - When getting link from a relevant website, page rank for the page where your link is placed should be good.

Number of links - Page where your website link is being placed should not have huge list of links, try to link with website 20-25 links per page.

Quality of links - On link page with your link should not have irrelevant links like casino or adult site links.

Static HTML Links - Some webmasters gives JavaScript that is of no use as back links or link popularity is concerned.

Check for NoFollow link - some tricky webmasters give links with NoFollow attributes that is again useless.

Redirected Links – Some webmasters provide redirected link with a dynamic URLs/query string that is not a search engine friendly way to get links

While doing link building campaigns always focus on quality of links instead of quantity.

Effective Link Building Techniques

2008-05-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

Link Exchange or link building is the most important and powerful way to increase your search engine rankings/ page rank as well as traffic to your web site. After designing a website and doing all ON page SEO techniques now its time to boost your website performance by using off page SEO activities. In link building process webmasters usually search for their link partners and trade/exchange links with them. Almost all major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN give importance to number of sites linked to your website, incoming links are like votes to your website. But choosing a bad or irrelevant link partner can even ban your website from search engine index. So be careful while choosing your link partner.

Link building includes three kind of linking strategies:

1. One Way Linking - In this process you need not to give anything in return for getting a link from other website. There are some websites provide free links to your website.

2. Reciprocal Linking - This is most popular way to increase your link popularity. In this process you need to find website relevant to your business and services and then send them request to place your link on their but before that you need to place their link on your website.

3. Three Way Linking - Its bit complex linking strategy to gain high link popularity. In this you ask for a link to your website from webmaster but you don't provide link back from your website but from any other (third) website to your link partner.

Before starting a link building process you need to understand the way for selecting a good link partner. Always keep in mind it's not just the quantity of links but the quality that matters.

Search Engine and Directory Submission

2008-04-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

After completing with ON Page SEO processes now it’s time to plan for a strong link building strategy for your website. There are many methods to get number of links one of them is getting your site submitted to popular search engines and web directories. Once your site is completed start submitting your website to major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Never forget to submit your website to regional search engines. After submitting website to major search engines next process is selecting good directories and submit your website to most relevant category. There are lots of web directories available on web every web directory have different criteria to put your link in their index, some of them give links without asking anything in return (FREE Web Directories), others ask for a reciprocal link or some are paid directories which ask for money to put your link.

Following are different type submission:

FREE Link Submission: There are huge number of FREE web directories that you can use to submit your website. One the most popular free web directory is DMOZ.org. In Free submission you just need to select most relevant category to you website theme and services.

Reciprocal Linking: Some web directories ask for a link to their home page from your website, called reciprocating links.

Paid Submission: Some web directories charge for including your website link to their index. Featured link submission is also of same kind but in this method you get link to a special place on their website for example, Home page or featured links portion.

Be careful when you are selecting a web directory for submission. Regional directories, service specific directories are more valuable than general web directories.

The hullabaloo about Page Ranks

2008-01-17T00:37:00.000-08:00

Are we becoming Page Rank junkies?
There is an addiction in the online space- and it's called the hankering-after-page-rank addiction.

Before we all get bent out of shape worrying about our web site's PageRank let us take a collective deep breath and ponder over the following statement:

Google does not rank websites, it ranks pages

And this is something we need to keep in mind. When submitting to directory sites and more importantly paid listings, it’s the Page Rank of the PAGE that the link is on, that is important. Keeping in mind that it the internal page has a good ranking, it should send traffic to your site too. It is possible for internal pages to gain a higher page rank than the home page.

Possibly the best thing we can do is to regularly change and update our pages. Keeping the pages fresh is seen as new content and bring back the google spider. And needless to say, the more this happens, the more likely our Page Rankings will increase. This is also why blogs in generally do well in natural search results because they provide regular changing information.

Cheers to PageRank de-addiction!

Robots.txt File and Meta Robots Tag

2008-01-14T19:38:00.000-08:00

Robots.txt File is used to give instructions to search engine crawlers (also known as bots, spiders) to allow or disallow some part of website for crawling, This is also known as The Robots Exclusive Protocol. Whenever a search engine bot visits a website it checks for robots.txt file and find instruction given in this file. So if it finds instructions not to crawl website it goes on.

Sytanx for Robots.Txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

*In this syntax User-agent specifies name of particular robots or * (for all robots) and Disallow gives the path disallowed for crawling (in our example Root path is given so any robot will not crawl any page of website).

Examples:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
All robots can crawl your website, no folder has been disallowed.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
All robots will not crawl content under "cgi-bin" folder.

User-agent: GoogleBot
Disallow: /images/
GoogleBot will not index content under "images" folder.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
All bots has been disallowed to visit any part of website

User-agent: GoogleBot
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /
In This example we are allowing only GoogleBot to crawl our website and disallowing all other bots.

Steps for Creating a robots.txt file

Open any text editor (notepad)

Write your robots instruction

Save file as "robots.txt"

upload robots.txt file to root of your website

Meta Robots Tag

Meta Robots Tag is used to define page specific instructions for search engine robots to index or not to index content of page. This tag should be placed under HEAD tag.

Like other meta tags Robots Meta tag have same attributes but with different values:

Syntax & Examples:
<meta name="Robots" content="INDEX, NOFOLLOW">
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW">
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

Note* If no meta robots tag is given then default content will INDEX,FOLLOW.

User and Search Engine Friendly Content

2008-01-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

The content of a website is most powerful tool for selling products or services and things like graphics, animations etc etc is important to make your website visibly sound. Good content is way to attract your visitors to stay on website and explore about products and services you are selling and an optimized content with smart use keywords is key for high search engine rankings.

While writing content for a website follow some tips:

Consistency - Make content consistent from page to page. Your objective should be consistent through out website.

Active Content - Always use active words in content to making visitor feel like a participant rather than a passive reader. Always inspire them to take an action.

No Error Content - Content on a website should be free from any grammatical or spelling mistakes.

Selling Idea - Most of websites have content describing features of their product or services, do not write about what your product/service have but write about how can it is beneficial for customers.

Call of Action - Your call of action text (buy now, get demo etc.) should be clearly visible to visitor wherever your visitor is on your website.

Content for Search Engines - A search engine friendly content does not mean a stuffed content with lot of keywords. Try to use your keywords smartly in your content with proper density of keyword. Never try to spam by hiding your content.
Try to link you text (keywords) to relevant internal page of website that will really help to boost performance of linked page.

Search Engine (SEO) Friendly Navigation Structure

2008-01-09T19:38:00.000-08:00

Navigation structure of a website plays a major role in guiding web crawler (search engine bot) to index your website. A non search engine friendly navigation can lead to major problems in search engine rankings. So try to make your navigation simple and manageable.

Following are some tips for creating a search engine (SEO) friendly navigation for your website:

1. Logo - In most of websites Logo is on top left of website. It is good practice to link your logo to home page (not domain.com but domain.com/index.html) from every page.

2. SiteMap - Sitemap is basically an index of web pages a website has and it is necessary for a website. Make your html and XML sitemap and place a link on top of home page. Avoid placing sitemap link on every page.

3. Avoid Image Links - As we all know search engine spiders don't read text in images, try to avoid images for navigational links. Always use text links for navigation and use CSS (cascading style sheets). If you really need to use images for links then give a keyword rich ALT attribute.

4. No JavaScript Menus or Links - Search engine spiders do not read text written in JavaScript and will not follow link defined in JavaScript. So do not use JavaScript for your internal linking.

5. Avoid Links in Flash - Search engine bots (crawlers) are not able to index/follow links defined in flash.

6. No Image Maps - Do not use image maps for navigation.

7. Dynamic Site Navigation - we usually see lots of queryString characters (?) in URLs for dynamic websites e.g., shopping portals. When you are designing a dynamic website (php, asp etc) try make your URLs with less or NO querystring. Use some URL rewriting techniques to make URLs search engine friendly.

*Note - If there is situtation where you want all these non search engine friendly techniques (JavScript, Flash, ImageMaps) for navigation then try to make an alternative navigation panel for search engines like on bottom of page use text links for navigation.

Website Meta Tag Optimization

2007-10-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

When your website is ready to launch there are some important terms that you should take care just placing text and images is not enough to make your website search engine friendly. You have to put some keyword rich and optimized Meta tags, alt attributes for images, keywords in your content and anchor text for internal linking.

Following is brief description and benefits of using Meta and other tags:

Make Optimized Title Tag: The most effective tag for getting high search engine ranking is tag. Title tag is main linked text in search engine ranking pages. Writing good title tag does not mean to make it just bundle of comma separated keywords, use 1-2 your primary keywords (key phrases) to make your title descriptive. Creating title with just keywords can cause penalize your website from search engine indexing? Try to make your title within 50-80 characters including spaces. You have very limited space to place your primary keywords so avoid using stop words like ‘is’ ‘the’ ‘of’ etc. Do not write your company name in starting, if you want to put brand name in title just place in end or middle of title. If you are targeting specific region put name of region (city, country) in your title tag.

Make Optimized Description Tag: The second important Meta tag in your web page is Meta Description tag. All major search engines like Google, yahoo, MSN shows your description just below the title of web page in SERP (Search engine ranking Pages). It gives brief description of your website and its services. In description you have freedom to make it 80-100 characters long including spaces, so try use 3-4 your major targeted keywords in a descriptive way. Try to use same keywords you used in title tag to make it more relevant and it will help for high search engine ranking. The description tag is like preview about web page containing that description tag, so do not use irrelevant content (that is not available in web page content).

Keywords Tag: This tag is used to place you keywords in a comma separated form, but it hardly affects your search engine ranking. Most of search engines do not give any importance to keyword Meta tag but still there are some search engines which counts this tag. So it is good to place all your important keywords in Meta keywords tag.

Heading Tags Optimization: The heading tags are also play vital role for search engine rankings. These HTML tags start from H1 till H6. Headings are generally used to highlight important information or service about any web site. Use most relevant and primary keyword in your heading tag. Place heading tag in just start of your web page content and below heading tag just describe your service declared in heading tag.

Image ALT Attribute: It is one the most important term in a web page. ALT is an attribute of Image (img) tag. Its basic purpose is to put an alternative text for situation where images cannot be displayed. All major search engine crawlers do not read images so for those spiders ALT attributes do its task. So you can also add your important keywords in your image alt attribute but place keyword relevant to image and content of the web page.

Anchor Text: Hyperlinked text or anchor text is text linked to any other page (external or internal). In web page content placing some links to make your important keywords as anchor text can also be helpful.

Some other things to take care of is to make your important keywords or key phrases bold in web page content, use good and unique content for every web page of your website.

Search Engine (SEO) Friendly Website Design Factors

2007-10-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

Design of a website is most important part of a website’s success on search engine rankings and traffic. It is only your websites designs and navigation structure that can make it easy for search engine spiders to read valuable content from your website and decide theme of your website. So before starting a website you must take care about design and navigation structure of website. It should be simple and easy.

Following are some website design factors that can affect your search engine rankings:

Navigation: Your website navigation should be simple and clear. Use text links to navigate to every web page on you website. Avoid use of JavaScript or Flash Link menu for navigation. Use unique and professional color combination on each & every page of the website; avoid using different colors and fonts on different pages of you website. Place your Logo on top-left part of website and link it to your home page with respective ALT attribute by using your primary key phrase. Make a html and xml site map and give a link to it only from home page. Using a bread crumb (link ladder) for navigation can also be helpful for users and search engine. Use your important keywords in bread crumb for linking.
CSS: Try to make table less web pages because web pages designed by using DIV tags are rated higher than web pages with tables. Using DIV for web page design is also easy to maintain and update. Do not define your styles in your webpage code make a style sheet (.css) file to define all style and give reference to that css file to use.

Avoid Flash and JavaScript: Using heavy flash animations can make your website attractive but search engine spiders don’t like flash and java script on any web page so try to use simple & light (gif, jpeg) images for designing. Do not include your JavaScript code in your web page HTML code keep all JavaScript code in different JavaScript (.js) file and give reference to respective where you want to use that JavaScript Code.

Content: Content on a website is it’s key to get higher rank and attract search engine spiders. Search engine spiders like site with useful content on it. So give a brief description of your services or type of products you are dealing in on home and link that brief information to specific landing page relevant to that description.

Avoid Frames and Image Maps: Some web designers use frames for websites that is of no use according to search engine spiders. Search engine crawlers don’t like sites in frames so avoid use frames. Image Map is way to divide a single image to different portions and link those parts to specific page. Links defined in image map is not readable by search engine crawlers. So try to avoid image mapping for your navigation.

There are lots of tips to make your website search engine friendly I am describe in later posts.

For more detailed information just go through Google Webmaster Guidelines to make your website search engine friendly.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

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