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Search Engine Optimization StrategiesWith the right techniques and know how, you could literally march right to the top of the major search engines and directories... leapfrogging over your online competitors.
Research the Keywords You'll Use BEFORE Creating Your WebsiteIf you're going to be looking to get online traffic from the search engines, you must do this research before you start creating your website. It's critical that your Web Design take into account the keywords that you think will help you climb the search engine rankings.
Here's how to research some of those words. Start by making a list of all the terms you would use if you were a potential customer. If you're an architect in New York, you'd go to a major search engine (Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc.) and type in "New York architect". Write down the websites that pop up. Once you've listed twenty of so... go back through your list and visit those websites. At each site, view the source file. In other words, look at the code that creates the page you're looking at. With Internet Explorer, just right click on the page and choose "View Source." With Netscape you'll want to do the same and choose "View Page Source." The code that comes up may seem confusing if you've never looked at it before. You're looking for some lines towards the top of the file that say
Jot down the words or the word fragments you see listed. Repeat this for all the websites you wrote down and put checkmarks next to the words that you see repeated. Go back to the search engines and type in the keywords that you saw repeated most frequently and see which websites come up. Before too long, you'll have an idea of which keywords are most popular.
Avoid Javascript, Frames, and Flash If You Want to Rank HighJavasript is the term used for little snippets of special code sent to the computer of anyone visiting your website. Javascript creates neat effects that create popups, special navigation functions, and other special effects. Some javascript helps your visitors navigate a large website, but it's not necessary. Most websites use a little javascript, but some rely too heavily on it. Most Web Design experts agree that lots and lots of javascript makes it harder to rank high on the search engines. Besides, not everyone has javascript on their computer. Some users turn javascript off on purpose while they surf the net... there are good reasons for doing this. Frames break the website into separate pieces that operated somewhat independently of each other. They can be useful in a few circumstances, but you should really stay away from them. Flash is a technology that creates really impressive animation. It loads relatively quickly (compared to other animations) and it creates some amazing effects. The problem comes when a Web Designer decides to create the entire website out of Flash or decides that there should be lots and lots of Flash animations throughout the website. Search engines have a tough time deciphering Flash and determining what the website is about. As you're about to learn, one of the most important concepts is having a distinct theme for a website.
Have a Theme for Your WebsiteIf you want to rank high in the search engines, the best strategy is to have lots of content (words) on your website that center around a particular theme. For example, if you're a dentist, your Web Design should consist of creating individual pages dedicated to separate topics about dentistry. You could have a page for
Obviously I don't know everything there is to know about dentistry... but you get the idea. Your content should be written as you would talk (or write) but should incorporate those keywords you wrote down through the research process. Don't cram your keyword together in an unnatural way. For example, don't write a sentence that says "As a dentist in Los Angelese, Dr. Smith's dentist patients rely on his two decades of dentistry experience to provide excellent dentist visits." Yuck. Even if it worked to get you a high search engine ranking, anyone reading your website would think you were strange.
Automatically Generate Page Titles / Meta Tag Descriptions / KeywordsIf you know how to use dynamic webpages, then you can weave some extra code into your basic website and your pages will automatically have different titles, keywords, and descriptions. What this means is that you can save yourself huge amounts of time and headaches by setting up the proper code once... and then pumping out page after page based on that Web Design "template." SureFire Web Design uses this exact strategy to put just the right search engine words on every page of our clients' websites. This Web Design technique was instrumental in helping us generate over 6,200 pages in our lastest database generated website.
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