Search Engine Friendly Web Design

How to get listed in the search engine results pages:

First, choose keywords that relate to your company.
Next, include these keywords in your website so it can be indexed properly.
Then, create search engine friendly pages.

How to optimize your web pages:

STEP 1: Write quality content.

Good content brings return visitors who may eventually link to your site.The search engines like to see keyword rich content. They also want to see content that is constantly being updated. New content gives visitors a reason to come back. Search engine robots will also visit your site more often once they notice that you update regularly.

Testimonial

Dear Em,

We would like to extend our sincere thanks for creating such a professional and aesthetically pleasing web site.

From day one, we knew we wanted to work with someone local. Your home page was the most informative we found. Your prices were very reasonable, and after meeting you in person, we knew you were the perfect match for us!

Thank you for your vision, patience, and expertise! We will recommend your services to others who are looking to create a professional and dynamic site.

Fondly,

Andrew and Bess Robblee,
Robblee Tree Service LLC
Antrim,
New Hampshire

STEP 2: Use valid, lean markup to code your pages.

What is web page validation? Validating a web page is the process of ensuring that the page conforms to standards. Validation will also ensure that your web pages are interpreted in the same way by search engines and your visitors.

Conforming to standards is one way you can make your website universally understood. The World Wide Web Consortium sets the standards and also hosts a variety of web page validators.

Validation also means that it will be accessible to more people across more web browsers. Accessibility means creating a web page design where ANYONE can use it. Having an accessible website is also regarded as good web design practice.

STEP 3: Design web pages that are not too heavy in file size.

If your page size is too large, a search engine spider that wants to index your site, might skip you if it "times out" while loading your page. The size of your home page consists of the html file, all graphics being loaded, and all scripts being imported.

STEP 4: Use effective title tags.

The title of a web page can be seen in a web browser's title bar. It describes the contents of your web page in one sentence and is the first thing a search engine's spider sees on your page. Creating keyword rich descriptive page titles will pay off in all of the search rankings.

Make certain each page has a unique title tag. By giving each web page its own title tag, you remove the chances of being found guilty of keyword stuffing.

BEWARE OF LINK EXCHANGES

If your website is associated with poorly reputed sites, then their bad reputation can reflect on you.

Too many irrelevant links can be seen as spam. It is not worth the risk of being banned in the search engines.

Instead, build a site that will attract natural incoming links.

Also, use valid markup and remember to include important keywords that relate to your company.

These search engine optimization techniques will boost your search engine rankings so web surfers will visit your site.

STEP 5: Use real headings.

Use the h1 - h6 elements for headings. Search engines still give preference to these tags.

STEP 6: Use effective text links.

Text links are very important to search engines, since anchor text often labels the content of a link's target page. In fact, many search engine optimizers consider anchor text to be the single most important factor in modern search algorithms.

Broken links, on the other hand, give search engine spiders the impression that your site is not regularly maintained and updated.

STEP 7: Always add ALT tags to your images.

Search engines cannot spider images. So they also can't index any text in an image. Using image ALT tags, which are basically image descriptions, will help the search engines understand the image. ALT tags also make your site more accessible to visually impaired people using text readers.

STEP 8: Use META tags.

META tags are html tags placed inside the <head> section of an html page. They are invisible to the reader of the web page, but they help search engines understand them. Most search engines today place less value on the contents of META tags than in the past because they have been abused by spammers. However, some search engines use the contents of the META description tag to describe your site in their search result listings.

META KEYWORDS TAG
A META keywords tag is supposed to be a brief list of the most important themes of your page.

META DESCRIPTION TAG
The META description tag should contain multiple keywords organized in a logical sentence. The DESCRIPTION tag is the spot where you should put a promotional phrase that catches the reader's attention. Most search engines will only use the first 150 characters or so in their results.

So keep your keywords and description short and concise.
Also, avoid repetition so you are not found guilty of META tag spamming.
Avoid using the same META tags for all of your web pages. Each one should be unique.
Make sure those META tags actually appear as keywords on the web page too.

Crimson Designs

NH Web Design Studio