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Free Website Content
Keep Your Website Search Friendly
Search Friendly
By Sharon Housley
So you have a fantastic website but no
one ever visits. You may ask? Why? Your website should
be designed with search engines in mind. Too many web
designers are graphic artists that excel at image manipulation,
but lack a basic understanding of search engine optimization.
Web design and search engine optimization (SEO) should
not be mutually exclusive. Webmasters should have a
clear understanding of both design techniques and how
the search engines work.
Incredible graphics on a website without
any traffic, will do little to fill the coffers. Follow
these basic guidelines to ensure that your website will
be visited and attractive.
1. Navigation
Both humans and crawlers (search engines) need to be
able to navigate your website. Avoid using technology
that prohibits the search engine's ability to spider
web pages. The majority of search engines have the ability
to follow the links on a website if you use standard
HTML. Observe normal convention and make the links obvious
and available to all website visitors.
2. Easy to Read
Fonts should be legible and webmasters should utilize
white space judiciously. Text on the web page should
be easy to read.
3. Speed
Avoid using overly large graphics that are slow to load.
Remember you only have mere seconds to capture the visitors
attention, do not waste precious seconds with web pages
that are slow to load. Search engines too will become
impatient and give up on your website if it takes too
long to view the content. As a result you should avoid
using free hosting services that might be unreliable
or slow to respond if you receive any web traffic surges.
4. Consistency
Your website should maintain a consistent look and feel.
In other words, all the pages on the website should
have a similar look, color scheme and navigation.
5. Above the Fold
The most important information on the your web page
should appear above the "fold". This means that the
website visitor should be able to view the most important
content without having to use the scroll bar.
6. Contact Information
Include corporate contact information on the website.
This lends your company credibility, anyone can pretend
to be anyone or anything. Including contact information
on a website shows that you are a serious and legitimate
business entity.
7. Avoid Javascript /Ajax
Javascript and Ajax are cool, but they are not search
friendly. It is best to stick with good old HTML. Search
engines at this point are unable to spider the website
contents that are displayed using Javascript. This is
also true of websites that are dynamically updated with
Ajax. Chances are the body of your website will help
your website rank well; do not waste the search engine
opportunity by using Javascript or Ajax.
8. Meta Data Matters
Each and every web page on the website should contain
a unique title and description. Many search engines
extract meta data from the website header and use it
to classify and categorize the web pages listing. The
web page title and description should relate to the
webpage contents.
9. Keywords Naturally
Use website keywords and keyword phrases in the web
copy in a natural way. Search engines are starting to
discern unnatural text, machine generated content and
content that is cobbled together by a bot. Write your
website's content for humans not search engines.
10. Web Page Focus
Each web page on a website should focus on one or two
keywords or keyword phrases, no more no less. The keywords
should be incorporated into the meta tags, and web copy.
An optimized website can bring search
traffic and visitors who have a natural interest in
your product or service. Optimization should be part
of the design process. Before hiring a web designer
make sure they understand both your design needs and
search engine optimization.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds
and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for
RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com
audio recording and editing software.
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This article may be used freely in opt-in
publications and websites, provided that the resource
box is included and the links are active. A courtesy
copy of the issue or a link to any online posting would
be greatly appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
.
Additional articles available for publication available
at http://www.small-business-software.net/free-website-content.htm
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