Web Design Discussion

Are you currently generating free traffic to your website?
Are people finding your website in the search engines?
Is your website search engine friendly?
How can you increase your current rankings?

These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself if you want to build a profitable business on the Internet. The best free traffic you can receive is from an organic listing in the search engines (websites listed on the left). Ideally your site should be listed on the first page for a specific keyword. If your website appears on the second page or beyond no one will see it. There’s no guarantee you’ll get a first page listing (because search engine formulas change and more competitors come online everyday) therefore you need to create a list of many keywords then integrate them into your web pages.

Step by step process on how to do keyword research:

1. Create a list of keywords

Use the free keyword research tools such as WordTracker or the Google Adwords suggestion tool to create a list of at least 100 keywords. For example here are the first 3 monthly results when you enter “keyword research” in Wordtracker..

keyword research…………….. 1,018
keyword research seo…………… 44
keyword research tool…………… 44
seo keyword research………………2

The longer your list the more keywords you can use in your website content. Your goal should be to dominate your niche by obtaining good rankings for all your keywords.

2. Select long tail keywords

Long tail keywords don’t have a high number of searches per month and have less competition than the popular keywords. Therefore it will be easier to attain high rankings for the them. In the above example you would use the second and third results instead of the first because there are less competing websites.

3. Create a list of competing websites

Enter each keyword into the Google search box with quotations around it to view the number of competing websites. The higher the number the more competitors you have.

Example

“keyword research”…………………11,500,000 (competing sites in Google)
“keyword research seo”……………41,910,000
keyword research tool………………1,410,000
“seo keyword research”……………….432,000

After doing a little more research you’ve discovered the first 3 searches have too many competitors but the fourth one has much less. You should now check the number of backlinks of the top 10 websites for this keyword. This will determine what you need to do to rank above a competing website.

4. Analyze the backlinks of competitors

These are links that point to a website. It’s one of the main factors Google uses to rank websites. The quality and quantity of backlinks will determine your rankings. If you can outnumber the backlinks of your competitors you will outrank them in the search engines.

Use Yahoo Site Explorer to check the number of backlinks for a web page or website. For example if the first website you check has 6000 backlinks you’ll need to get over 6000 to outrank them. That would take too long. If the second result only has 20 backlinks you could outrank them by building more than 20 to your own web page containing the same keyword.

5. Use the keywords in your content

Only use one or two keywords in the content of each web page. Include it in your meta tags, headings, sub headings, paragraphs and links. Don’t over do it otherwise the search engines will think you’re spamming them and lower your rankings.

6. Build backlinks to your website

Build backlinks to all your web pages using a combination of article marketing, video marketing, commenting on blogs, forums and social networking. Avoid getting backlinks from unrelated websites. Focus on sites that compliment or relate to your own.

7. Add unique content

As you add more content you increase the places visitors find your website. Instead of just finding your business through the home page they find it from other pages. Therefore make sure you optimize each web page plus build backlinks to it.

Related Article
How to Optimize Your Website for the Search Engines

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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Web Design, Hosting, SEO

Before you make plans to redesign your website there are some seo secrets you need to know about that generate long term benefits. Many site owners SEO their websites after they’ve been redesigned because they didn’t receive any extra traffic or their traffic disappeared. Follow the SEO secrets below so your web site will easily be found by the search engines.

6 Website Redesign SEO Secrets Your Developer May Not Know

At the end of the year, many businesses start to think about redesigning their tired old website to breathe some new life into it. You may even be in the midst of a website redesign right now. If so, the first thing is to make sure you hire a design and development company that knows how to build the infrastructure of the website in a search engine crawler–friendly manner.

Beyond that, you need to address a number of additional SEO tactics before you get too deep into your redesign. The reason you need to keep SEO front and center during this time is twofold: so that you do not lose your previous traffic, but also so that you can gain additional targeted search engine visitors when the new site goes live.

Here are 6 SEO redesign secrets your developer may not know…ignore them at your own peril!

1. Creating Your SEO’d Site Architecture

Search engines look explicitly at how all your pages are linked together in order to determine their place within the site. Pages that are linked from every other page will be given more weight than those that are only linked from a few others. This is all considered a form of internal link popularity, or in Google language, internal PageRank.

Recommendation: During your redesign, don’t bury too deeply within the site any content that was previously bringing targeted search engine traffic. Ensure that any informational content that will be focused on the more competitive keyword phrases (for example, product and service pages) is high up in your site hierarchy.

In addition, all content contained in a specific category should be cross-linked via some sort of sub-navigation within that section.

2. Categorization and Avoiding Duplicate Content

When people are seeking information from a search engine, they usually have a question, a problem, or a need for specific information. The search queries they use at Google and the other engines reflect this. The more ways you can categorize your content for the various target markets you serve, the better.

Recommendation: Be sure that all top-level pages answer the potential searcher’s (your potential customers’) questions, and that it’s clear that your products and services can solve their problem. In addition, you also have to ensure that regardless of how someone found any piece of content on your site, they always end up at the same URL to avoid PageRank splitting and duplicate content issues.

For example, if a specific product can be classified as both a product and a service, it makes sense that it might be listed under both categories. However, the page (URL) that the potential customer eventually lands on, regardless of which category they started in, should always be the same.

3. New Content Management System and Changing URLS

If URLs must change in the redesign due to a new content management system or back-end coding, search engines may take some time to index the new URLs as well as give them the same weighting they gave the previous URLs due to URL age factors.

Recommendation: It’s critical to 301-redirect all old URLs to their relative counterpart within the newly designed website. This will pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones quickly, as well as ensure that site visitors don’t receive 404-not-found errors.

This will be easier if the new URL naming is similar to the old one, because you can use automated methods. If URLs must change completely with no correlation to the names of the old URLs, and hand-redirects are required, you’ll want to at least redirect all the top-level pages, as well as those that you’re sure receive keyword traffic from search engines. But, ideally, every URL should be redirected if at all possible.

4. Coding of Navigation Menus

Links contained within the navigation of your website should be coded in a search engine–friendly manner so that they are visible and crawlable. Some DHTML and Flash menus are invisible to search engines, which causes the pages linked within them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.

Recommendation: Make sure all navigational menus are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. In addition, avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation (CSS mouseovers are fine). You’ll also want to ensure that all content can be reached by hard-coded links – don’t force the user to go through any kind of search box menu because those are traditionally search engine unfriendly.

5. Custom HTML Elements

While some level of automation for titles, metas, headers, URLs, and alt attributes for images can be helpful, it’s critical that your new website’s content management system allow you to create custom descriptions for these as well.

Recommendation: Make sure the content management system has fields for custom title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, etc. There should be no limit to the number of characters allowed in these fields either, because every page may need a different number of words and characters.

6. Session IDs and Other Tracking Links

It’s best not to use session IDs to track visitors, but if your system must use them, you’ll only need to feed the “clean” URLs to the search engine spiders – otherwise, they may get caught in an infinite loop, indexing the same content under multiple URLs.

You’ll also want to avoid any sort of campaign tracking links appended to URLs because these can split your link popularity by causing your content to be indexed under multiple URLs.

Recommendation: If this type of tracking is inherent in your system, use the canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.

Don’t be surprised if your developer isn’t happy to receive some of these “secrets.” He or she may feel that their authority is being usurped or their creativity is being hindered. Just remember that it’s your website that you’re paying them to create in a way that will make you the most money possible. Let your developer know up-front that these things are non-negotiable. If they tell you that they can’t do any of the above, start looking around for a new developer – ASAP!

While there will always be a few unexpected bugs to work out when your site goes live, you won’t have to be afraid of losing your search engine visitors as long as you know what you’re doing. We’ve successfully helped many companies through this transition without any glitches. At the end of the process, there’s nothing like the feeling of having your beautiful new website launched. But more than that, there’s great comfort in knowing that the people looking for what you offer will continue to be able to easily find you in the search engines.

Source
6 Website Redesign SEO Secrets Your Developer May Not Know

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Did you know that your web site images get indexed and ranked by the search engines?

If you correctly optimize the images on your web site they can achieve high rankings. For example if you enter “horse” in the Google search box you’ll see several horse images for the top results. When you click on any of these images it will take you to their respective web sites. Image optimization gives you a leg up on your competitors who may not have implemented this strategy.

How to optimize your web site images?

1. Optimize the file name

Use the keyword that describes the image in your file name. Instead of naming your horse image “image1″ name it “horse.jpg”

2. Optimize your description

Search engines only read text therefore include your main keywords in the image description (alt tag). Make sure it clearly describes your image (and not something else). False use of this tag may alert the search engines you’re trying to trick them.


<img src="horse.jpg" alt="horse picture">


3. Optimize the image title tag

Example


<img src="horse.jpg" alt="horse picture" title="horse">


4. Optimize your content

The web copy surrounding your image also affects the position of your image in Google’s image search. So you would place the horse image within the copy containing horse content.

5. Include the width and height attributes

Larger images tend to do better than small images so include width and height dimensions to show search engines the size of the image.


<img src="horse.jpg" alt="horse picture" title="horse" width="640" height="480">


6. Optimize the web page

If you optimize your web page for a specific keyword it will do better in the search engines than a page that doesn’t have that focus. Using too many keywords in your web copy will dilute the ranking power for each keyword.

7. Use high quality images

If your image gets listed at the top of the first page it should be crisp and clear so visitors will want to click it to view the image on your web site.

Go through the images on your web site to make sure they are correctly optimized. It may give a boost to your current search engines rankings.

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Check out my SEO Services

Are you always checking your web site rankings?
Is your traffic dependent on maintaining top rankings?
Do your rankings convert into sales?

Attaining top search engine rankings doesn’t always translate into a successful online business as there are multiple factors influencing a visitor’s decision.

Here are 5 reasons why top rankings don’t guarantee success

1. Search engine ranking formulas change

You may enjoy top rankings for a while when suddenly your site disappears. This is because search engines constantly change their ranking formulas.

2. Competing web sites

Your rankings may drop due to other sites competing for the same top position. If your only source of traffic is from the search engines you may suddenly have no sales and be out of business if you lose your top position.

3. Geo targeted search results

If you enter “shoes” in the Google search box local business companies are displayed in the search results in Google maps and the Google ads on the right side of the page. This is because search engines know your location by your IP address and will provide results that are beneficial to you.

The same happens when searching within your Google or Yahoo account. You’ll receive personalized search results based on your preferences. Google is always trying to make searches more targeted so you quickly receive the information you seek. The rankings you see from your desktop may not be the same as what others see.

4. Top rankings don’t mean more traffic

It’s easy to achieve top rankings for keywords no one is searching for. The search engine company you hired may give you a list of all the keyword phrases that received first page rankings. These keywords are useless if they don’t increase the number of visitors to your web site.

5. Top rankings don’t equal sales

If your web site looks unprofessional it will turn away your visitors. Some other factors that influence conversions include:

• poorly written web copy
• slow loading times
• difficulty navigating to other pages
• broken links
• cluttered web page

Instead of constantly checking your rankings evaluate the performance of your web pages to convert visitors into sales.

Also read How to Optimize Your Google Maps Listing

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Boost your backlinks, traffic and sales
with my SEO Services

If it’s blatantly obvious your web page has been optimized for the search engines Google may penalize you. In past years site owners stuffed hundreds of keywords in the keyword meta tag to improve their rankings. As a result this tag was rendered almost useless. The same could happen to your web pages.

Google frowns upon pages that have been over optimized and may lower your rankings as a result. This is why Google constantly changes their ranking rules.

Here are some of the most common places keywords are inserted on a web page:

• domain name
• tilte meta tags
• description meta tag
• keyword meta tag
• H1, H2, H3 tags
• file name
• several times in the first paragraph
• bolded text
• multiple times throughout the web copy
• hyperlinks in the web copy
• navigation links

Inserting your keyword phrase in all these locations could trigger a spam filter as it’s obvious the page has been SEOed.

How should you optimize your web page?

Write naturally without thinking about where to place your keywords. If you’re always thinking about optimizing your content it will be obvious to your readers. The content may not flow well because you’ve included your keyword phrase too many times.

After you’ve finished writing your content go through it to check how many times you’ve mentioned your keyword. Shoot for 2%. This means 1 keyword for every 200 words.

Your home page should contain general keywords because it summarizes what your web site is about whereas the internal pages should contain more specific keywords related to your topic.

Instead of using the same keyword phrase throughout your web copy use several related keywords. For example if your main phrase is “article marketing” you could also use content marketing, content promotion, strategies for marketing with articles, etc. By using 2-5 words in your phrase your content not only reads better for your audience but it’s not obvious your spamming the search engines.

The next time you write web content let it flow naturally from your mind without correcting it along the way. Only edit when completed. This will enable you to churn out well written content quickly and easily.

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Web site owners spend big money to achieve top rankings in the search engines so customers will find them easily to purchase their products or services. A web site that appears after the first page on Google won’t get any traffic unless they employ other methods of marketing.

Google maps changes all this. Now local businesses can attain first page listings without paying anything. When a customer enters a keyword to find a local business Google will automatically display businesses that are closest to you. Local results are displayed above the regular listings.

Example
If a customer enters “web site design bowie maryland” they will see your company information listed at the top of the search results.

How to get listed in Google Maps

Open an account at Google’s local business center then submit your web site and company information. You can create multiple listings if you have more than one local business.

How to optimize your listing on Google Maps

1. Choose the correct category

Enter the category that best describes your business ie web design, dentist, photographer, etc.

2. Create a captivating description

This is what customers will read about your business. Describe it in such a way that will want to check it out. Include keywords customers would enter to find your business.

3. Make your listing stand out

Here are the things you can include in your listing:

• Description
• Payment
• Email
• Business Hours
• Categories
• Photos
• Reviews

Enter as much information as possible so it will stand out from your competitors (their business will be listed with yours).

4. Location

If your business location is in the center of the town, it is more likely that it will appear at the top of the list.

5. Get listed in other local directories

Google Maps gathers it’s results from other online directories and databases therefore submit your web site to online yellow pages and yahoo local. Find other local directories by entering keyword+location in the search box.

6. Optimize your web pages

Include the city and state names on the home page of your web site. Place them in the meta tags and web copy. This makes it easier for customers to find your business because you’ll a top listing in the search engines.

7. Encourage customers to write reviews

You can improve the your listing by getting customers to write positive reviews about your business. The more stars you acquire the higher your position becomes.

If you follow the 7 steps outlined above your web site will achieve a good listing in Google Maps and you’ll start attracting visitors from the search engines.

Also read Top Search Engine Rankings Don’t Guarantee Success

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To get your web site optimized for the search engines
please visit: Search Engine Optimzation Services

Does your web site currently rank well on Google’s result pages?

If your web site is on the first page of Google you will receive lots of free traffic and make more sales. High rankings are attained based on on-page factors and off-page factors.

On-page factors refer to what’s on your web pages:

• Did you optimize the web page for the targeted keyword?
• Can search engines find all your web site pages through the links on your website?
• Do your web pages validate for correct HTML so search engine spiders can easily parse your pages?
• Are your web pages free of all spam elements (hidden text, sneaky redirects, keyword stuffing, cloaking, etc.?)

Off-page factors refer to factors that can’t be found on your web pages:

• How many websites link to your site?
• Are these links from related high quality pages?
• Do social bookmark websites link to your site?
• Do the links to your website include keywords for which you want to get high rankings?

If you want to get high rankings for a special keyword, you must optimize one of your web pages for that keyword. If one of your web pages has been optimized for a keyword, then Google will return it in the search results.

Unfortunately, there are many websites that target the same keywords as your website. If more than one website has been optimized for a keyword then Google will list the web pages with the best inbound links in the top 10 results.

For example, if the top 20 websites have been optimized for the keyword “red shoes” then the website that has the most inbound links that use the text “red shoes” as the link text will attain the best position on Google.

If your web site meets all the on-page and off-page requirements Google will list your web page on the first page (top 10 results).

There are many ranking elements that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results. The more elements meet Google’s requirements, the more likely it is that your website will be listed on Google’s first result page.

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If you’re interested in getting your web site analyzed
for top rankings in Google and other major search
engines send an email to info at isitebuild.com or
view my: Search Engine Optimization Services

Would you like to get a double listing for your web site in the Google search results pages?

Google usually only lists one page in it’s top 10 listings however there is a way to get a second indented listing using the tactics listed below.

What are Google indented listings?

This is when a second listing is placed beneath the first one in indented form. You can therefore receive a double listing for the same web site. Most site owners are unware of this strategy so you can move ahead of your competition.

Here’s what Google says:

“When Google finds multiple results from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages from that site indented below it.”

Benefits of double listings in Google

Pushes competitors listings down

If your web page is listed in the top 10 results and you get a double listing it will push all the results
down. If a competitor is listed number 10 on the page he will be moved to the second page and no longer appear in the top 10.

Attract more visitors to your web site

If you have 2 listings on the first page of Google you will own 20% of the listings instead of 10%. This means you have doubled your chances of people clicking on the links to your web pages.

Generate more traffic

Most visitors only view the resuts of their searches on the first page of Google. Capturing double listings will drive more traffic to your web site.

How to achieve double listings for your keywords

1. Your web page must have a top 10 ranking for your keyword

Your web page must already be listed in the top 10 results (first page) of Google. If you aren’t there yet work on getting more links to that page.

2. Create another web page with alternative content

This web page should be created on the same web site and link to the page that has the top 10 listing. Optimize your second page for the same keyword as page your first page however create different content for it.

3. Link your second page to the first page

Both pages need to be linked to each other to achieve a double listing.

4. Link your first page to the second page in the anchor text

Use the keyword phrase in your anchor text on the first page to link to the second page. Try to use the anchor text within your content instead of your navigation bar.

5. Get inbound links to the second page

Get links from other sites to point to your second page. If possible use the keyword phrase in the anchor text of these links. This type of link carries more weight than just using a URL.

Tip
Search for all the pages on your web site that already have a top 10 listing in Google then follow the steps outlined above to get a double listing. You’ll receive more clicks, traffic and sales.

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Improve your search engine rankings by visiting search engine optimization services

Google has been the dominant search engine for many years and still covers 60% of the searches over other search engines. Wolframalpha is different to Google in that it’s a a computational search engine. This means it users numerous databases to compute likely answers to questions.

I took wolframalpha (wolframalpha.com) for a spin and was impressed with it’s speedy feedback. Here’s some examples you can try:

Enter any date (e.g. a birth date)
Enter any town (e.g. a home town)
Enter any two stocks
Enter any calculation
Enter any math formula
Enter any two first names
Enter any food
Enter any measurement
Enter any chemical formula
Enter any musical notes

Pros

It’s extremely good at getting answers for any kind of calculations. It was created by an English mathematical scientist so you would expect it to calculate data very well.

For example it you enter red + yellow it will show you orange and present the hexadecimal data, nearest named colors and complimentary colors.

Cons

Since the search engine is still in it’s infancy it did not return searches for all my queries.

Recommendation

I would use it primarily for calculations or mathematical data but not use it as a replacement for Google but rather as a complimentary search engine.

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receive high search engine rankings and obtain lots of backlinks?

Please visit my Search Engine Optimization Services page to view my SEO packages.

In my previous article I explained how to optimize blog titles. Your content should also be optimized so it attracts search engine spiders and keeps visitors on the page.

7 Steps to Optimize Your Blog Content

1. Include your keywords

The keywords used in your blog title should be woven throughout your blog content. Be sure the first paragraph contains your keyword phrase. This is because search engines typically index content at the top of your web page first. Don’t repeat your keyword so many times that it sounds strange when you read the content out loud.

For subsequent paragraphs weave your keywords into the content naturally.

2. Split content into paragraphs

It’s better to split long paragraphs into smaller ones so they are easier to read. Include sub headlines and make use of bullets throughout your blog content.

3. Give your visitors what they expect

The purpose of your content is to expand on the title. Don’t get off the subject as it will drive your visitors away. Sometimes writers just ramble on without providing any actionable content. Make sure you provide at least one good tip your readers can act on.

4. Tag your content

Your Word Press Blog allows you to enter tags after adding content. This helps search engines to find your content. Enter the main keywords used in your title/content separated by commas.

5. Create title and description meta tags

Word Press automatically adds the title meta tag however it doesn’t add description or keyword meta tags. The description meta tag is what visitors see under your title in the search engines. An attractive description that supports the title could make the difference whether a visitor will click on your web site url or not.

Keyword meta tags are not used by the major search engines anymore but still include them for the smaller search engines.

To make it easier to add title, description and keyword meta tags, install the headspace plugin. It allows you to customize the meta tags for each post.

6. Provide a call to action

After reading your blog content visitors are ready to take action. Capitalize on their preparedness by providing a call to action at the end of your content. Introduce your product, service or subscription to a newsletter and the url of your offer.

7. Proof read your content before publishing

Spelling and grammar mistakes make your blog appear unprofessional and cause visitors to click elsewhere. Before publishing your content check it with a spell checker, read it aloud to yourself or get someone else to edit it. Word Press allows you to save it as a draft so you can edit it before it goes live.

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