Web Design Discussion

Search engines will give a higher rank to web sites with
unique content than those that contain duplicate content.

Here are 3 less obvious areas where duplicate content
may occur within your web site:

1. Newsletter archives

You may have a web page on your web site with an article that is
also duplicated in your newsletter archives.

2. Blog posts

A blog post or article may also be duplicated within
the web page on your main site. Most blogs contain duplicate
content because they automatically archive posts within
the blog or the blog owner has placed the post in multiple
categories.

3. PDF files
You have duplicate content if you converted an html page
on your web site into a PDF file for downloading. PDF files
also get indexed by seach engines.

Tip

Make sure you also don’t use the same title and description meta
tags for every web page. Use different titles and descriptions
for every page on your web site.

Whenever I need to write an article or add content to a
web page that needs targeted keywords, I do some quick
research first. This helps me to quickly see how many
searches are produced for a specific keyword entered in the
search engines.

If these keywords are included in your content
there is a greater probabability your web page
or article will be picked up by the search engines.

This ultimately means more traffic and sales.

2 free research tools I often use are:

1. Google AdWords Tool

This tool displays a list of keywords related to the ones
you already thought of so you get a broader reach.

2. Wordtracker Keyword Suggestion Tool

This tool quickly shows you the number of searches
for your chosen keyword.

I recommend this method only if you have limited time
for your research. If you have more time you
should also analyze:

competing sites
link popularity
site statistics

For more comprehensive research I utilize all
the tools provided by:

Search It

This will give you a more accurate assessment.

Recently I was asked by a client if I could optimize their flash web site so they could get high rankings in the search engines. All pages of this web site were flash pages. This means no HTML pages except for a few links interspersed throughout the site.

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Many site owners make the mistake of getting links from web sites not related to their own. They try to get as many links as possible from any person that wants to exchange links.

This is big mistake.

Your site will most likely lose its rankings and/or be banned from the search engines.

Why?

This is because search engines want to produce focused, relevant results to searches. It still doesn’t happen often enough because you still get results that are not related to your searches.

What is Link Optimization?

This means creating, finding links and content that have high value. If your web site has high quality content, other site owners will want to link to it automatically. If you have a new web site, you will want to find high quality sites that can link to yours. These are usually sites that have been on the Net for years, have high rankings and get a lot of traffic.

Link value

The quality of the links pointing to your site is superior to the number of links. However if you get a large number of high quality links from other sites that is better than just having a few.

Example:

An article on “link optimization” gets placed on a web site that has a PR (page rank) of 7 whereas your web site only has a PR value of 2. The PR7 site will get found faster, indexed faster, and receive better search engine exposure (higher rankings) than the PR2 web site.

Explanation

The link in the resource box of your article links back to your web site. The high ranking web site passes on its authority to your web site thus increasing your own “authority” and with time, your overall rankings.

A Note about Page Rank

Your site’s Page Rank can be viewed by observing the green line in the Google Toolbar. Sites that have a high PR(ie PR 6-10) will generally rank higher than sites less than PR6. Google claims PR is not significant anymore however the Google web site has a PR value of 10.

Search Engine Optimization Services

Herman Drost is a SEO specialist. He offers search engine optimization services that are based on the total number of pages to be optimized, competitiveness of the keywords targeted, actual SEO work required to optimize the site for those search terms, and the estimated time necessary to acquire a competitive search engine position.

Many site owners participate in link exchange campaigns to boost their link popularity. This can be very time consuming because you need to continually contact other site owners and wait for their response. Often you won’t get any response and therefore waste your precious time. Incorporating anchor text in your link building campaign will save you time because it provides high quality backlinks to your web site.

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The search engines are getting more sophisticated
with their algorithims because they want to return the
best results possible to people searching for information.

If I don’t find what I am looking for on the first page of the search
engine results, I’ll usually search the second and even third pages
or even try a different search engine (I usually use Google).

The problem of duplicate web content

Site owners are constantly looking for content to add to
their web sites, blogs and newsletters. They often don’t have
the time or knowledge to write it themselves and therefore will
find content that is already written for them.

The problem for the search engines is that it clogs up searches.
I don’t want to see the same information displayed in the top 10
sites on the first page of search engine results.

What does this mean for you and your web site?

Create your own unique web content.

Uniquely written web content will always give you better rankings
than content you have extracted elsewhere. If you write an article,
first place it on your own site, then wait for a few days before
submitting it to article directories.

This will allow your article to be indexed and ranked first by
the search engines. If you submit it to an article directory
first, the article directory page will outrank the article you
added to your own web page.

As more duplicate content appears on the Web, unique
web content will always do well, because it’s what people want.

7. Header tags

Header tags are used to emphasis headings and subheadings
of your web content. Use the H1 tag for the main header and
H2 and H3 tags for the subheadings.

8. Title tag

The title tag is the most important tag within your code
because it’s what the search engines use to determine the
theme of your site. Include the main keywords that you
included in the content of your web page.

9. Meta tags

The meta tags include description and keyword tags. Even
though search engines don’t place much value in these tags
anymore, include them anyway. The description meta tag is
what appears within the search engine results pages, so
make sure you write an attractive description about your
page. This will prepare them to buy your product.

The keywords meta should include all the main keywords used
on your product page. Include approximately 20 keywords.

10. Broken links

Broken links on a page will not only frustrate your
visitors but will also prevent search engines from finding
other pages of your site. Check your site periodically
for broken links particularly if is a large one by running
it through a link checker.

W3C Link Checker
http://validator.w3.org/checklink

Conclusion

Even if you have a large site containing hundreds of
product pages, it is still worth optimizing because each
page may attract additional visitors. Visitors may enter
that page by conducting a search from a search engine. This
will increase the overall traffic to your web site and
result in selling more products.

4. Web Accessibility

Make sure your page is web accessible. Web accessibility
means that people with disabilities can use the Web. This
includes people that have visual, auditory, physical,
speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. It also
includes older people with changing abilities due to aging
ie visual impairment.

Web Accessibility Tool
http://www.contentquality.com/

This online tool identifies errors in your content related
to Section 508 standards and/or the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

5. Image optimization

Large images or too many images on a page will slow the
loading time of your web page. Reduce the size by rescaling
it in your graphics software. If you need to use large
images, create a thumbnail image first then link to the
larger image.

You can also reduce the number of pixels of your image in
your software also.

Every image should include an alt tag to help identify it.

6. Content

Be sure to include content that describes the item of your
product page. Include your main keywords in the content.
Place the content at the top of the page then add the image
of your item below. Search engines tend to spider the top
of the page first.

Many e-commerce sites don’t bother to optimize their
product pages because they only contain images. This means
you will be losing out on attracting lots of extra traffic
to your web site.

Search engines spiders will only index pages that are
correctly designed and contain lots of quality content.

Here are 10 ways to optimize your e-commerce web page:

1. Professional Design

Create a design that is attractive to visitors. Make sure
the colors blend well together. Don’t use background colors
that make the text hard to read. Black text on a white
background is still the easiest to read on computer
screens.

Vischeck shows how your site will appear to color blind
people. It provides a computer simulation of the entire
process of human vision.

Vischeck
http://www.vischeck.com/

2. Simple navigation

Don’t use images as search engines only read text. Don’t
use javascript as some visitors deliberately have this
turned off on their computers.

3. Validate code

Run your e-commerce web page code through an html validator
to check for html (xhtml) errors. HTML errors will slow the indexing
of your site by search engine spiders. HTML errors will
also slow the loading of your pages. This will cause
visitors to click elsewhere as they wait for your page to
load.

W3C Markup Validation Service
http://validator.w3.org/

Most search engines utilize links to build your search engine presence. The quantity and and quality of the links determine how well your site ranks. A common misunderstanding about links is that site owners think that links to or from any site will be good for them.

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