Online marketers understand the importance of getting top search engine rankings in major search engines. Therefore, they spend many time in optimizing website content. However, many of them ignore the fact that web design structure has a role in search engine optimization (SEO). To acquire high ranking, you cannot just rely on web designers because they could be good at web design but not good at SEO.

This article reveals several important web design elements you must consider during website optimization process.

1. CSS Stylesheet

It is good to use CSS stylesheet to format your web design because it can standardize the appearance of your website. For the sake of convenience, some web designers use internal CSS. It is no good! You should use external CSS stylesheet so that your HTML coding becomes consise, and mainly compose of your website content.  It is an essential SEO practice.

2. Content Management Software (CMS)

If you use CMS to manage your website, make sure your CMS provides these features:

a. Allows you to define different templates for different sections/pages. It gives you flexibility in optimizing website content.

b. Allows you to define Title and Meta tags for different web pages. Again, it gives you flexibility in optimizing every web page.

c. Allows you to generate static HTML pages instead of dynamic pages. Search engines are not good at reading dynamic web page. Accoding to Google webmaster guideline, Google may not index dynamic URL with more than 2 parameters within the URL.

If your web pages cannot get indexed, you definitely get no rankings no matter how many SEO effort you make.

3. HTML Code Compliance

As a good web design practice, make sure your HTML coding is compliant to some well recognized HTML standards such as W3C standard. Some search engine optimizers reported that non-compliant web design could cause difficulties for search engines to index and analyze your website. It hinders your website to get top search engine ranking.

4. Use of Graphics

You must optimize the file size of your images. As search engines like to read text, you should consider avoiding the use of graphics near top of your website, whenever it is possible.

5. Multiple-level Navigation Menu

Many websites use multiple-level navigation menu in Javascript.  However, the coding usually leaves in the HTML body. This is no good in terms of SEO. I recommend seperate Javascrpt from HTML coding by using external Javascript file. 

6. Bad Web Design

To make your web design search engine friendly, you must consider avoiding:

a. Use of frame. Search engines have difficulties to index all your frameset. Even though they can index some frame pages, users would only access to part of your webpages only in case they can find your website from search engines, e.g., only see a left-hand side navigation menu with a blank page on the right-hand side.

b. Re-direct techniques. For some reasons, web designers may make some re-direct pages or adopt Javascript re-direct techniques and re-direct visitors from one page to another content pages. Since search engine spammers usually use this technique, search engines could penalize your website.

7. Flash

Web designers may sell you to build a flash website or make a flash intro page as your home page. Their point is that flash makes your website more appealing and it would improve effectiveness of your website.  However, it is not always the case.

Visitors want to find information fast. Flash sometimes could make your website slow and require visitors to install plugins before they can see your website.  In terms of SEO, simply speaking, search engines treat flash as a graphic and cannot analyze content inside a flash file. The implication means a flash website is hard to get top search engine ranking.


Conclusion:

For small business to succeed online, you must strike a balance between SEO and fancy web design. A too fancy web design, in many cases, cannot give you any business as no one can find your website from search engines and if it annoys your visitors.

SEO, or search engine optimization, has become an industry all its own. The perfect SEO techniques should be easy to implement, and offer the best results. Not only should SEO drive traffic to your site, but keep it coming back as well, which is what every website owner wants.

Strong “Meta” Site Description and Title. Why? Because when search engine crawlers look at basic areas of a website, they are looking for a relevant title and description based on the site’s keywords. The more relevant the title and meta description, the more likely the site will be referenced in regards to the keywords chosen.

Good Site Navigation. Why? When a crawler is looking at a website, they need relevant links to reference and find your other pages. The more relevant links to other pages in your site, the better.

The “No less than 250-words” rule is one to stick by. Why? When reading content, readers want quality information. Ensuring the content is long enough not only grabs the crawlers attention, but keeps your readers interested as well.

Daily updates are better than weekly. Why? Because readers will come back when they know something new to look at or read will be there. They will not come back if they are reading the same article every day for a week. when a site constantly updates its content, the search engines have more to grab onto and in turn will push the fresh content to the front of the search list.

Catchy, keyword rich titles are the key to great content. Why? Because the keywords in the title will grab the reader. It is the title a reader sees first and what makes them want to read more.

Good, quality and catchy content on a site makes the world go around. Why? Because once the reader is drawn in by the title, there needs to be something substantial to back it up. The reader needs to stay interested in what they are reading, instead of just reading the title, they will maybe read the rest of the article if it is good enough.

Focus Keywords on the Content. Why? When content is focused on certain keywords, they make the content appear relevant to the keyword. Keyword density between 3 to 5 percent is optimal because anything less than 3 percent the search engines do not pick up well and anything more than 5 percent looks like spam.

Use Relevant Photos. Why? Because this gives you another chance to use keywords for the content without spamming them. The more the keyword is used in different places, the more relevant the content seems to the search engine crawlers and the better the chance your content has to make it to the front of the list for that keyword.

Utilize Press Releases. Why? Because if no one knows you exist, you will never get any traffic. Even if you have better content than anyone else does, no one will read it because they have no idea you exist. Using a press release properly will get the word out about your site and start driving traffic to your site.

Play Nice With Others. Why? Because interacting with other sites and blogs can get you more incoming links to your site. The more links to a site, the better chance there is for search engine crawlers to notice the site and reference it is a search.

Since the day Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media) first used the term “Web 2.0″ rumors have flown faster than fact could catch up. Within weeks there were dozens of so called “definitions.” So what is Web 2.0? It’s really just a concept. Web 2.0 is the idea that the Internet can be used for bigger business than viewing simple Websites and sending email, if the right technologies are employed. Chances are you’ve been using Web 2.0 technology for a couple years already via shared multi media, social networking, and online collaboration sites.

Primary tools of Web 2.0 include video sharing sites such as YouTube; Wiki sites like Wikipedia; blogs and various “live face” technologies. We will cover 3 of the quickest, easiest ways to optimize for Web 2.0, beginning with blogs.

1.) SEO for Blogs

Optimizing a blog is one of the absolute best ways to capture Google’s most coveted top spots very quickly. You can hit number 1 on Google in a matter of days. Here’s how you do it…

a.) First, find a good blogging tool. There are plenty out there. I use WordPress (http://www.WordPress.org.) I originally picked it because it was so quick and easy to setup. And soon I realized the platform does 50% of SEO by its very nature. It’s free and you can get thousands of themes, to fit any style you wish, also for free.

b.) Next, make sure your hosting provider can support your blog. I’ve never seen one that can’t. If you are starting fresh, do a Google search for “WordPress blog hosting” and you’ll find great packages that only cost $25 for a whole year. Just avoid the freebie hosts since you are almost guaranteed to be sharing server space (and likely an IP range) with sites banned by Google, which can cost you your ranking.

c.) Once your blog app is installed, turn on the “permalink” option from the control panel. This way each posting you enter will also get its own URL. Finally, begin entering posts of 200 or more words, focusing on only 1 or 2 keywords per post. Try to begin each post title with the primary keyword for that topic.

d.) To best optimize your keywords and content follow the steps outlined in SEO cbt’s release “Google Domination” (http://www.SEOcbt.com). This is a free computer based training module for SEO do it yourselfers that works extremely well. It was not written specifically for blogs but all the information is perfectly suited to them.

Inside Tip: Register your domain name for a five year period or longer. Just extend it if needed. Google has been known to check “whois” records and assumes the longer the domain is registered in advance, the more “real” the site is.

2.) SEO for YouTube Videos

YouTube accounts for more than 60% of ALL online videos watched in the US. And your YouTube videos can be found in Google’s search results just like any normal Web page. This means they can rank number 1 in just days, with the right SEO.

If you’re looking to capitalize on SEO for Web 2.0, this is a fast and free way to do it. I won’t get into how to upload the videos and optimize the frame size, etc. That said; let’s assume you have signed up for your free account at YouTube.com and are ready to upload your first video using their easy to follow instructions. This is all the SEO you need to know…

a.) When forming your title, think in terms of “long tail” keywords, meaning keyword phrases of three or more words. Be sure these are in the same order people would search for them (eg/ “long tail keywords” not “keywords long tail.”) Also try to anticipate what the user will type in his search. “How to” is one of the most common search phrases people use in Google and YouTube to get answers quick.

b.) Think of “tags” as keywords and enter them like you would the Meta keyword tag of a web page. Select only the most likely search terms people are using and keep the words in the order people use them. Don’t just use random words separated by commas. Use full length search phrases exactly how people search for them. And don’t go too crazy here. Excessive tags tend to confuse the YouTube engine. Incidentally, if you have “how to” as a tag, also add “howto” (without the space.) If “how to” returns a bunch of unrelated junk your “howto” tag can better cut to the chase in YouTube’s search engine.

c.) The description is where you have the most freedom. It’s best to begin the description with your main keyword (and title) as close to the beginning as possible. Something like this works well… “Learn how to…” then follow up with several sentences rich in long tail keywords (the same ones from your tags.) Good grammar isn’t the biggest deal but try to make it friendly for people who might actually read the description before they decide to watch the video. Also remember that Google uses a natural text algorithm that can spot unnatural keyword spamming a mile away.

Real Life Example: I just saw a commercial on TV for a spy movie and someone threw a knife. I went to Google and entered “how to throw a knife” (without quotes.) The top three matches include a YouTube video and Wiki entry. Wow! Welcome to Web 2.0!

3.) SEO Using “Live Face” Technology

One of the biggest reasons for the dot com crash of ’01 was that Websites became way too impersonal. One of Web 2.0′s strengths is the ability to help people relate to people once again. One of the most successful technologies leading the way is “Live Face.”

Live Face allows a video spokesperson to meet, greet and inform your Web page visitors. As far as SEO benefits, any sort of video has usually involved heavy RealTime or Flash files that block search engine spiders and hurt rankings. Now however, there are services like Live Face for Web (http://www.LivefaceForWeb.com) that can add full length videos to your site without it interfering with onsite SEO one bit (due to the file’s location) while greatly enhancing offsite efforts such as acquiring the highest quality one way and reciprocal links.

Most sites employing this technology report conversion increases of up to 5x. This means they are converting up to five times the number of sales they did before using Live Face technology.

Real Life Example: The SEOcbt.com site mentioned earlier uses Live Face for Web and they hit number one on Google for all of their major keywords within two weeks of site launch.

That’s a good start to SEO for Web 2.0. Good luck!

To present information over the internet, developers have to use certain programming languages. Basically, programming languages are developed to inform computer in which way it should work after getting specific instructions. Although there are different types of languages available in the world of computer but XML is really getting popular because of many good reasons.

Extensible Markup Language or XML is one of most extensively used languages to exchange information over World Wide Web. It is considered an extensible language because of the fact that users can made certain changes to its basic form. This language is getting more popular because it is now creating a standardization framework. Because of this standardization framework, it has now become much more convenient for certain businesses to store and retrieve information. A great example can be seen in healthcare industry where this framework makes it possible to store the record of a patient for good.

Delving into the concept:
Today all software companies are considering the role of XML while developing certain software solutions. To get a better idea of XML, it is relevant to throw some light on SGML. Standard Generalized Markup Language or SGML is a metalanguage. It means that there are certain languages that can be found within SGML. In fact, XML is supposed to be subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language. It is because of the universality and ease of implementation that people are now more prone to use XML for document specification in lieu of using SGML.

Nevertheless, the role of SGML, in terms of revolutionizing the world, can not be overlooked. It was HTML, an application of SGML, which has changed the fate of World Wide Web.

Playing the role of standardization framework:
As mentioned that XML is now creating standardization framework, so, it is essential to talk something about meta-standards. Meta-standards refer to those standards that can be used to define other standards. Some of the XML related standards are acquired from ISO and some of them are added to the language in general.

There are certain ways and methods to translate between different standards. In fact, these are also known as special standards which play the role of translator between other standards. The standard specifying ways to translate is called mediator. It is worth mentioning that there are specific standards that determine the way how mediators are to be defined. So, the whole standardization process is quite complicated as one standard is used to define other standards, but, that’s what standardization framework is all about.

As SGML is responsible to bring forth XML, so, the common root of standards is the Standard Generalized Markup Language. But, XML grew at a rapid pace because of its special characteristic known as “extensible”.

The bottom line:
Since there are different meta-standards and mediators, so, such system is supposed to be more flexible than others. The openness of this system is another aspect helping developers in a great way. Due to this openness of system, lots of development can be seen in coming years.

Optimization of the website for both major search engines Google and Yahoo is a big challenge of SEOs. Both search engines have different algorithm to show the search result for search term. If a website would have better ranking in Google Search, while not in Yahoo. Its reason that a few of the techniques appreciated by Google, while some other techniques Yahoo like.

I’m doing optimization for the sites and experience that each search engines have different algorithm to provide search results for a search term and different evaluation factors to rank top website for a search term. Now I realize some important factors and want to share with you all. Some of the best techniques for both search engines are described below. What are those let see.

Google weighs the Title tag most, should be meaning full sentence to attract the visitors based on keywords. Put your keywords in description tag but should not be dense more than 2%-3% otherwise pages will remove from the search index or will degrade in rankings. Sometimes keyword tag ignore by Google, it does not much weighs to this tag. Google says “Content is King” therefore web pages which have more content appreciated and gives priority to be top ranked, but you much be sure content should be fresh and new, must not be copied from other cached web pages. Google gives importance to only relevant anchor text inbounds links. It measures the value of inbound link quality after that quantity. Other factor is their Google PR of inbound links. If you have more links from high PR pages, then you will have better search engine ranking for particular keyword or search term.

Yahoo gives importance to that pages which are keyword based URLs and weighs the website address as an important ranking factor if it includes keywords. Yahoo weighs the pages which have Title tag, Description META tag and Keywords META tag with keywords density, Yahoo looks for sites with keyword densities as high as 6%- 8%, put content on pages make keyword dense but sure not should be more than 8%. Try to get a no. of links whatever they have PR or not, more links top ranking is the trend of Yahoo Search. If you have these types of pages you can have better search placement in Yahoo Search Engine.

Using of heading tags like H1, and H2 are important for both search engines. These tags not only help for closeness of keywords but also help to make betters visibility to highlights your words and slogans.

Site Map makes it easy for search engines to spider website and accesses all of your most important web pages. Site maps should be accessible from your home page and kept up-to-date. Google supports and recommend to use xml sitemap (named sitemap.xml) and Yahoo supports and recommend also xml sitemap (but named ror.xml), should be available at root directory of your website.

Try the following SEO techniques to get better rankings in search result pages of yahoo and Google, and check regularly to see the effected results. If you see improvements in result then try to more effective, or if you don’t see any improvement then you have lacking any one the technique mentioned above. I know these techniques may be common for you but many of us may be not aware from all of these factors. And I’m sure you will definitely get improvements.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing are very common words for people associated with Internet and E-Commerce. Most of the people think that both the terms are same and relate to website optimization and promotion. Well, it is true that both SEO and SEM are related with websites optimization and promotion. Even, the ultimate goal of both SEO and SEM is to drive organic traffic to the website, generate leads and increase incoming revenue. However, it is not right to say that both these terms have same meaning.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization deals with making a website Search engine friendly, so that the contents from different web pages of website can be easily indexed by Search Engine crawlers. SEO is in fact initial step in all Website Optimization and Promotional campaigns. Search Engine Optimization process takes care of several important aspects, like:

Designing/Modifying existing design of website for easy navigation Implementing file/directory/image naming principles of SEO Keyword analysis depending upon the targeted niche Creation of web pages with keyword rich contents Including most relevant META tags in all web pages of website

Above described things are very important in order to make your website ready for Search Engines as well as potential visitors. The initial success of your website completely depends upon SEO. If your website is not properly optimized for Search Engines, you can’t expect sudden increase in number of visitors and revenues coming from your website.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing deals with all aspects of promoting a website through various means. Whatever we do to promote a website and to increase the incoming traffic towards a website comes under Search Engine Marketing (including SEO). In brief, SEM covers all free and paid online promotion and advertising techniques. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) includes following actions:

Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Submission Paid or Sponsor Listing in Search Engines Online Ad Placement (Banner or Link Advertising) PPC Campaigns Email/Newsletter Marketing, and Social Network/Social Media Marketing

In brief we can say that, Search Engine Optimization is just a part of Search Engine Marketing. Another thing is that Search Engine Optimization deals with mostly internal tweaks in website, for which you don’t have to spend money. However, most of SEM actions required prior investment but in return they provide instant results.

As more and more people round the world are surfing the net everyday, the competition to attract their attention has increased by leaps and bounds in the recent years. Companies – big and small, professionals and individuals are all in the race. Innumerable web pages are being produced and being hosted everyday. All of them are keen to rank high in the SERP or Search Engine Result Pages. and the so the SEO experts are busy than ever before.

An experienced SEO professional knows that the way major search engines like Google, evaluate web pages has changed through these years. Search Engine are getting smarter and smarter. Fooling a search engine is becoming harder. Or should I say risky. When you try to fool search engines, you run the risk to get banned. So, what triumphs? Real good contents? Back linking? What else?

Let’s see what are the hottest SEO ‘on page’ and ‘off page’ techniques on which SEO experts have unanimously expressed their trust. This list is not necessarily on merit basis, I mean, the first factor on top of the list doesn’t mean that it is the most important SEO factor.

On-page techniques

1. The Title tag

Go to the Google search page, type any keyword and hit enter. Have you ever noticed the starting line of each result ? It’s the ‘title’ of the web site. So, it goes without saying that ‘title’ is important. You must have an appropriate ‘title’ for your web site containing the most relevant keywords.

2. Meta Description.

You will often hear or read that Meta tags are no good anymore. But the Meta Description tag still holds good. You will never find an optimized web page without it. No SEO skips this one, on the contrary takes care that the description is comprehensive, precise and to the point.

3. H1, H2, H3 tags

The headings. The ‘H1′ tag or the header is most probably the most significant body tag in terms of SEO along with the ‘Alt’ tag . It is supposed to be the main headline of a web page and should comprise of its primary keywords or key-phrases. You should have precisely described ‘H1′ tag on each of your web pages. If you don’t like the look and feel of the ‘H’ tags, use CSS to design it to your choice.

4. ‘Alt’ tags.

Unfortunately search engine spiders cant view the images on your web pages. Neither they can view those lovely Flash content or animated GIFs displayed in the pages of your web site. They can only read texts. so feed them with some descriptive texts about the images or Flash contents that you may have on your web pages as alternatives. The primary use of the ‘Alt’ tag is to describe your images or the likes of Flash banners etc. Use this to your advantage – use your keywords as ‘Alt’ tags. It really helps and is widely used by all SEO experts.

5. Internal Anchor Text links

Using ‘Anchor Texts’ to link other pages of the web site is now being considered as one of the most important factor that influences page ranks. You can judge it yourself. Choose any well optimized web site with high page rank. Go to the Google search page, type link:thesiteyouchose.com and hit enter. The search will return with several pages and you will notice that quite a few of them are from that very site itself. So, instead of ‘click here’ do consider using ‘For more information on something go to the something page’ (replace ‘something’ for anything you like). I hope you got the idea.

6. Suitably named files and folders

This concept is also relatively new. It has worked like a charm for me. The idea is to name a file ‘contact-a-web-designer.html’ instead of just ‘contact.html’. Or rename your ‘download’ folder as ‘download-cheap-web-templates’. Does it make any sense? I hope it does. Try it, you will not regret.

7. Quality content.

That goes without saying. Good, quality content which is appealing to the viewers is indispensable. Nothing can influence the search engine more, make no mistake. Make sure you write the contents for your web site visitors and not the search engines. And it is very important that you add fresh contents to your web pages regularly – it tells the search engine that your web site is very much alive.

Off-page techniques

1. Link building

Good content and consistent link building – the two most important factors of Search engine optimization. Gone are the days where any links were good enough to achieve good page ranks with the search engines. Now you should take utmost care on who are linking to you and from where? You must have come across the terms like “relevant web site/page” and “good neighborhood”. It means that you get more credit if you get back-linking from web sites which are based on the same theme as yours and preferably have high page ranks – the more the better. And instead of placing your url as links use your primary keywords as Anchor Text links.

Now the million dollar question ? Who is going to link to you? Why should well established web sites with high page ranks will consider linking to a new site like yours? Well to harm trying. Most of them will not, but if you have a decent site with quality content some may just agree. But don’t worry. Fortunately you have some other options to gain some back-links. Submitting to directories is certainly one of them. Try writing some good articles on your web site theme and submit them to directories round the world. Most article directories will allow you to put a couple of links inside your article provided your article is good enough to be selected. Start trying and you will soon find that it’s not that hard. submitting to various directories get your web site indexed by the search engine much faster than otherwise.

2. Approach

Yes. Your overall approach towards optimizing your web site will eventually influence your site’s ranking in more than one ways. ‘Slow but steady’ should be the right approach. You can’t achieve anything here in the SEO world overnight. patience is the key here. Don’t try to optimize your site for broad keywords like ‘web design’ or ‘Pizzas’ at the first instance- it will be sheer waste of time and energy. Rather chose what is known as ‘long tail technique’. For example go for ‘affordable web site design Santa Monica’. And when you have got some results start working on those broader keywords. And you should have the same approach towards link-building as well. Be realistic. Don’t try to get too many links too fast. search engine call it spamming and they ban spammers. Just keep every thing plain and simple.

It is not so hard to earn money from the net. But you should make your self deserving. it is not hard to attract visitors to your web site, but then again your site should worth it. And believe me, you can make your web site worthy.