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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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