Search engine optimization techniques

Optimizing your website is not really that difficult, there are many search engine optimization techniques, or SEO techniques, that can be employed even by a novice webmaster with limited html skills and the will to learn new things.

This article will deal with the on page search engine optimization techniques, or seo techniques that you employ on your website to make it more search engine friendly. While off page search engine optimization, or SEO that is performed through the use of other websites, such as with link building; is vitally important. Proper optimization of on page elements of your website should be considered the foundation which you build all other search engine marketing (SEM) methods on.

Page title optimization

Of all of the seo techniques that you can employ on your website, the title tag is largely undisputed as being the most important element of on page optimization. The title tag should be different for every page of your website and it should be keyword focused with the most important keywords at the beginning of the title.

It’s somewhat disputed amongst professional SEO’s whether there should be multiple keyword phrases within the title or only the two or three that directly relate to the page that the title represents; as of this moment in time there seems to be proof that either of these methods can be beneficial.

Use of headings

Using the headings tags are considered an important aspect of your website’s optimization. These start out at
and continue down in order of importance to the
tag. While the content contained within headings tags are not weighted as heavily as the title tag, headings still have considerable power for keyword focusing of your content in the eyes of many search engines.

Headings tags should be keyword focused, and as with the page title, important keywords should be kept towards the beginning of the heading tag. Your most important headings should be used with tag and the less important headings can be used with the
tag, tag and so on. An important note, however: your page title and headings should not be identical. Mixing and matching of keyword phrases is the recommended practice when employing our search engine optimization techniques with the title and the headings.

Content is king - website content optimization

Maybe the phrase “content is king” is slightly overdone, and often times it’s used out of context, however, creating keyword focused and optimized content is one of the more important search engine optimization techniques that you can employ for your website.

Keyword focusing is a big factor when optimizing your website content. For instance, this article is about search engine optimization techniques. If you’ll look back and read though this article you’ll notice the phrase search engine optimization techniques purposely being placed throughout the article’s body. This is the keyword focusing aspect of creating optimized website content.

Search engines are pretty smart, and they’re getting smarter every day. What this means for website content optimization is that keyword focusing isn’t enough anymore. In order to help improve the relevancy of your website’s content for certain keywords and phrases, you should also work to incorporate related keyword phrases as well into the content. Taking our example of this articles keyword phrase focus search engine optimization techniques, you’ll notice that phrase as well as SEO techniques and SEO being used in lieu of search engine optimization. Basically, when you’re looking to optimize your website content, you’ll want to use natural substitutions of your main keywords and phrases that you might find on other websites about the same topic.

Use of sitemaps / link directory

Last, but not least on our list of search engine optimization techniques is the use of a website sitemap. There are actually two types of sitemaps that you can use for your website, and we’ll touch on both of them here.
Sitemaps for search engines

Sitemaps built for search engines, such is the case with Google sitemaps, help search engines to easily find all of the pages of your website so that your pages can be indexed. While the use of Google sitemaps is pretty popular amongst a certain sub-culture in the webmaster world, the need for this type of sitemap really isn’t needed. In fact, you can get the same results or even better results from using a different type of sitemap.
Sitemaps for people and search engines

Let’s say you have a fairly large website; some 30 pages, maybe more. It’s generally recommended that every page on your website is no more than two clicks from your homepage. Maintaining a link to every page of your website on your homepage simply isn’t an option when you have a large website for cosmetic reasons, let alone overall user friendliness. In order to achieve the “two clicks” recommendation, you absolutely need a sitemap.

Not only will a sitemap help users find the less popular pages on your website, in terms of search engine optimization techniques, the use of a static sitemap is just a good idea. You also have the ability to work on keyword focusing for the anchor text used to link to your internal pages, another one of the many search engine optimization techniques that will help you improve your website for SEO.

While the search engine optimization techniques listed on this page are not exhaustive, the seo techniques listed here will give you a much needed advantage in improving the overall search engine friendliness of your website. All things considered, using the techniques outlined here will give you a solid foundation for any off page search engine optimization methods that you choose to employ.

7 Basics of Good Web Design

By: George Peirson

Whether you are just starting a web design project, looking at revamping an existing site, or just wanting to double check the usability of your current web site you should consider these 7 Basics of Good Web Design.

These Basics are aimed at new visitors/customers, your repeat customers will be judging your web site on different values. Just like wearing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, these basics will help you pick out the “look” of your web site so that you make a good first impression.

1. Fast Loading Web Site – Any way you look at it, a fast loading page should be your number 1 concern. The web is all about speed, fast searches, fast purchases, fast information. You can’t have any of that with a slow loading page. Ask yourself this question, have you ever been on Google doing a search for something important and a link you clicked on didn’t open up immediately? What did you do? Patiently wait for the page to open or move onto the next link on the list? My favorite sites open almost immediately.

So, a few suggestions: Make sure that your images are properly optimized. Don’t use very many large images, save those for a different page. Keep any auto-running multimedia to a minimum, offer links to run media instead. Check your code for anything else that could affect your page loading times. Since text loads almost instantly go ahead and use all the text you want, just keep everything else under control.

2. No Meaningless Splash Page – Do you appreciate a fancy animation page that doesn’t tell you anything and you have to wait for before the web site will open? Neither do I. The last thing I want once I find an interesting site is to wait through some animation before getting to the first page. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want multimedia on a site, I do. I just don’t want an animation before the first page that forces me to wait for it to finish before getting onto the site. Its like having to wait for a salesperson to finish their memorized speech before you can ask them a question. No thanks! I like animation, just in the right place and at the right time. Plus if I am a returning customer I will have already seen that animation and don’t need to see it again.

My recommendation is to use a smaller animation contained in your main landing page which also includes your main message and links to the rest of your site. It will make for a faster loading page (smaller file) and your visitors can go ahead with accessing your site without having to wait for the animation to finish.

One final note, never, ever put your logo as the only content on your landing page with a link that says “Enter Site”. This just screams Unprofessional and will drive away potential visitors in droves. The last thing I want to do is to click on another link just to get into the site. This is a total waste of my time. I usually will skip a site if I see this.

3. No Annoying Web Gimmicks – Now that you have your visitor on your site quickly the one thing you don’t want to do is to drive them away just as quickly. So, don’t put anything annoying on that first page. No loud background music that makes them quickly hit the volume control or the back button on their browser. No flashing animations while they are trying to read your content. No popup, flyout, expanding ads that cover your home page. Basically leave the gimmicks alone until you are sure that your visitor will stay on your site. Most casual visitors will leave your site in just a few seconds, no sense on driving them away more quickly.

Multimedia is great on a web site, just don’t bombard your visitor with it first thing. If you want audio then put in a nice picture with a link, like a picture of yourself with text saying something like “Let me tell you how to make $50,000 this month!” If they are interested they will click on the link and listen to your message, if they are not interested in audio then you should be using a different pitch anyway.

Also, monitor what advertisers are putting on your site if you sell ad space. I am sure you have seen those ads with the animated dancing figure, cute the first time you see it. But after seeing it 10,000 times with every imaginable character I have added the company to a list I keep of companies I will never do business with. So their animation has gone from “look at me” to “you annoy me” in my mind. Ads like these will impact your visitor’s experience. So even if your site is perfectly designed, one misplaced ad can ruin all of your hard work.

4. Have a Clear Message – Too many web sites are a mish-mash of content. This is especially true of blog pages. Certain types of sites lend themselves to stream of consciousness content, but most don’t. Make it easy for your viewer to understand what your web site is about, don’t make them guess. Have a clear topic headline, followed by clear and concise text. This is also where a picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture directly pertains to your message.

You want your visitor to be able to quickly understand what your message is. If they like your message they will take the time to read the rest of your page and look around your web site. If they don’t like your page, then it won’t do you any good having them stay on your site anyway. So, don’t make your visitors guess, let them know what you are about quickly and cleanly and you will have happy visitors. And when thinking about a sales page, a happy customer is a buying customer.

5. Coordinated Design – This one should be self evident, but it is surprising how many sites change their design for every page. You want your visitor to be comfortable in your site and one way to achieve that is by having a coordinated web design. Having a consistent logo, using a consistent color scheme, keeping your navigation in the same place. All of these help to create a coordinated design. This does not mean that you can’t change colors or the “Look” on different segments of your site, but if you do, the changes should not be so drastic that it feels like you have moved on to a different site.

If you select one place for your logo, one place for your navigation, one look for your buttons or other common graphic elements and stick with those then you will be well on your way to a coordinated design. If you change colors for a different section, but keep the same logo location, the same navigation location, the same button shape then your visitors will not become lost as they move from page to page.

6. Easy Navigation – Once you have grabbed your visitors attention you want them to be able to easily move around the different areas of your web site. This is done with easy to use navigation. There are three standard, accepted locations for navigation elements on a web page: along the top, on the left side, and at the bottom. I will usually put my main navigation either along the top or along the left side. I will then put text based navigation at the bottom of the page, this text based navigation is more for the search engines than anything else, but it also makes it easy for your visitors to move to the next page when they have reached the bottom of the current page.

Most people start reading a page from the top left and then read towards the bottom right. So navigation at the left or top will be seen as soon as someone enters your page. Also navigation at the left or top will not move or change position if the browser window is adjusted in size. The worst thing you can do is to put your main navigation on the right side of the page and have your page set for a large screen size. Let’s say that your page is set for 1024 across with the navigation on the right, and someone views your page at 800 across, they will not see your navigation at all. The left side of your page will show perfectly, but the right side will be hidden outside of their viewing area. Of course by using floating or popup menus you can overcome some of these design limitations and keep your navigation visible at all times.

Unless you know that your audience will enjoy it, don’t use Mystery Navigation. This is where your navigation is hidden within images, or spaced around the web page in some mysterious random order. This can be fun on gaming sites, or social networking sites, but in most cases the navigation should be easy to see and easy to use. If you do want to use Mystery Navigation I would recommend keeping the text based navigation at the bottom of the page, just in case.

7. Have a “Complete” web site – And finally, no one wants to go to a web site only to find that the site is “Under Construction” and the content they are looking for is not there. These are words that you should never use. If a section of your web site is not ready for prime time yet, then simply don’t show it yet. It is better to have your site look complete and professional, then to have it look like a work in progress that should not be up on the web yet.

You can easily tell your visitors that you will be having more content in the future without looking like your site is unfinished. Just use phrases like “Content Updated Weekly” or “New Products Added Monthly”. Both of these will tell your visitors that it would be worth their time to come back and visit at later, but neither one will make your site look unfinished. So no matter how small your web site is, give the impression that you have taken the time to complete the site before putting it up on the internet, this makes for a more professional presentation and a better visitor experience.

In Closing – By following these simple 7 Basics of Good Web Design you will be well on your way to having an easy to use and successful web presence. Just keep in mind what you look for when you first land on a web page after doing a web search in Google or Yahoo, or other search engine. If you want fast loading pages, make sure your pages load fast. If you want to be able to find what you are looking for quickly and easily then make sure you have easy navigation. Just keep your first time visitor in mind, put yourself in their web shoes and make your web site an enjoyable place to visit and success should follow.