SEO Search Engine Optimization

1. Choosing a domain name

Selecting the right domain name for your website is important for your future success for a variety of reasons. Not only does the domain name need to logically relate to your business and be fairly easy for people to remember, your choice of domains can have a very real effect on your placement within search engines.

Keyword Importance
The actual domain name of your website may be included as one of the factors considered by the large search engines in determining whether your web site is relevant for a specific keyword. As a result, including the most-searched keyword for your business in the domain name itself can increase your sites relevance in search result pages (SERPs). The PromotionWorld Keyword Suggestion Tool is a great resource for figuring out which keywords are the most important for your business, and thereby can be considered as an important part of your domain name.

There are of course many examples of seemingly irrelevant domain names that perform exceptionally well on search engines. The domain name of Google is a perfect example. Search engines use complex algorithms to determine a websites relevance, so remember that this is just one of many factors.

AAAlphabetically Speaking
Since the dawn of the phone book, there have been countless new businesses created with odd-sounding names designed to push their listing to the top of the page. Most listings in search directories also use alphabetical order for sorting websites, so there are now countless domains that start with numbers or the letter A. A quick search of Google shows the Army Aviation Association of America, American Association of Advertising Agencies, and AAAA Surplus all jockeying for position. This is not a key factor for search engine optimization, though. The value of creating a great brand exceeds the advantage of being the first on alphabetical lists with a nonsensical domain name.

Think Branding
Building a great brand should be a primary goal of most online businesses. The almighty Brand is among the companys core assets. Since a strong presence on the Internet is becoming more and more important for even traditional businesses, the right company name and URL choice can be vital to your businesss success. Choose a name which is easy to remember, easy to pronounce, and does not infringe on existing trademarks.

The goal of corporate branding was eloquently summarized by the band Cake:


We are building a religion
We are making a brand
Were the only ones to turn to
When your castles turn to sand

An easy-to-remember domain name is a valuable tool for your business promotion and recognition. The name doesnt need to have a great meaning if you are committed to building a brand, then your Google could be FUBAR without a lot of work.

Including hyphens in a domain name has its pros and cons. A well-placed hyphen can help compound words to appear more clearly to people, but it can have a negative affect on your overall branding strategy. This is just one of the many reasons why Coca-Cola can be found at Coke.com as well as Coca-Cola.com and CocaCoke.com.

Marketing Niche
Understanding your potential market is vital to a good understanding of the value of a potential domain name. Find out who your competitors are in the market first. Than consider how you will try to differentiate yourself youre business from your competition. Knowing your marketing niche will help you to navigate the vast jungle of potential domains. Cheap-Cowboy-Boots.com is a very different positioning statement than Best-Cowboy-Boots.com, for example. One of the best ways to evaluate how you will position your company on the market is to use the PromotionWorld Keyword Suggestion tool to find the keywords your potential customers are using today to try to find similar businesses.

2. Hot n Heavy Web Site Consummation

Building your new web site is an exiting adventure. The act of creation is a rush whether you are using silk sheets or style sheets. Before you start with your new web site, however, you must make sure that youve laid the proper foundation for future success. Search engine optimization should be on your mind even at the formative stage of your web site to insure your success and to prevent you from having to rearrange the site structure for SEO.

Customer-Centered Development
You can consider your target audience and market niche when guiding the development of your web site. Is your audience Internet savvy, or are they newbies? Will they read complex instructions and navigate to find information, or do you need to sell a simple and direct message quickly? Let your site user profile influence the structure and complexity of your web site.

The ABCs of HTML
It almost goes without saying that it is important the website developer to have good knowledge on HTML and the basic rules of website development. Beyond the basics, however, keep in mind that many design decisions will have a direct effect on search engines will analyze your web site. Eye candy like Flash-based navigation can be fun to develop, but search engines wont be able read information contained in images, Flash inserts, and other kinds of web site window dressings. Try to stay away from using too many effects since this can harm your search engine readability.

Clear Paths for Crawling Spiders
Search engines are continually scouring the Internet and processing web pages to provide their users with the best information possible. This process involves the use of automated programs, commonly called spiders, which continually crawl the web. It is important that your web site is built in a way that is easy for the spiders to find information. Clean, well-defined and simple code structure is a must for SEO-friendly HTML. Obsessing over tidy code may seem a bit anal-retentive, but it is important to have HTML that can be easily processed by web browsers and search engines alike. Be sure the HTML is implemented with all key structure tags placed in the right order. It is especially important to understand the right placement of the Meta Tags, tables and heading structure.

Google Commandments
SEO techniques specific to the Google search engine will be discussed in detail in the second installment of this tutorial, but keep this immensely popular service in your thoughts even during the creation of your web site. Google gives an advantage to sites which are well organized and easily classified. Cleanliness may be its own reward, but improved placement within the Internets leading search engine should motivate even the most sloppy web master to scrub HTML clean.

The other vital tenet from the Book of Google is the Internet is built upon the free transition of information. Google rewards web sites that give the users the opportunity to move easily from page to page, site to site. After all, Google wants to be sure that Google users can easily come back to Google. This means that the back button in the browser must work on all pages of your web site. The God of Search Engines will punish you if you stop their users from going back to search results.

Blinded by Flash
Macromedia describes its powerful Flash application as a powerful tool that
...allows designers and developers to integrate video, text, audio, and graphics into immersive, rich experiences that deliver superior results for interactive marketing and presentations, e-learning, and application user interfaces.

Flash can be a great tool for creating innovative, dynamic web sites, but it is a double-edged sword. Many experts agree that improper use of Flash will cause significant trouble with the search engine optimization. If a spider cant crawl your web site because key navigation is hidden in a Flash insert, your placement on that search engine will suffer tremendously. Use the effects moderately to avoid harming your site. A flash introduction may seem like an attractive design decision, but it can create a significant barrier to your site content.

The focus of your web site must lead you in every stage of the development. Starting with a good development and promotion will deliver results in the future and will pay back your efforts.

3. Wonderful Web Design and Sensational SEO

The graphical design of your web site will be a key building block of your business image. Design is one of the most core decisions in creating of your corporate image because it creates an instant, visual representation of your companys presence. Design decisions must carefully balance aesthetics and usability, but mind though that it is equally important to consider search engine optimization in the design phase. Certain design decisions can have a disastrous impact on your placement in search engines. We will therefore merge the two in a discussion of design-specific SEO requirements in the remainder of this section.

Surveying the Landscape
Do you want to know what design conventions may work well in your industry? Look first to your competition. Look closely and critically at your competitors to evaluate what design elements have been successful in the past. You can use search results to gauge which sites have better optimization. Keep in mind, however, that the most successful competitors will likely be better positioned in search engines because of the factors that made them successful, not necessarily only SEO-specific activity.

The graphical design of your web site will be a key building block of your business image. Design is one of the most core decisions in creating of your corporate image because it creates an instant, visual representation of your companys presence. Design decisions must carefully balance aesthetics and usability, but mind though that it is equally important to consider search engine optimization in the design phase. Certain design decisions can have a disastrous impact on your placement in search engines. We will therefore merge the two in a discussion of design-specific SEO requirements in the remainder of this section.

Surveying the Landscape
Do you want to know what design conventions may work well in your industry? Look first to your competition. Look closely and critically at your competitors to evaluate what design elements have been successful in the past. You can use search results to gauge which sites have better optimization. Keep in mind, however, that the most successful competitors will likely be better positioned in search engines because of the factors that made them successful, not necessarily only SEO-specific activity.

4. An Ode to Structurally Sound Web Sites

The homepage of your web site may be the doorway to your online business, but the structure of the site behind the door is just as important as its curb appeal. An intelligent structure to the subsections of web site is the cornerstone of search engine optimization. To implement the right optimization process, you should follow these guidelines: First, define the right linking structure and hierarchy for your site. It is great to have a site filled with great information, but that information has to organized into If you have several categories, well structured with different content areas, be sure to link the top-level categories in the navigation on your Home page. The entry page of your site is the most important not only for the visitors; it is of great value to the spiders and thus needs to present all the linking requirements carefully completed. Secondly, you need to adapt the site code to be easily read.

Navigating Charted Waters
It does not matter how much great information your web site contains if it is impossible for visitors, and visiting spiders, to find it. Navigation is your greatest tool to helping everyone find the pots of intellectual gold hidden beyond your homepage. Your visitors are like treasure seekers in your site-island. Make their journey easy and entertaining for making them come again. What you can actually do? In the menu navigation you can set all the links to your major inner content - category groups, services, features, content groups, forums and promotions. When you choose which links to put in the navigation bar, you need to have a clear vision of your site structure. A well-organized home page is good both for your user retention and for the search engine spidering. Talking about the navigation links, we can consider the importance of the top line path navigation. This thing is the way you to lead the spider and the visitors into your content, allowing an easy follow-up of the site structure. Remember that every page of your site needs to have an easy access both from and to the home page. This can be achieved either by linking your logo to point the Home page or setting a Home link in the top of the page.

Outbound Linking
While linking, always consider the importance of the links outbound and inbound links on/into your home page. Many experts recommend that you find up to 10 sites in your industry with good Alexa.com positioning and Google PageRank and exchange links. Some webmasters will even buy links on especially popular home pages. The outbound links may be as important as inbound links. Search engines sort the sites by similarity and the outbound links can be a great help. For example if you set a link to http://www.my-favorite-competitor-site.com, the search engine spider may relate your sites as content of similar category. You can read more about Google PageRank and Alexa.com to find out why these are important for your search engine optimization and how the Alexa.com toolbar function as a mediator in the Internet.

Tables
Using a table-structured layout can make your content easy to find understand. The use of tables on a web page allows you complete control over the look and format of a page. Tables are especially useful in creating clear navigation sections, a great way to help users intuitively find the core logic of your site organization. Tables are also well accepted by Google for their ability to put organization in the content. You will see later in this tutorial how you can use tables to improve your search engine visibility.

To be most effective, the table structure of your site needs to be especially clean and well-organized. Arranging your content in tables will allow the spiders to find the logic of your content organization. How it can happen? When your table structure follows the content logic, your content will be spidered and classified better. If you have for example text descriptions for every product, you can set in the table name the name of the product or the name of the category group. Use equal table names and structures for your equal content units. Here is a code example of a beginning of a well structured table:

Title name
Demystifying URLs
Dynamic web sites, managed by complex Content Management Systems (CMS), offer the webmaster greater flexibility and efficiency over hand-coded HTML. The use of a database allows your data to be easily stored, processed, and output. A database-driven system also your content units to be easy delivered for displaying using many search criteria and in multiple formats. Showing the searched information every time the user performs selects to request it , will allow your site to gain more popularity and to increase the user retention indicators.

The URL structure concerns the most important part of the optimization process. If your URL type is
http://www.yoursite.com/content.php?id=43
you can make it more readable by mode_rewrite.
This way your URL will read:
http://www.yoursite.com/2005/0112content.html

The automatic URL rewriting is one of the very cool new methods you can use to prepare your pages for an easy indexing. Go to our URL part to learn more.

Frames
Frames are considered not to be search engine friendly. Using frames you will cut your site from creating of different page addresses. Since the number of pages is counted for the site value and relevancy in the SERPs, you need to create as many pages as you can. Using Non-framed site will facilitate your users as well when they use Add to favorites or copy your URL to specific page, since in the framed sites all the pages adopt the home page address.

5. Top fold issues

Living Life Above-the-Fold

Internet marketing folk describe the section of a web page that is visible without scrolling as being above the fold. This is the sweet spot of a web page; the section that every visitor will see. The actual size of the page that will appear without scrolling varies by screen resolution. A page on a monitor set at 1280x1024 will show more than a page on a monitor set at 640x480. Marketing gurus obsess over the minimum targeted resolution of potential customers because advertisers want to see there ads.

The prime virtual real estate of Above-the-Foldville is also the most logical place to put your logo and the primary navigation of our web site. The important information always belongs near the top of the page as possible. This placement has a side benefit for Search Engine Optimization: search engines also consider the top fold as a priority by reading the page code starting with the header.

Like Fish, Text is Best Served Fresh
The Internet is filled with stale, moldy web pages. Keep your web site updated frequently and post these text updates proudly above the fold. These updates will keep your page interesting to visitors and will have a direct effect on the frequency of Google spider visits as well. You need to update your content and links both to attract your visitors with new information and to allow the spiders to consider the changes. A changing page is more visited and thus better indexed. Remember the Golden rule in optimization: the more frequently you update your web site, the more frequently it will be frequented by visitors and spiders alike. And what could be better than more people and more spiders?

Links
Links in the top fold are of greatest importance. Why they are so influential? The top fold links are valuable for reasons we explained partly above. They are the keys users and spiders will use to reach your content. Thus you will have to define what the most important part of your site is you need to lead the visitors to. The outbound linking section here is recommended only if you are sure that you change the link information at least daily. This way you will keep the visitors to your site, making them back for more your picks to other interesting topics on other sites. You may found that I am talking always about the user part of your site, while considering the search engine optimization issues. You need to understand that the traffic and specifically the user retention are of the most important factors for your search engine visibility.

The Invisible Value of Images
Images play several roles in search engine optimization. The appearance of images is naturally important to the overall look and presentation of your web site. But beyond the superficial value, carefully named images can also serve a dual role in search engine optimization. One trick is to use relevant keywords in the name of the images. For example, if your company is a SEO software company, link the images with relevant SEO terms like searchengineguide.gif and seoarticle.jpg. Even the name of directory and subdirectories can contain meaningful keywords.

6. Navigation
Navigation is of the issues most important for your site visibility. The navigation to your main content areas is of double importance when it is in the top fold.

The frequent indexing will be provoked by a frequent update of your content and a clear structure of your interlink structure.

Here the network sites have an advantage in creating more interlink options in the network which will lead to increase in your Google PR. Be sure the links to your pages are in the top of the pages and not hidden in javascript. When you open the page by View source, you will see the code display in the order the search engine spider will read it. Remember this top fold navigation tips and apply them carefully.

7. Site map

The site map has long been a staple at large, commercial web sites, and for good reason. It is of essential importance for making sure that search engines are finding all of your web sites content during every crawl. A good site map can also be an important way for your users to find information on your site. The site map page should ideally be at the following URL

http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.html

It is important for the site map to be in the main site directory so search engine spiders can easily find it and follow the links. This will guarantee your main site content is instantly accessible to spiders and humans alike.