BaseKit Explains How to Create a SEO Friendly Website in 2011

Feb. 9, 2011 - PRLog -- No matter what the purpose of your website is, or indeed who it’s designed for, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tends to be one of the most important goals. Considering SEO is much simpler if you think about it during the initial stages of the design process, rather than changing everything once the website has been created. This article aims to help you create a website that is SEO ready from the start, and that is able to summon organic traffic.

Keywords
Firstly, you need to consider the keywords and phrases that you want to target. Initially, you should aim for one or two keywords per page and find a balance between keywords that have a high traffic volume without being too competitive. A number of factors determine how competitive the search term is, but you will get a good idea through looking at the page rank of the websites on the first page of a Google search. Google’s external keyword tool will indicate the search volume and you can download various page rank plug-ins for your desired browser.

Unique Content
Having top notch, individual content is key to successful keywords, as well as ensuring your content is available to search engines. You should make sure that the content is not enclosed in an image, or the search engine crawlers won’t be able to access the content, only the name of the image file. It is possible to view the source code of a page in order to see the content precisely how the crawler will see it. If all you see are file names and HTML, then this is what the crawler will see too.

Search Engine Optimisation via URL
It is important to make your targeted keywords for each page appear obvious to search engines. There are several ways to do this but at the very least you need to ensure that the page title suggests the keywords, and that they are enclosed in a single H1 tag of the page. If feasible the website URL should contain the main keyword that you are pursuing, and the structure of the URL for the subsequent pages should reflect the top keyword for each separate page. A great example is The Guardian who’s Technology homepage URL is www.guardian.co.uk/technology and ranks second in a Google search of ‘Technolgy’ behind Wikipedia.

Anchor Text
Another suggestion of how to make your targeted keywords clear is to pay close attention to the anchor text that you use to link pages. Search engines tend to assume that the content is driven by the anchor text, so ensure you put emphasis on your intended keywords within the anchor text.
Most webmasters are lazy about the anchor text they use when linking other pages and sites. For example, one of the most popular pages that websites link to is Adobe Reader, and most web builders use “click here” as the anchor text. If you type “click here” into a Google search, the highest ranking is indeed Adobe Reader. So you see, it really can make a difference.

External Links
Once your website has been built, the final stage is to generate external links to the site. Over time, this will increase the page rank and develop your website’s authority in the search engines’ eyes, which will enable you to start climbing up the ranks and breeding traffic.

Web Building Software
If you create a website using a website builder rather than starting from scratch, it’s important to choose one that offers as much flexibility for optimising your search engine visibility. This will allow you to control each of the elements mentioned above without taking up too much of your time. Your clients will certainly appreciate it.

Chris Winstanley is Head of Marketing at BaseKit

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BaseKit disrupts the traditional web hosting market. BaseKit is an easy way to create, host and manage beautiful websites online. BaseKit is based on a flexible layout structure that allows users to create a website directly from a Photoshop design, or customize one of our 100+ professionally designed website templates. Users can build their website using the easy drag & drop interface, adding widgets for text or dynamic content like Twitter, RSS, Google Maps and more. This saves them thousands of pounds and help them to achieve beautiful and powerful results.