What good is having a web site if nobody can find you? Madison's Website Designer Offers Tips

March 26, 2011 - PRLog -- If the Search Engine lists you, but not within the first two or three pages of the results, your potential visitor will probably never even see you.

The encouraging news is that with a few simple steps, any website can be optimized for search engines, and thus, gain ranking and online recognition.  

Molly Nicaise, owner of Fainting Goat Web Design in Madison Wisconsin, says, “Search engine optimization – SEO – is a tried and true practice for getting new and old websites the publicity they’re lacking.”  The big 3 search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo.  Nicaise said that each engine has their own set of preferences and that they tweak their preferences periodically.  Part of the challenge is to keeping up to date with changes and then implementing them in a site’s design and promotional strategy.

With a good SEO strategy, your site could appear on the first page – and if not that, at least in the first 10 entries.  Nicaise says that knowing the words or phrases people would likely use to find your business online is where you start.  She added that those keywords are meaningfully written into the website’s text and also the code (what search engine robots see).  

Using keywords and phrases intelligently in a site’s design is only the beginning.  There are additional items a website developer must implement.  “Every site owner wants his or her business to appear on the first page.  It’s possible with a lot of hard work and unorganized competition, but your site’s ranking changes all the time. You have to keep up with it.”  

According to Nicaise, “SEO isn’t rocket science.  You have to know the rules, know what each search engine wants, keep up to date with changes, and implement on your client’s site.”  If a website owner has enough coding skill, they can take optimization into their own hands:

Use important search terms (key word phrases) in the  tag. Give every page of your site a unique, meaningful title.

Provide a meaningful description, incorporating keyword phrases, in the  tag -- this is what search engines display in that sentence you see with the results of a search.

Use your keyword phrases in heading tags  or . This tells search engines that these words are extremely important to your site.

Other sites that link to your site are a GREAT for your site’s ranking.  If the site is in the same field as yours, all the better.

The text ON each page of your site should range between 200 to 500 words. Why?  On the web, content is king & search engines rank sites higher in MEANINGFUL content.  Use your keyword phrases 2 or 3 times but no more than 5 times on each page.  

Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase.

Because local search directories are king (Google, Yahoo & Bing all have local search directories), make sure your footer contains your snailmail address & zip code.  If this information is missing, some directories won’t list your site / they don’t believe you’re local.

Update your content if possible.  Search engines rank sites higher when they see fresh content.  If your site content doesn’t change often, put a blog on the site and then blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

Because search engine spiders can't see pictures include your keyword phrases in the 'alt' attribute for the  tag.  

Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

If you use CSS, try and place the Style Sheet data as an external Style Sheet, and use a . This avoids the Style Sheet pushing your valuable content further down the HTML.  Same goes for JavaScript.  Another work-around is, in addition to a javascript dropdown menu, put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

If you are on a shared server, check the blacklist to make sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

Take the time to submit your site to directories – it’s tedious, but worth it.

Fainting Goat is a small, boutique firm that offers great service, practical & economical solutions, and in-depth knowledge of the field. We work across the continuum -- from start-ups to the established -- and we do it all: conceptualize, develop, implement.  We specialize in websites.  Call us for a free consultation.

http://www.fgoat.com

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Fainting Goat is a full service Promotional Agency in Madison Wisconsin -- Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations Advice, Website Development.