News
 Effective
SEO Design Tips to Impress Visitors and
Search
Engines, part II
If your visitors like your Web site, there is a very
good likelihood that the search engines will, too.
Here are the last 5 tips from Barry Fenning, owner
of (www.betteririshwebsites.com) that focus on how
to develop your site with your visitors in mind, and
also effectively conduct search engine optimization.
6. Descriptively label your links and images (aka,
the "anchor text")
This technique is both common sense and good
practice. Saying "click here" is not enough to help
visitors understand what they're going to find once
they click through. Be as descriptive as possible
with every text and graphical link on your site.
When writing your anchor text and alt attributes,
you can almost always describe the page you're
pointing to by using its main keyword phrase. That
is an important factor that search engines take into
account when it comes to ranking your Web pages.
7. Make sure your site is spider-friendly
Your site may look fantastic. You and your Web
designer may be talented graphic designers who can
make Flash and JavaScript dazzle your visitors with
a show that would put Michael Flatley and his River
Dance to shame. However, if your site contains Flash
and JavaScript, it's important to know that search
engine spiders have difficulty reading this code (or
appreciating the effort you put into the design).
The way around this is to provide navigation
alternatives such as static links and a site map to
allow the spiders crawl deep within your Web site
and index the pages within their results. Overuse of
Flash, JavaScript, and images can also lead to your
Web pages' being very slow to download. If these
file types are used sparingly, your visitors and
search engines will appreciate your efforts a lot
more.
8. Create fresh content
When you are optimizing your site properly, you will
see a trend. If you are doing something that
benefits your site's visitors, then the search
engines will reward you for it. Blogs and forums are
effective and easy ways of adding new information to
your site on a regular basis. However, if your only
purpose of setting up a blog or a forum is for
better search engine rankings, then there really is
no point in doing it. Only add a forum if it
contributes something beneficial to your site and if
you have the traffic to make it interactive enough
for visitors to return to it. And, only add a blog
if you have something of interest to say on a
regular basis. Once you have your blog and/or forum
up and running, you should optimize them with the
same professionalism you do with any other page on
your site.
9. Do not think that you can trick search engines
As noted before, if you are benefiting your
visitors, then the search engines will reward you
for it. If you try to trick the search engines by
hiding keyword phrases, joining link farms, or any
other sneaky practice, your sites will be removed
from the search engines. (And you will also have to
spend more time cleaning up your site before they
will accept you back in.)
10. Offer something unique
If your Web site offers something that is unique and
interesting to your target market and it is properly
optimized (by applying all of the techniques listed
above), you will not only rank well within the major
search engines but also get the added benefit of
people linking to your site in forums, blogs, and
through other sites. That will send your site more
visitors and create more inbound links, which will
help it rank higher.
Remember, it's human visitors that you are trying to
impress, not search engine robots.
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Melissa Data
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