Friday, January 16, 2009

Working With Website Design And Search Engine Optimization

By Chris Channing

When designing a website, there is a lot of preliminary work that needs to be done in order to get the exposure necessary through search engines. Most webmasters skip this part, and instead focus on optimizing their website through offsite means. Take this fact to your own advantage and beat them in the rankings by following a few onsite SEO methods.

A meta tag is a block of information that contains different keywords, a title, a description, and other tidbits that relate to what the page's purpose is. Filling out this information isn't necessary, but it does help a website rank better in search engine results due to the added content. It might not sway rankings a great deal, but a change will likely be noticed.

Newspapers and websites aren't so different. Websites have the ability to use headings much like newspapers do, and in fact, search engines reward website that use such headings. Using a heading or subheading tag helps search engines sort and organize the data they read from a website, and this often results in a better ranking.

After a web design is complete, a designer should always be held accountable in how well it performs in different web browsers. This also brings up the point that all designs should be validated against strict rules and standards, so as to ensure that a website has the highest chance possible to be rendered correctly for anyone trying to view it. It also helps search engines read content easier, which can keep a website running strong.

Alternate text is another tool to use when linking to other content, or even when putting images into a website. Alternative text is what is displayed when a mouse hovers over a link or an image. This is usually used to help the reader understand what they are interfacing with, but is also read by search engines to help tag content in a website and to determine the overall subject being discussed.

A sitemap is another way to keep search engines happy. A sitemap will link to every page in a website that you'd like search engines to look at. It's much easier to get new pages in a website indexed this way than to wait for search engines to find a new website from other sources. In addition, they help out readers who may be looking for a certain piece of information or subject.

Final Thoughts

From here on out, readers should continue their efforts in becoming experts at Internet marketing. It may take some time, effort, and practice- but in the end the hard work will pay off as search engine domination is imminent. For more information, go online for more tutorials on SEO.

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