Plan for search engine success before you launch your new Web site
by Mike Hallaron, MH1 Web Design
Preparing to redesign your company Web site? ..or launch a new business site? Do not wait until after you launch to begin thinking about search engine marketing and proper optimization techniques.
You and your Web designer should have a clear understanding of your target audience and key words and phrases that will ensure search engine ranking success. In fact, if your new designer does not ask you questions about your market, competition, audience and try to understand your goals from a marketing standpoint before beginning work.. run, do not walk. Discuss and implement these key steps of search engine-friendly design and optimization before and during the design process. Lastly, have your designer register the completed site with Google, Yahoo and the others for optimum success.
Some important rules to follow:
1. Try to design your basic site structure in good old html. The folks at Google will tell you that their crawler software has trouble navigating and reading java script and flash. This will hurt your chances at high, first page rankings among organic search results.
2. Identify your meta tags and make sure they are included in your <head> code. Although meta tags are not weighted as heavily as they were back in 1999, they still serve some functions with crawlers in identifying your key words and phrases. And tags like your description tag appear in organic search results that are read by potential site visitors, hence customers.
3. Use proper headline tags on your pages. (H1, H2, and H3 for example) Make sure to include your key words within your headlines when possible and avoid vague, abstract headlines that are subjective and meaningless. Your text should flow normally for the human reader. Google also considers bold and italicized text more important, but again, use logically and sparingly.
4. Think about adding secondary pages as your site matures to support link building, provide fresh, useful content and keyword-rich text for search engine spiders.
5. An html sitemap can help visitors quickly organize where they are within your site and where important content is presented. An additional XML sitemap is great for search engines trying to navigate through all of your Web site pages. The XML sitemap helps Google and Yahoo index your site accordingly, expediting the ranking process. Human visitors cannot see or access your xml sitemap.
6. Include a partners or links page. These pages are very useful for swapping reciprocal links with business partners and related vendors. Seek other sites in your industry and try to stay with high traffic, respected company sites.
Remember that when you build or re-design a Web site that you must serve two masters… human readers who require an attractive, informative visual Web site and the search engine ranking software that can help boost your online success and make you more money. Find a good designer who understands how to skillfully carry off this balancing act.
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