Get the truth about web design & SEO for internet marketing

Avoid the Flash Website Trap?

The Flash website trap is the most common problem today in web design!  Everybody offers web design because it's easy and Flash design is profitable.  However, does your Dallas web design company or advertising agency know, or even care about employing, the necessary search engine optimization techniques and strategies for successful internet marketing?

There are some beautiful websites out there, but their chances of ranking high for any relevant, target keywords have been dashed by the use of only graphics and Flash, and little to no search engine spider readable text. You need a Dallas web design company that understands search engine optimization.  If they don’t, it could cost you thousands in the long run trying to go back and change everything because you're not getting the required,  TARGETED search engine traffic, necessary to make sales.

For Example:  You could spend $5,000-$10,000 easy, on a website designed by a Dallas web design or advertising agency, built in Flash or really cool fonts that are embedded in graphics, only to realize later that the search engine spiders can’t read any your content, and thus won't be able to index it... This means you won't show up in the local Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, or National search results, and that searching prospects will never find you.

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.

This is critical information YOU NEED TO KNOW about web design and search engine optimization before choosing a Dallas web design company or advertising agency!

Search engine spider readable text needs to be present on each page of your web site for effective internet marketing, as Google explains in their webmaster guidelines.

Direct Google Quotes:

"Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content... use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images." 

... AND...

"Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site."

Get the truth about Web Site Design and (SEO) Search Engine Optimization Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas!

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.

Read this article:

Search Engine Optimization
Basics - Content (Part 5)
By Andy Beal

Over the past few months, search engine optimization (SEO) has become more mainstream, with many companies considering this form of marketing for the first time. The amount of information on the topic of SEO has increased dramatically, with many new authors stepping forward to pen guides that explain how to optimize a website. Yet even with this increased awareness, I'm still amazed by the number of business owners who still believe tweaking titles or adding keywords to Meta tags is all that is needed to increase search engine visibility.

Optimizing Your Page Content
In previous articles, I have endeavored to provide a beginner's guide to making these changes; now it's time to turn our attention to perhaps one of the most important aspects of any SEO campaign, optimizing your page content.

So, where do we start? What is the most important change a Webmaster can make to a page in order to improve search engine positioning? To find the answer, we simply go back to the very first article in this series, where we discussed effective keyword research. When researching your industry, competitors and most requested search terms, you identified the keywords that are the most regularly used by your target audience. You've used them in your title and Meta tags, but their most important use is in the actual page content, the text you display on the pages you are trying to get positioned.

Include Your Targeted Search Terms
So many times, I have seen web sites that fail to mention any of the search terms they are trying to achieve rankings for. They'll have lots of graphics and may also have good levels of text on the page, yet the company still fails to include the exact phrase that is important to them. For example, if you're trying to achieve rankings for the term "desktop computer supplies," make sure your content has that exact phrase present in it. It is of little benefit to say something along the lines of, "The best selection of accessories for your home computer" when trying to target "desktop computer supplies." While you may pick up points for having text that is on the same theme, you won't achieve your best search engine rankings unless you include liberal occurrences of the exact phrase you are trying to target.

Checking Keyword Density
Your next question is likely to be "How often should I mention each search term?"  A well-optimized page should include at least 250 words of text.  Within that text, aim to achieve between 3% - 7% frequency for the term you are trying to target.  Make sure that you place your most important search terms in text located towards the top of your page and also try not to target more than 5 phrases within any block of text (the more phrases you try to target, the more text you need to achieve a high frequency).  You can check your keyword density at keyworddensity.com.

Also look for opportunities to make links out of search terms located within your page text. In the example of "desktop computer supplies," consider making one of the occurrences of this phrase a hyperlink to the most relevant page within your website; it will give you a little push in your ranking efforts.

The Impact Of Keyword Proximity
If you're unable to include the exact phrase within your page text, which can often happen when the targeted search term is not used in the course of normal syntax, try at least to keep the words within close proximity. For example, you could use "Discounted supplies for desktop computers." While it is not as valuable as including the exact phrase, it at least contains the targeted words, albeit in a different order. The search engines, while preferring to display pages that match search terms exactly, have shown a propensity to display web pages that have the targeted words within close proximity.

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.

Search Terms Should Be Pervasive
While paragraphs of text within your web page offer the best opportunity to include search terms, make sure you don't miss the many other opportunities within your content. For example, look at the text contained within the headings of each page and make sure they contain the most relevant search term for your content. Also, consider the navigation menu that you use and look for instances where you can include a relevant search term. How about the text you use under each product description? I've seen websites where the most dominant two-word phrase on a product page was "Sale Price." Ouch!

As you can see, the text you use on each page is vitally important when trying to achieve better search engine positioning. However, adding keywords to your content is not enough to get your web site to the coveted "#1" position. There are many other factors that need to be considered, including many that don't involve the content on the page, but since we are looking at page content, here are a few quick tips:

:: Don't bury your keyword-rich content at the bottom of the page. The search engines consider where the text is located on a page when determining your site's relevancy. Google will believe that text pushed to the bottom of your site, in a small font, can't be that relevant to your business.

:: Don't overdo things. While having no search terms in your text is disastrous, having too many could have an equally negative impact. Stick to your 5-15% frequency.

:: Remember the user experience. While your SEO efforts will help improve your search engine rankings, don't sacrifice the usability of your web site. Ensure that it is easy to navigate and that all of your keyword-rich text still makes sense to the average visitor.

:: Add one or two targeted search terms to the ALT tags of any image that links to another page within your website. Search engines have shown they consider ALT tag text when the image contains a link to another page.

:: Don't go overboard with the use of "H1" tags or bolded text. While they can help improve your search engine positioning, less is more.

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.

Walk Before You Run

Hopefully, the above advice will assist you in modifying your most important pages to increase search engine visibility. When you feel you have made all the basic changes to the text of your site, you'll find many articles that discuss fine-tuning your page layout and content. Search engine optimization is an ongoing process, and you can drive yourself crazy, if you try to optimize every single aspect of your web site. Simply remember to keep your site relevant and make sure you have covered all the basics before advancing to more complex techniques.

About The Author
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.

What is Search Engine Spamming?
Read Google's Quality Guidelines.

Don't make your text the same color as the background of the site in an effort to hide extra keywords. Just making it the same color can get you banned, even if you aren't stuffing in extra keywords. They'll even nab you if you use a text that is just slightly different in color from the background.

Don't use a keyword or keyword phrase over and over again in your keyword META Tags, anywhere on your page, or in any HTML areas.

Don't stuff a bunch of keywords way down at the bottom of your page where you think no one will click. The spider police will get you. Don't create a highly optimized page to get a high ranking, and then switch the page on your server to another one.

Don't use automatic redirects. It’s not recommended if you want to get high rankings.

Don't submit the same page over and over again, or try to trick the engines by simply renaming the same page. Don't submit nonsensical sentences that are stuffed with keywords. Don't submit more pages per day than a particular search engine allows. Don't have more than 8% of the words as keywords on any one page. Don't put a tremendous number of transparent GIF files on the page with the same alt text. When using transparent GIFS, don't put the height and width tags. Don't put multiple title tags in your HTML code. Used to work, but, alas no more!

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.

Search Engine Strategies

Keywords: The Critical Component

There are two critical methods used by search engines to find pages. The first is by keywords, and the second is metawords or META Tags. An extremely critical part of this whole mix is the keywords and keyword phrases you select that match the services and products you offer. A keyword is the term someone uses when they look for information. What are they actually going to type into their computer? It’s really to your benefit to find out what they would enter into the search engine. It may not be what you would use and in many cases it will totally surprise you. What they type would be the "keywords" that the search engine uses to look for the information.

If you kill yourself designing your site based around certain keywords that you think are great, but the searcher is searching using other keywords, then they'll simply find your competition that did a better job of picking out keywords. We don't want that to happen, do we?

Each page of your site may have different keywords associated with it's content, or you could have a site that has every single page optimized to the same keyword. The important thing is that it MUST BE THE RIGHT KEYWORD or you will never be found.

For example, let's say someone goes to the search engine Google and types in the keyword phrase "presentation skills." Google has cataloged millions and millions of pages, so they can find the pages on the Internet that are most relevant to that particular keyword phrase. Their goal is to return the proper list to the person that is looking for information on "presentation skills." 

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.

Name your Graphics as Keywords

Search engines are getting so sophisticated now that you want to take advantage of any little boost you can get to beat the system. You can also name your graphics with keywords. Instead of making the file name of a photo "joe.gif" you would name it "presentation-skills.gif" Anything you can do to boost yourself without spamming is a good idea.

How do you find out what people are using for keywords when they find your site? This is where you get into the field of statistics. What you’ll find out is it tells you what hours of the day people are coming to visit you. It will say where they’re coming from and it will tell how long they stayed there. The more sophisticated ones have the keywords that people typed in and which search engine they used. These are critical pieces of information.

Don't use Frames on your Pages

Many people say you should not have frames on your home page. What is a frame? To explain using a visual example, imagine buttons down the left side of the page that always stay there, while the text on the right side of the page switches. That’s a frame. The frame is the fixed part while the rest is variable. Why shouldn’t you have frames? Search engines have had a tough time with them. They’re supposed to be getting better, but you’re safer not having them on your home page, because the last thing you want to do is make it tough on a search engine.

Don't let your designer talk you into having frames. They are only interested in the look of the site. All the top marketers in the world who are actually making money and getting top search engine rankings don't use frames.

Contact me for a FREE SEO
Web Design analysis.