Website Optimization

Make sure your website site design does not contain elements that negatively impact a search engine’s ability to index it. An unfriendly design can sabotage your site’s ability to rank well and be found by your target market.

Employ a navigation and linking structure that encourages regular indexing by search engines. Modern drop down menus, site maps help to insure your pages are indexed regularly. Consider adding text links throughout each page so the spiders can also access similar or related pages in your web site.

Many search engines can read 'named anchors’ so use them when they are appropriate. Add 'short' keyword rich ALT text to describe your graphic link destinations but do not use the same words on every graphic.

And above all, make sure your content is useful and relevant to searchers. Web sites employ many different methods for displaying navigation menus to their visitors.

If the design/concept calls for graphics in your menus, use graphics to form the backgrounds of buttons and menus and overlay them with text for the actual link text. For rollovers and drop down / interactive menus, create the menu portions using CSS, then add a simple JavaScript to show / hide the menu on rollover of the menu item.

Text Links
Advantages of text links: they load faster, can be indexed by search engines, are easier to edit, are better for visually impaired visitors, their content contributes towards search relevancy and help to determine where you rank under your most relevant keyword phrases in the search engine results.

In terms of search engine optimization, generally your home page is stronger than your sub-pages because it has the most inbound links pointing at it, so provide plenty of on-theme descriptive text about your niche product or service.

We recommend a minimum of 200 words as it is easier to include your keyword phrases, maintain your marketing message whilst providing more content for the search engine spider robots.

If it is easy to read and navigate, it will be easy to find after search engine optimization and submission. Try to be consistent in your layout and design and include plenty of relevant content about your product or service. It should be fast to load into a browser, less than 2 seconds is considered excellent.

Keep your content up to date and avoid annoying visitor/spider distractions such as pop-ups or pop-downs. If your pages contain text content that is relevant and specific they will achieve a high search engine ranking and deliver a lot more visitors.

Begin every page with a header tag <H> and an introduction that explains what is covered below. Keyword prominence is as important with content as it is in your Title or meta tags, so put your most important content first.

A good rule of thumb is that spiders will heavily weigh the first 25-30 words. Some spiders may assign more weight to the end of a page so you should also consider a summary that includes your keywords.

Your visitors and search engine spiders expect to see text on your pages. Always use visible text that is relevant to your site/page content. Most search engines cannot index graphical text so feed them keyword-rich body text and text links.

Avoid excess repetition – include your keywords logically throughout your copy, without disturbing the flow for the reader. Have plenty of descriptive text, make it easy to read, easy to navigate and easy to find. Be consistent in layout and design, have relevant, up to date content and it should be fast to load in a browser without any distractions.