Search Engine Tips & Web Design

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This by far is the most important aspect of web design. You can have the best looking page on the Internet, but if you are not indexed properly in the search engines it will have no benefit. Nobody can find you unless you have advertised your site address in other mediums.

Now we all know that most web design companies say at the sale, "Oh yes we will get you at the top of the search engines if you buy web design services from us." How does one verify this though? How do we know that the web design company we are thinking about using is telling us the truth? We at Pagetrends tell our potential customers to perform one simple test in order to prove whether or not a web design company is honest when they say they will get a site at the top of the search engines.

First: Ask your potential vendor which key words they can be found at. After getting the list of keywords from the web design company, go to google and see if they are telling the truth.

Secondly: Determine by looking at googles listing how many companies they are above. You can do this by viewing the total number of listings found for the key word after your search is displayed.

Thirdly: Put yourself in the web designers shoes and determine whether or not the keywords they gave you are top key words for their industry. Also determine, in your opinion, if the number of keywords they gave you is enough. Now granted, there are 28 million listings for the keyword hosting, so only the biggest web designers will be there, but there are plenty of keywords and phrases that are great that a good web designer will be visible in. In fact you probably typed one of those keywords or phrases to find us.

Now if the only keyword you received from the potential web designer was their name or the like, I would strongly suggest going somewhere else for your services. After all if they cant get themselves a desent ranking in the search engines, how on earth can you expect them to get your site a good ranking. Don't you think they want business over the web too. I know that we do, and we are constantly keeping up with the search engines to maintain our status.

If they are in the top million for the keywords they gave you, then I would say that they have the knowledge to do the same for you. With this being the case, you might want to ask who else they have done web design and search engine optimization services for, so you can check those sites out in the same manner.

After all verifying the quality of a web design company's services on the Internet is a pretty easy process when you think about it.

If you can not afford to hire a search engine expert, the initial keyword process can be performed at the time your website design is constructed. For this process we suggest you start with a list of what you think are pertinent and popular keywords for your business.

We saw that all keywords are not created the same. Some keywords are used more frequently than others, and, some frequently used keywords had less competition than others. Using Popular Keywords that are pertinent to your site is a must and using top keywords with the least competition will get you started in the rankings.

Too many webmasters only want lots of hits. They see that a certain percentage of visitors buy their products. They figure that the more traffic they get the more they weill sell, but this is not true if their visitor is finding their site based on keywords that do not apply to their products / services.

Your goal is to attract targeted customers to your site. You want visitors who think your site is just what they need. Once they get to your site, they'll read your top heading and a sentence or two. This has to hit them "right between the eyes." Your site should be just what they spent the last hour searching for, but how is this achieved?"

Select keywords from a top list you ahve made that truly reflect your subject. Work these keywords into your Page Titles, Your headers, your alt tags and most importantly your content. We do put keywords in Meta Tags also, but don't spend to much time here. The search engines, at least the big ones, dont use meta tags for keywords any longer. The most important aspect of your search engine rankings today is to develop clear and concise content that matches your page title. It is also good to have a professional assisting you with some type of SEO system in place. The search engines can change on a dime and they often do, so a professional can keep up with these changes to ensure that your seo system is current and ready to keep your site ahead of the rest..

Select popular keywords that interest you and write about the subjects they describe.

That's it. Either you've already written something and are now selecting the right keywords. Or, you are wondering what popular topic you could write about. We suggest using the following criteria to figure out how to write your content.

• Is it clear what company is responsible for the contents of the page?
• Is there a link to a page describing the nature of the company, who owns the company, and the types of products the company sells?
• Is there a way of verifying the legitimacy of this company? That is, is there a phone number or postal address to contact for more information? (Simply an email address is not enough.
• Is there a way of determining the stability of this company?
• Is there a statement that the content of the page has the official approval of the company?
• Is there a statement giving the company's name as copyright holder?

ACCURACY

• Has the company provided a link to outside sources which can be used to verify company claims?
• Are the sources for any factual information clearly listed so they can be verified in another source?
• Is the information free of grammatical, spelling, and typographical errors? (These kinds of errors not only indicate a lack of quality control, but can actually produce inaccuracies in information.

OBJECTIVITY

• For any given piece of information, is it clear what the company's motivation is for providing it?
• If there is any advertising on the page, is it clearly differentiated from the informational content?

We hope we have helped you on a venture that can and will be beyond your wildest expectations if done correctly.