Question
8 simple steps to optimize your web pages!
Although this has been covered before, it bears repeating for all of our new (and established) "webmasters" at here! The end of 2004 is almost upon us, and that's a great time to update our sites to be 'positioned' (ready!) for 2005 and whatever changes (and INCOME) it will bring!
Traffic from search engines is widely considered the best (and cheapest) way to generate traffic to your site. The increasing popularity of search engines has led to the development of a whole industry that revolves around ways to “optimize” websites.
The end result is that many people now think that only “professionals” can help their website rank high within search engines. But, the truth is that anyone can structure their site so they rank high for many keywords.
Below are listed 8 simple steps that you can take to optimize your web pages. By following these, you will improve your chances of increasing your rankings:
1) Target one word for each page: A huge mistake that many beginners make is cramming numerous keywords onto every page. Instead of doing this, you should focus on one specific keyword for each page. That way, you can make sure that the page is focusing on that one word without any distractions. If you want to target multiple keywords then it is necessary to create a separate page for each.
2) List your major keywords in the links back to your site: Many search engines, Google being the most famous, have started to take into account the words that are mentioned in the title tag of the links that point to your site. So, a great way to improve your rankings for your keywords is to place it in the title tag. ***
3) Make your first 100 words on the page keyword rich: Another mistake that most webmasters make is to have a menu on the left-hand side of a website. Since search engines primarily focus on the first 100 words of a website, a left side menu is a misuse of valuable space.
Instead of doing this, you should have your title, description and web copy within the first 100 words of your site. An easy way to do this is to have your menu on the right instead of the standard left-hand side.
But, since the left-handed menu is now commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.
4) Insert the keyword into your title tag: In the source code of most pages are “header tags” (also known as Meta tags), which help search engines understand the content of the page.
To fully optimize your website, you can tweak the source code of the page. The first step is to insert the keyword in the title tag. (This is what is shown in the results of a search engine when your site is listed)
5) Insert your keywords in the description tag: The description Meta tag is almost as valuable as the title tag. The information in this tag is listed directly below the title tag in search engine results. As a result, a good description can make your website stand out from other listings. To get the prospect to click on your site, it is important to write a snappy description while using your keyword.
6) Insert them into your keywords tag: Like the title and description tags, keyword tags are used to help search engines understand the content of your web page. Although this Meta tag has become less popular, it doesn’t hurt to put your keywords here.
7) Place your keyword in the header: When writing the actual text of your site, the first part should be the headline. Whenever a search engine scans your site, it rates all words in the headline as being more important then the rest of the web copy. To take advantage of this, you should have your keyword in the page headline. But, since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it so that it is smaller.
8) Write your keyword enriched web copy: Now that you have set up the structure of your page, you can write your web copy. While creating the text, you want to include the majority of the keywords at the top and the bottom of the page.
In addition, the keyword should be included a few times in the middle. Basically, the common saying is that the keyword density should resemble an hour glass shape.
The total web copy of your page should be about 300-500 words. Also, the keyword should be included about 5-12% of the total words of the page. The percentage varies according to each search engine, so you might want to play around till you find the best results.
If you follow all these steps, you will definitely see an improvement in the search engine rankings for your keywords. The best part is that you do not have to spend any money on the expensive search engine optimizers!
Good luck!
-by Scott J. Patterson
*** Be aware that many webmasters use linking software to manage their reciprocal links. Many softwares allow only ONE reciprocal link entry to ONE URL link. The webmaster (or link master) may not be able to link to multiple pages at your site under one reciprocal link entry.
Another item to note, if you have YET to establish a domain name.
Obtaining a domain name with ANY of your keywords as part of the name will be a HUGE boost to you! For example, if you sell 'apples & oranges', you should shoot for a domain name which uses either 'apples' or 'oranges' in the name! (ie "Adam's Apples" vs. "Adam's Fruit" or "Adams Produce" or even "Adam's Stuff Which Fell Off The Tree".)
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Excellent post!!!! Now everybody don't just read it DO IT You will never regret it. Be ready for next Christmas. I have so many sales right now I'm having a hard time keeping up with the packing. Get busy
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Once you have your web site complete and ready to be listed you need to take a slow step by step approach to get listed in the search engines. If you do it right the first time and then build on that formula, your profits and your site will benefit in the long run. Those willing to spend the time and put these techniques into practice are the ones that will benefit and are more likely to be successful.
1. Your first page is where search engines will start and making sure that this page is fully optimized is one of your first goals. What's optimization your ask? It's making your site as search engine friendly as possible. You will also see people refer to this in the short form of SEO.
Your first step is the TITLE TAG. This is one item that search engines look for to start getting information about what your site is about. It is also what search engines will show above a clickable line on their results page. It is also a major consideration of where you will rank when certain inquiries are made of the search engine. TITLE TAGS are one of the major things to concentrate on and to make sure that you get it right. Doing so will result in not only better placement in the search engine, but enticing descriptions will also result in more people clicking on your link and visiting your site.
Take a look at what your competition is doing in order to get some ideas for your site. To see their TITLE TAG go to their web site and in IE or Netscape click on View then Source and you will be able to see their TITLE TAG. Don't copy theirs, but let this help you get some ideas for your own site.
2. Putting keyword phrases into your pages - Finding the perfect set of keywords for your web pages and knowing the right keywords to use is very important because your site should provide people with what they are looking for. A free program to help you can be found at: http://www.goodkeywords.com Good Keywords makes use of various tools provided by search engines like Yahoo, Google, Teoma and other services like Alexa. Using Good Keywords makes it all very simple, fast and straight forward. Just remember...don't over do it or you will be penalized.
3. Writing your web page copy - Your next step is to incorporate those keywords into the copy on your web site. This is extremely important as search engines need to see these keywords on your page so they can then analyze these words and decide where your site should be listed in their categories. Write your content around the keywords and use them as many times as possible, keeping in mind though...that it is not just a search engine that is reading the copy but also your visitor.
4. META TAGS - Meta tags provide search engines with information about the content and purpose of a Web site. A Web site that uses meta tags to the best of their ability will appear more often in search results and will also be seen closer to the top on those search results. Many people feel that stuffing keywords into the meta tags will help improve their rankings. The original idea behind meta tags was to give a way to classify the web site. The problem now is that many engines don't consider meta tags to be as relevant to the ranking, therefore they give them less weight overall because of the keyword stuffing techniques used. That's not to say that you still shouldn't use meta tags, just consider to use them for what they were originally intended - that is to give your site an accurate title and description with a few keywords (3 or 4 phrases max) outlining what the page, or site is about.
5. ALT TAGS - The ALT tag or 'alternative text' is an attribute of the IMG tag. (Any graphic on your web site) An ALT tag should be included for every image within your web site. The ALT tag provides an alternate message to your viewers who can't see your graphics. Without ALT tags, images on a web site are meaningless to these users. If you will be using a graphic menu systems for navigation, these alternate messages are an especially important aid to users without the ability to see your graphics. Adding an appropriate ALT tag to every image within your web site will make a huge difference to the accessibility of your web site. Also, for those who use Yahoo and Google image searches, your ALT Tags can be very important and will help bring traffic to your site. Take for instance one of my sites - http://www.spasoftheworld.com I have loads of graphics of different resort spas and the graphics all carry the name of the resort. People looking for information on this resort may easily end up at my website because I names a picture with the name of the resort.
On the reverse side, ALT TAG stuffing, which is using the tags in an image to hide keywords will rarely help a site's position. If you can insert a key phrase into the image description then by all means do so. Remember that Alt tags do usually count towards your overall keyword density so it's better to have relevant keyword alt tags rather than something like "image01.gif".
6. Linking - with more search engines coming online every day, search engines are looking for ways to serve quality links to visitors. This is where linking to other sites and having them link to you becomes important to both you and the search engine. People who assume that the more inbound links to them will help them, are very wrong. This may have been true at one time but not today. Search engines need to give quality results. One way they have of rating your site is by the quality of inbound links to your site. Therefore sites that are closely related to your site and that link to you will help boost your popularity in search engines. With Google this is a huge issue in how you rank with them. Having a hundred links from all sorts of site may result in hurting your ranking and you may be viewed as a link farm.
7. Spiders - A search engine is a database that has been put together by spiders. Spiders scour the Internet going through pages and recording information available on web pages. Spiders then give the information to the database and the database feeds the results. Theoretically, the web site should show up in the search results the next time the engine updates. It is important that all links on your site be active. A dead link may prevent a spider from doing your entire site.
8. Robots Text file - Search engines will look in your root domain for a special file named "robots.txt" (http://www.mydomain.com/robots.txt). The file tells the robot (spider) which files it may spider (download). This system is called, The Robots Exclusion Standard.
9. FLASH - This has to be one of the top mistakes a web site owner can do to hurt their search engine rangkings. Good content will win over flash every time and getting visitors to your site is what you are trying to accomplish. The only thing the search engines will be able to see when visiting a site where the first page is all flash are the title tags and links. In most cases that will not be enough. Over and over it's content rich pages that will get you the rankings you need. You may have to decide between getting a high ranking or having a "pretty" entry page. Remember that you goal is customers and sales. It might be kewl the first time you visit the site but when you have to go there over and over again it becomes very annoying not to mention that people on dialup must cringe when faced with such a page. They often give up because of the length of time it takes to load.
10. Don't expect results overnight. It takes time to get your ranking up there, even with paid inclusion. You may start out with a low ranking when you are first listed but as you continue to optimize your site and build "relevant" links you will start to see a gradual climb. As you wait for your rise to the top, concentrate on building as many relevant links as possible. Beside increasing your ranking you will be surprised at the number of referrals that you will received from those linked pages.
-Jean Sutherland
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If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function – and that’s to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner.
No matter what your web designer tells you, simplicity is best when building your small business website. While having a website with lots of bright colors and flashy interactive graphics might win web design awards, it will probably not help you win customers. In fact, the more complicated your web design, the higher the risk that your sales message will be lost amidst all the fancy bells and whistles on your site.
For most small businesses, a simple and elegant four or five page website is all they need to get the job done. As an added bonus, such sites are inexpensive when compared to flashier multimedia sites. If you want your small business website to increase your profits instead of emptying your pocketbook, pay close attention to the following design guidelines when you build your site.
Make Your Website Easy to Read
In order for your website to get sales and/or leads, your small business website design needs to be user and consumer-friendly - that means it needs to be easy to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be the norm.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again - the purpose of having a website for your small business isn’t to win design awards. It’s to convey information about your product or service that guides the consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor.
If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, as I mentioned earlier loud colors and excessive graphics only serve to distract attention from the sales message contained in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you’ll keep the sale.
Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since the majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page.
Make Your Website Easy to Navigate
Since the chief purpose of your site is to convey information, you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they’ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they’ll leave your website before you can say “Google.”
At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use “bread crumbs” for this purpose – a “trail” of links that show each page visited since landing at the site.
Lastly, make sure that there are no broken links on your website. Broken links may not seem like a big deal to you, but to a site visitor who was clicking on a link for more information they are a major frustration. Fix your broken links!
Oh, and incidentally, making your site easy to navigate will also help the search engines to find and index all your pages, which might help you get more traffic over the long haul.
Make Sure Your Website Loads Quickly
Despite the fact that high-speed internet access has become very affordable and accessible in recent years, many web users are still using dial-up connections to access the internet. Note that these people get very frustrated when they have to wait five minutes for your webpage to load. You will lose these visitors if your web page files are too large and take too long to load.
Keep photos, graphics, and animations to a tasteful minimum on your websites, and keep your total page size under 50K to ensure maximum usability for your visitors. In addition, avoid using background music on your pages unless it is absolutely necessary – music files take time to load, and can annoy your visitors enough to make them leave your site.
By the way, smaller and faster loading pages make it easier for the search engines to spider and rank your site – an added bonus for keeping your page files small and your load times fast.
Hopefully, these guidelines will help you build a website that gets you more sales and leads for your small business. Remember, building a website that your visitors enjoy browsing will boost customer loyalty and encourage repeat sales. Create a fast-loading site that’s easy to read and navigate, and your visitors will thank you with their checkbooks!
-by Michael Massie
March 31, 2005
Answer
Colors convey character, emotion and intention. You are what colors you choose. Thus, your choice of colors should reflect the message or feeling you to hope to convey to the viewer.
Red - Red is hot color. It is an established color of love, urgency, courage, danger, passion, blood, intensity, aggression, and competition. It is best used as an accent color. This color does not usually blend well with greens or purples of the same intensity, so if you use red with these colors, modify the brightness or intensity.
Blue - Blue is a color of peace, tranquility and wisdom. It also conveys honesty, truth, loyalty, power, coolness, health, harmony, and confidence. Blue is a safe choice for most uses, and goes well with the majority colors. Don't use blue if your site is food or drink related, since there are hardly any blue foods and drinks.
Beige & Gray- These are neutral colors. As neutrals, they can be combined with almost any color and still come across well. Both make for very readable backgrounds, but be sure to use glints of bright colors or the site will appear uninteresting. You can also accent beige or gray with dark colors. It will create an illustrious, professional look.
Black - Black entails death, seriousness, solid strength, elegance, sophistication, rebellion, evil, power, and mystery. It can be powerful, aloof and intimidating. However, black is very useful in separating things such as graphic images. Black can make colors explode!
Yellow - Yellow is the brightest of all colors and has the greatest illuminating power. It is a warm and cheerful color. In addition to cheerfulness, yellow can also convey caution, optimism, idealism, cowardice, and imagination. Too much yellow can be an eyesore. Be careful using yellow with greens and purples of the same intensity. It might tone down one or the other.
Green - Green connotes youth, fertility, ecology, nature, health, growth, money, safety, healing, and food. However, to other viewers, it may connote envy, insects, and reptiles. Green can be well suited as a secondary or accent color.
Brown - Brown implies simplicity, earthiness, comfort, durability, and stability. However, like the neutral grays and beiges, a site that is mostly brown can be very dull. However, a site that had a light brown/beige background, a rich brown secondary color, and bright or dark red accents can give the impression of being very professional.
When choosing colors for your web site. Choose wisely because colors have a larger impact on the viewers. To know its impact, try this test: Open your web site and write on a piece of paper as many words and images that you can think of. Now, have another person to do the same. After that, compare your notes. If you made correct color choices, the list should be almost impossible to tell apart.
-Maricon Williams
Edited to add: What about color blind folks who view your web site? What do THEY see/ NOT see?
Here's a site with a tool which you can use to see how your website would look if you were a colorblind person.
The URL is http://colorfilter.wickline.org/
You just type on your URL and you can then see how your web page will look for a person with different forms of colorblindness.
Remember, as a webmaster, you want to take into account as many different types of people and their needs as possible. If YOUR site acommodates them, and no one else does, guess who gets their business? YOU!
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Nice summary, Kathleen. I know there are some sites I visit that I CRINGE at when I see, and I leave as fast as I can! There are also folks with sensitive eyes, seizure disorders, etc. that have a trememndous difficulty with flashing banners, regardless of color.
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Choosing the website topic
Probably you have already chosen a topic for your website. If not, it is always better to decide on a topic before proceeding further. However, it might not always be the case if you are an amateur webmaster.
In order to choose your website topic, consider these points:
What are your areas of interest?
Do you know enough in that area to deliver good content or services?
Do you provide any goods or services or plan to provide in the future?
The points mentioned above usually will not apply to all websites. If a company already has a line of products or services, and want to add a website to deliver them via the internet, this section is probably not very relevant. However, if you are looking for a content based website, or willing to provide a new service, this planning section will help you.
Researching your competition
Setting up an internet presence via a website has a relatively low barrier to entry. One can set up a website with a few bucks per month of investment. However, competition is the same or probably more, than in any brick and mortar establishment. Usually for a brick and mortar business, it takes tons of money to buy/lease real estate, setup furniture and equipment, hire employees etc. Once the business picks up, the only fear is any competition that is local to that area. However, on the internet, because of the low barriers to entry, competition is very high. New websites pop up in thousands every day. What makes competition worse on the internet are free advertising channels that the web search engines provide. Well, one might argue that the advertising is free only if your website is better than the rest of the competition. And that is partly true. We will discuss advertising in general under a separate topic.
To learn about your competition, run a quick search on any of the search engines like Google or Yahoo for the keywords you think best describe your website topic. For example, if your topic is race cars, you may want to search on race cars, performance cars etc. See which sites are listed within the top 20 listings. Pick some of the websites that frequently turn up on most of the search queries for all the different keywords. Those are the well established sites in your area of interest.
Visit those websites, and look at the content that they provide. Try to find out why they are so popular on the search results. Often popularity in the search results may be due to various factors:
It has been there for long (from the early internet times in 1996).
The content is unique and lots of people like it.
Uses a better technology including linking methods.
Has a huge fan base.
After reviewing the competitors' websites, you have to figure out these questions:
*What can I offer better that these websites, so that people will visit my website?
*Is anything missing in these sites that I can provide? Usually expertise in that area helps to deliver unique content.
*Can I offer services at a cheaper rate? Cost and pricing strategies will be discussed later.
*Researching the competition is not a one time process, you have to do this every now and then to figure out how your website is ranked compared to the others. For example - Did your competitor update their website or provide a better service or product at a cheaper price?
Deciding on the name
A website name (also known as website address or the domain name) often speaks a lot on the internet. It is not uncommon to choose a long name with more than 15 characters to describe the content or speciality of your website. For example, a domain name consisting of initials only, such as f1r.com, may not create a lasting impression compared to a domain name FormulaOneRacing.com. Visitor's will be able to remember the name easily rather than searching on the internet for finding your website for a second visit.
When selecting a domain name, here are the tips to consider:
*Do you already have a company name? If yes, try to find a domain which includes your company name.
*What are your website topic keywords? Can you include at least one in your domain name.
*Does the domain name describe your website content?
*Can your website content be categorized in a web directory such as DMOZ.org based upon the domain name only?
*Does the domain name include words that are spelled differently in different parts of the world (such as color and colour, humor and humour). If you choose such a name, you might have to register both versions of the domain name.
Domain Names
With the ever growing population of new websites every day, and record new domain name registrations every month, it might be hard to find a domain name of your choice. Therefore, keep a few domain names in mind, or a combination of words while searching for a domain name. Buying your choicest domain from a broker company may be expensive in case you do not find one that is available.
Domain Name Extension
Choosing the right domain extension is also essential. The .com extension is the most popular and very widely referenced domain for commercial websites. .net extension is mainly for service providers such as hosting companies and network providers. Country specific domains (such as .co.uk, .us) are also popular within individual countries. For example, if you do business in the United Kingdom, getting a .co.uk will create a local branding and attract more visitors from U.K. Sometimes advertisers look for such country specific domain extensions for promoting their products.
Tips & Tricks
It is wise to choose a domain name that is not used by any other company with another extension. There might be legal issues later where you might have to give up your domain due to trademark or other violations. Domain registration is very cheap nowadays. Therefore, if you have the budget, registering as many extensions as you can will save some grief later. No one will be able to register the other extensions with your site name when your site becomes popular.
Estimating Your Costs
It is always a wise idea to roughly estimate the expenses for setting up your website. For most new content oriented websites with no internet presence, the expenses are usually minimum. However, for ecommerce sites who are opening to the internet to boost sales, the cost of setting up a website might be high. Planning is certainly required as regards to the budget, so as to make quick decisions about what to postpone for a later phase.
Things to consider
This list is no way exhaustive, but will help in figuring out how much the company or an individual has to spend to set up, launch and maintain their website. Most small scale websites rely on organic growth (growth from within, does not depend on external funding). These sites grow at a slower pace than those that start out big using venture capital. However, risks are much lower in case of organic growth if the website fails to perform.
Development:
The cost of developing (coding) the website is often the biggest out-of-pocket expense for companies or individuals. For amateurs who are familiar with the technologies, can create the websites themselves, so costs are almost nil (not considering the time spent on building these pages).
Hosting:
This section of the cost cannot be ignored for serious websites doing business on the internet. Being frugal on website hosting may lead to lost sales due to problems arising out of server downtimes and lost or insecure data. Domain registration costs are very cheap these days, within $10/yr (used to be US$35/yr in late last century). Hosting costs may be as cheap as $5/month (for small websites with low traffic) to hundreds of dollars per month for high traffic websites. Free hosting is not recommended as the disadvantages outnumber the benefits of not paying a dime. There is a section devoted to hosting for further reference.
Marketing:
Internet marketing costs are relatively very low (but effective) compared to traditional marketing channels such as TV, radio and print media. However, competition drives marketing prices higher. For example, if your website is in a dating & personals category, expect a high cost of marketing. Cost per click rates can be as high as $0.65 to $5.00. Similar is for an automobile sales website.
Ecommerce:
Adding an ecommerce component can drive your expenses higher if you are not careful. There are costs associated with merchant accounts, setting up shopping carts, accepting payments via the website, and other maintenance fees. Another important cost that is often ignored by new ecommerce sites is fraud. One fradulant charge back can eat up profits generated by months of sales. A section on ecommerce has further information on this.
The importance of a good site layout
Websites are judged by content and layout. How good your content maybe, if your layout is not appealing, visitors will not be eager to come back. Everyone is not born with a quality of creating layouts that are pleasing to the eye. If you have been to different Yahoo groups, you might have found various color combinations that the group owner has chosen. Some of them have red backgrounds with blue colored text creating a blinding effect. Although Yahoo provides all the possible color combinations, some choose the wrong colors.
Points to consider while designing a website layout
Website design is not a one time activity. Almost all websites alter their layouts to give it a new and better look. Also with advancement in technology, underlying code also changes accordingly, adding new possibilities of providing a better layout.
Keep it simple:
A simple website layout is user friendly. Do not create complex navigational links using complex scripts or images that maynot be viewable correctly in different browsers. Also search engines cannot index the site properly if complex navigation is involved. Minimize the use of bulky images which take long to load. Use smaller icons to attract visitor's attention instead.
Readable font size and face:
Use a standard font size of "-1" (11 or 12 pixels if using styles) so that visitors can read the content easily. Select a professional looking font face (Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif are very common). Avoid using fancy fonts like Comic Sans (unless it is a personal website). Use appropriate spacing between lines (12 or more pixels) to avoid clumsiness.
Use web safe eye pleasing colors:
The choice of colors may reflect one's personal taste. Every webmaster or designer wants the color combination that he/she likes best. However, it is a wise decision to get feedback from users or friends about what they feel about the color combination of the website. Use web safe colors whenever possible.
Webpage Dimensions:
One important aspect of layout is keeping track of dimensions of a web page. Most successful commercial websites limit the width and height of the webpage so that the important content of the webpage lies within the top 600x600 viewable area without scrolling. To avoid a horizontal scrollbar, set the page layout to expand and shrink with changes in browser window size. Sometimes this interferes with image and text positions relative to each other and throws the layout structure out of synch. The best choice is to limit the width by placing a table with a fixed width of 750 or 775 pixels.
The page height should not be any more than 4 scroll lengths. Limit the content of the page and if more content needs to be added, move it to a new web page. Provide a navigational link to the next page and a link back from the second page. This will also increase your website's page views (adding more advertising space).
Limit File Size:
Webpage size is defined by the total size of text, images and supporting files (including javascript, flash etc.) that is downloaded from the server to view a webpage. Page size is very critical for high volume websites because of high bandwidth needed. However, it is also very important for any other site in order to keep loading times to a minimum. Most of the population on the internet use a slow 56K modem to access the internet. And smaller page sizes load faster. If you look at some very high volume websites like Yahoo.com and Google.com, they hardly have any images, making their site load faster.
There is a trade off between making your webpage look nicer with lots of graphics and making it faster to load. The rough target for page size should be below 35K for at least the cover page. However, for ecommerce sites, it is often not possible because they have to present multiple product images to attract attention. As a general rule of thumb, a visitor will leave your site if the loading time is more than 8 secs.
---websitegear
Although starting your website may see overwhelming, take it step by step. Know in advance that in order to have a successful e-commerce website, you'll have to invest, on a regular basis, either YOUR time and continuing expertise, or you'll have to hire someone for their knowledge. Doing it yourself brings satisfaction, knowledge, and control. Hiring it out is faster and painle$$ - other than to your pocketbook.
Answer
Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct searches.
The formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your site. These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms. The optimal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for a website with your content. In order to achieve success your website should be optimized with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.
relevant + popular with searchers but not with competitors = success
Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term. The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may tap words that hadn't occurred to you. There are a number of free and low-cost tools available online and for download that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed. The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts. The tools will often assist with pay-per-click engines, creating expanded, related keywords or phrases that can be bid on.
In addition to examining log files to see what terms customers are using to find a website, visit competitors’ web sites and examine their meta tags for additional terms, use a thesaurus to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your meta tag keywords, and optimize for various forms of nouns and verbs, including tenses and plurals.
Keyword Tools
KeywordTumbler - KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds. http://www.keywordtumbler.com
TheDowser - Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Sandbox, Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer, Google AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion tracking and optimization tool. http://www.thedowser.com
WordTracker - Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information! http://www.wordtracker.com
Keyword Suggestion Tools - A handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to see how often it's searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Keyword Ranking Tool - This utility can be used to check search engines for keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for your various keywords over time, which, as you probably know, is critical when doing search engine optimization. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
Overture Keyword Tool - After entering a keyword or phrase, Overture provides a list of related phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a count that indicates the number of times the phrase has been searched on. http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/
Topword Tool - Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes a complete web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through color coding, inform you of words/phrases which should be included. The main use for this tool is checking your optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank well. http://www.abakus-internet-marketing...s/topword.html
Google Suggestion - The Google Suggestion is a new online tool for webmasters. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's 'Did you mean?' feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type 'bass', Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include 'bass fishing' or 'bass guitar'. Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like 'progr,' Google Suggest might offer you refinements like 'programming', 'programming languages', 'progesterone', or 'progressive'. You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides a number that indicates the number of searches a specific word or phrase has had. http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Keyword statistics give webmasters a way to tap into what is on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match your marketing efforts to the various ways people locate their items of interest on the net, potential customers will be streamed to your site like ants to a picnic.
-S. Housley
Answer
Most website owners talk about their most important keywords, but very few really do anything about them.
Those often overlooked search terms, that are so important to a website's placement in the search rankings, are a vital component of any search engine optimization (SEO) effort.
Without keywords for the search engines to index, there is literally nothing to find in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Keywords are the function of the search engines. As a result of those searches, the your most important keywords are what lead potential customers to your web pages Take care of your keywords, and they will take care of you.
The importance of keywords to a website is felt in two ways. The first area of consideration, when writing the on page and off page content, is keyword placement on the page. Where the keywords are located is important, to varying degrees, with the major search engines.
The second area of importance for keywords is their density on the page. How many keywords appear on the page, makes a difference to all of the search engine algorithms. The choice of which keywords to target on a page is often of vital importance, especially for highly competitive keywords.
Keyword factors for consideration
Each search engine, from industry dominant Google, to Yahoo, to MSN Search, to the various other search engines, has a different keyword calculation. Some search engines permit heavier keyword numbers and density on the page, while some like Google, have much stricter allowable density levels. The placement of keywords, in any number of locations on the page, has different results in the various search engines as well.
Consideration must also be given to such additional on page keyword modifications as bolding, italic, and actual keyword type size used. Other factors include the use of page titles, and their relative importance to the various search engines, as keyword delivery vehicles.
Consideration has to be given to the incoming link anchor text to a web page. Any linked off page content is, in fact, part of the receiving page's total content.
Taking into consideration, both the placement and density of a web page's keywords, will pay dividends for any website owner. Fortunately, keywords can be used in such a way as to propel a site higher in the search engine rankings.
While there are certainly no magic formulas, a few common sense ideas will pay off for most web pages.
Laser targeting the keywords
When planning which keywords to target on a page, a plan of action should be the first step. Be sure to choose only one, or two at most two keyword, for the focus of your efforts. In highly competitive keyword situations, no more than one keyword should be the topic on any page.
Keep the long term goal in mind, of ranking high for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. To score highly for that selected search term, a concentrated effort is essential. Think one keyword, with accompanying phrase, maximum for each page. In a competitive search field, the single keyword approach is the only one worth employing, if you want to rank well at all.
The site's home page and internal pages should have slightly different focus, but should be created with the overall goal in mind. This is especially important for highly competitive keyword situations. Often a series of pages, each one supporting the others in an overall theme, is necessary to provide added keyword power. Since low, medium, and highly competitive keyword conditions require differing strategies, they need individual consideration.
For lower competitive search terms, there is no real need to concentrate a page's entire effort on a single keyword. In fact, it might not be the best practice in that case at all. A website owner can target two or even three low competition keywords on a page.
With few webmasters targeting those search terms, the page can be focussed on all of them, ensuring the page be found by many different searches. Of course, not all keywords are that easily optimized.
Moderately competitive keywords comprise perhaps the largest category of search terms. A helpful practice, in the case of medium level difficulty keywords is to use them all on the home page. By placing the keywords front and center on the website's home page, they become the focus of several themes on the site.
Each targeted keyword should then be provided with individually linked, and theme clustered internal supporting pages. By providing additional theme and topic related pages, the keywords are given extra support, and overall on and off page density.
For highly competitive keywords, much more concentrated effort must be applied, to the highly sought after search term. In heavy competition, only one keyword per page may be targeted. Any more than that, and the page's keyword focus is lost. The entire effort of that page must be on that one all important search term.
Many additional focussed pages, perhaps even starting on the path to an authority site, must also be created to support that highly competitive keyword as well. The object is to create a powerful website theme, built around that single keyword. Anything less, and the site will not be able to compete for that term at all.
Regardless of the level of competition, it's a good idea to become dominant in as many search terms within the site's topic as possible. Once top search rankings are achieved with an important keyword, move to the next one. The more keywords are controlled, the more paths are available to enter the website, resulting in huge increases in visitor traffic.
Applying the tools to the job
There is no magic keyword density formula. There are only some guidelines to consider, when deciding how heavily to place keywords on a web page. Google has the strictest requirements, regarding keyword density. No more than 2% of a web page's words should be the targeted keywords. Any more will be considered spamming.
On the other hand, Yahoo and MSN Search have much higher keyword density tolerances, perhaps as high as 5% of total words. That difference leaves quite a distance between the optimum limits for Google and the levels permissible in Yahoo and MSN. A prudent webmaster will recognize that a tradeoff will be necessary, while ensuring that the copy reads well for potential customers and clients.
The ideal compromise is to maximize the keyword levels for Google, without writing copy that doesn't read well. Use the keywords only where they make sense when reading the copy. Poorly written copy might draw some extra visitor traffic, but is unlikely to convert that traffic into sales.
A website owner should be certain that the page's most important keyword is included in the page title. Each web page should have a unique title, providing an extra keyword boost to that page. Titles are a very crucial part of the various search engine algorithms, and are an important way to prominently display the most sought after keyword on the page.
A good plan is to have a well linked site map, connecting the various supporting page, to the main targeted page. The links to the targeted page should contain appropriate anchor text, emphasising the main keyword. Each supporting page should be part of the overall theme, and provide additional keywords, for the focus page. It is especially important, to have as many theme related pages as possible, in highly competitive situations.
Try to get your linking partners to use link anchor text that contains your targeted keywords. For highly competitive keywords, strong anchor text from as many incoming links as possible, is vital for your pages to appear in the search rankings at all. While it's highly unlikely that all inbound links will contain the same link text, be sure it's not all identical in wording to avoid triggering any link text filters.
While it is debatable whether placing keywords early in the on page copy is helpful in Google, higher placement does appear to have some benefit in Yahoo and MSN Search. Those search engines give some additional weight to bolded keywords as well.
With keyword placement, early positioning is probably a good idea, provided the text flows well to the reader. Keywords sprinkled appropriately throughout the copy provides the best of both worlds.
Bolding keywords appears to help rankings in Yahoo and possibly MSN Search as well. The practice seems to have less influence in the Google search placements, however. Larger size fonts provide similar results. Enclosing the most important keywords in h1 and h2 tags to add extra keyword density, works with all search engines, provided the tags are used sparingly. Overuse could result in a loss of search rankings.
Adding a blog or forum component to a website significantly increases the overall site total of keywords. The additional keywords help to enhance the overall themes of the site.
With its regular, almost daily postings, a blog will add huge numbers of well themed keyword rich pages to the site. The frequency and freshness of the postings gives the site very favorable treatment in the search engines. The naturally attracted incoming links, a hallmark of blogs, are often accompanied by keyword anchor text and theme related sending pages.
Adding a forum to the site lets the forum's own visitor traffic add unlimited keyword laden pages to the website. The additional pages move a site further along the road to authority site status, with the many keyword rich incoming links provided by referring forum members.
Conclusion
Keywords are the reasons that people discover a website. Through searches for information, visitors are led to a website. It's important that a site provide as many opportunities to be included in those search results as possible.
By using the many tools at a webmaster's disposal, a site can rank well for its most important keywords. By watching the density of the keywords on the page, and maximizing their effectiveness, a site can take full advantage of the various search engine algorithms.
Proper keyword placement, both on and off the page, will provide an additional keyword boost as well.
Take care of your most important keywords, and they will take care of you.
-Wayne Hurlbert
Answer
since the left-handed menu is now commonplace, you can also choose to put your first 100 words above the left-handed menu, so this text will be the first thing read on your website.
I have read this several time but doing this just made the site seem off balance so I decided on the left sided links for customers rather than SEO, I have not yet figured out a way to place text above the left links. Any suggestions. Thanks for the article.
Elizabeth