Website Design Articles
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Constantly Changing
In the early years, there were basically no rules. Later on, there were lots of rules and they were constantly changing. As of October 2010, the whole playing field changed again.
Google Places "7 pack"
This is Google's new local search feature that supersedes all the main search results that you would find in the center section of the page. In order to get in this pack, you need to have your website fully optimized, as well as creating yourself a Google Places account business profile. If you are in a highly-competitive industry and do all your business locally, then Google Places is a must for you. If you do business nationally, it's not going to help you much. Now the natural "organic" search ranking that you worked so hard for is going to be moved down by the number of listings in the "pack."
Is "Flash" Really Needed?
Although more search engines are indexing flash content, does that mean you should use it? What about the fact that not all browsers have Flash installed, or that with some mobile devices, Flash shows up as a blue square? On top of that, if a whole website is built on Flash, SEO is completely useless. Even if you put keywords in the Flash file, it will not pull up the HTML of your site. If you still want to use Flash, be sure to use it wisely. Don't make it the first thing search engines see when crawling your web page and keep it to a minimum.
Are Backlinks Important?
A backlink is a link on another website that takes you to your website. It's very important that you have quality content on your site to make someone to want to give you a backlink. Make sure that these backlinks contain your keyword phrase, come from websites that are "established authorities" in their field and are reciprocal to your business. If you go out and just get arbitrary backlinks from sites that have nothing to do with your business, you will actually hurt rather than help your rankings.
Here are just a few ways to get backlinks:
- Blogging
- Article Marketing
- Web Directories
- Press Releases
- Forum Commenting
Keyword Choice
In order to rank high in a keyword search, you need to choose a keyword phrase that doesn't have too much competition. This way, achieving and maintaining your ranking won't be as difficult. The keyword phrase should also be in your domain name. If your keyword phrase is "dog kennels" then you should get dogkennels.com. If you can't get that exact domain name, then add a suffix rather than a prefix to it (i.e., dogkennelskansascity.com) because the words are in the order of importance. When you add your location to the domain, you will rank very high for a demographic search.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the number of times a certain phrase appears compared to total number of words in the website page or article. It has always been said that this phrase should be used at least three times for every 100 words, in the beginning, the middle and end of the text. This is a very contentious topic in the SEO world. Half the experts say that this rule is worthless and the other half says that it works. What is important is that your copy is topical and relevant and your keyword phrase is in the H1 heading. Then you want to create two or three sub headings (i.e, H2, H3, etc) that would have their own subset of keywords around the main topic. This combination can significantly improve the ranking for that web page.
Are Meta Tags Still Relevant?
Meta tags consist of the title, description and keyword tags at the top of the code that creates a web page. It is important to have your keyword phrase in the title tag, the description tag and in the body of text. Lately, some SEO experts have put less importance on even having a keyword tag and other SEO experts insist that it is still relevant in how high a web page can rank.
To sum up, there are lots of SEO rules that are forever changing. If you want to get the most out of SEO, you should definitely hire someone who has several years of search engine optimization experience and can show you proof of their success
Author Bio: Amy Kesler is owner of In Sync Web Design. She has been designing and developing effective web sites since 2002. Amy has a creative flair, with a broad understanding of business and technology. She listens to what you want and is able to easily create the web site you have in mind.
Call (913) 825-2587 for a quote from the most effective search engine optimization service in the Kansas City area.
