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By Jeffrey Smith in Featured

In SEO for Large Websites Part I & Part II, we discussed the importance of starting with a goal in mind and tying it to competitive keyword thresholds, an overview on keyword research & selection, the value of establishing preferred landing pages and the last topic covered was how to reinforce keyword categories using an array of SEO tactics.

Topics covered in the previous posts were:

Now, we will conclude this triage with the last few areas pertaining to optimizing large websites specifically through:

  • Strengthening Internal Linking
  • Using Succinct Titles and Meta Descriptions
  • Managing Site Wide Duplicate Content (Custom templates, Noindex, Follow, 301 Redirects, XML Sitemaps).

Strengthening Internal Linking – The purpose of internal linking is to reinforce specific keywords, topics or stemmed arrays of relevant information to search engines. Each link on your page is telling search engines “this page is important”, so, the first thing you need to understand is, make sure you are sending the right message.

Ironically, many webmasters omit using internal links to connect contextual content or help establishing a pecking order for important content. Here are a few posts that provide more detail from a how to perspective or tactical viewpoint on internal links, but for the sake of context we will stick to the premise of why it is important.

From the standpoint of a hierarchy, the page which is a destination for the most internal links from other pages within a website, earns a higher search engine position as search engines associate links with authority (both from other sites and within a website).

The larger a website becomes, the more important it is to distinguish each page from others so that it can (1) develop its own authority and (2) rank for a specific array of keywords. The less work you do, like share one template for example instead of create a series of topical templates to facilitate key landing pages, the less likely those pages will stand out from others.

The idea is, consider your trophy keywords; these landing pages should have the highest concentration of absolute internal links to them. To accomplish this, focus on the first occurrence of a keyword on a page within the body area of the content and use it to provide the link to the page you wish to emphasize as the new champion page for that keyword. Do this throughout the entire site to really see the beauty of this technique or you could implement a script or plugin to accomplish this tactic with ease.

It is important to seed these keywords or use keyword co-occurrence whenever possible to reinforce the internal linking effect to your top level landing pages.

Say for example you have 1000 pages in your website, and you have 10 landing pages you want to emphasize as the top level keyword and key phrases. Depending on the keyword threshold and how competitive it is, you may wish to add editorial content to support the main landing page.

This does two things (1) it helps to flag your website as a relevant match over and above say for example a site that is using a general shopping cart and just has cookie cutter descriptions to distinguish it and (2) it provides a platform for leverage for internal links and keyword stemming.

There are two solid ways to produce rankings (1) content or (2) links both have advantages but the precedence is even more prominent when you utilize both in tandem to accomplish a series of rankings for competitive keywords.

So, with 1,000 pages to work with you could potentially use 100 pages per landing page to support at the top of the hierarchy or silo/subfolder to produce buoyancy for your pages.

As a website gains more pages, the site gains more Pagerank; and not the kind in the toolbar, actual on page authority. Internal linking (linking to pages with relative keywords or key phrases) is your first line of offense and defense in layering a foundation which will provide stability and rankings as time progresses.

Each page only counts if its indexed and duplicity is not rewarded, so, using supporting pages and internal links can keep your content relevant to search engines (since they can determine the concentration of ranking factor) as well as alleviates the need to place all of your ranking factor on one page alone.

The way to leverage on page internal links is to find the other pages deemed significant and then provide a link to the target / preferred landing page potentially as close to the beginning of the body text as possible. Not that sidebar or stand alone links in the footer don’t pass value (a minute amount), but based on block segment analysis, keywords or links in the body text carry more weight for SERP (search engine result page) positioning.

Out of those 100 pages if you have one page that has 5 of the keywords from your 10 primary landing pages, then build an internal link from the content from that page to each of the 5 keyword/pages.

The idea is, concentrate as many keywords to as many pages as possible, but try to use the same target page for a given keyword or key phrase (so you don’t diffuse ranking factor). Once each landing page is sufficiently reinforced, then its dependency on off page ranking factor (links from other sites) is diminished and it will (a) get or stay indexed as well as (b) be able to pass that ranking factor along by consolidating link flow to another page (by way of the links that leave it to other pages).

Using Succinct Titles and Meta Descriptions – Your title tag is the most important element in search engine optimization. You can rank on an “exact match shingle occurrence” in a title tag alone. Then if reinforced by a supportive occurrence of the keyword, a plural or synonym variations and then reinforced in the H1 (header tag), in the links on the page and links to that page, creates a thorough degree of relevance for that page to search engines.

Top level categories should be succinct and descriptive. For example – ”Brand-X Designer Shoes: Shoe Collection from Company -Y” would be ideal if the company sold shoes or a collection from that designer.

The idea here is, if you have a main category page that feeds subsequent listings and then use the most competitive description in the title. The description could state… “Company-Y Provides Designer Shoes by Brand X as well as Model A, B and C”, this way the meta description reinforces the title. This type of relevant redundancy works well as long as it is not abused.

Never stuff titles with more than 6-8 words and keep your descriptions to 12 words or less whenever possible.

In addition, if your page has 500 words of unique text, a header (h1) tag that matches the first word in your title (your main keyword) and uses a relevant description and has internal links pointed to it, the only missing ingredient is a few deep links from other sites to cement its position from other large orphaned pages from competitors who are selling the same wares.

Managing Site Wide Duplicate Content – I mentioned before in Part I that search engines are not a fan of duplicity or duplicate content, so, the less you replicate across a site, the more distinct the signature becomes when attempting to equate relevance.

So, is having a page that has 100 links on every page across every category the same going to really help contribute to facilitating a higher relevance or quality score? Or what about having the same meta title on every page in a category in a large e-commerce site (as if search engines will not notice)… It is possible to SEO your CMS (content management system) to fine-tune relevance and eliminate duplicity with a few custom hacks/settings.

There is one thing to be said about duplicity and large sites “try to avoid it as much as possible”, which means create more templates or more content and make each page unique. True, domain authority can push through a great deal of duplicity and keep pages in the index, but if rankings are the objective, then think of each page as an island that needs to have its own ecosystem to survive in the SERPs.

So, to provide methods for sustenance you can employ tactics such as custom templates, using a noindex, Follow tag in the header / meta data, 301 Redirects or XML Sitemaps to provide irrigation to pages starving from link attrition.

Custom templates – If you have a large site such as an ecommerce site, try to create themed categories that logically support the next.

mysite.com/products/shoes/

*This is your top level category, hence anything linked from this will rank well on the merit of the page strength funneled to it from the main site. The main site/navigation would like to it with the keyword “shoes”. That way, If you offered shoes, watches, jackets, etc., each would have its own main landing page / top level category.

On the top level category this should have the least amount of links leaving it and the most inbound links from other pages internally as well as links from other sites.

Then by adding brand modifiers or descriptors in the next tier you would have allinurl relevance meaning that your URL (universal resource locator) a.k.a. web address would reflect relevant naming conventions that reinforce topically what that pages contents are.

Combined with the keyword/naming conventions used in the title and description, this is a winning combination for relevance that borders on redundancy, but really drives the point home to both users and search engines alike.

If you wanted to further stem that tier, you could add mysite/products/shoes/black-highheel-pumps-size6.html

As an example, or the option to truncate the .html is also an option based on MOD rewrite preferences (preferences conducted and assigned at the server level). The point is, the more information you replicate and reinforce, the easier it is for search engines to sort and assign relevance score towards.

You could also take it a step further by using a specific category based template that only refers to the top level category in the sites secondary navigation (usually text links on the left side bar) to provide additional shopping options to users.

Then instead of having the template bleed ranking factor by trying to link to everything (like the main page of the site), consolidate links to only categories that are part of the same product type.

For example the main navigation on the internal shoes pages would have primary navigation to

Shoes | Pumps | Heels | Flats

Don’t forget to use breadcrumb navigation as well to aid user awareness, but then in the footer (using footer links) under each product I could have the other brands of shoes positioned there to reinforce internal links or even add links to other categories such as

Jackets | Socks | Hats – to provide a robust user experience…

The idea here is to create self contained segments that reinforce topicality and then use links from each category to push link flow deeper into the site where it can become buoyant over time. Using a series of rotating .php includes with pre assigned related links is one alternative that you can use to avoid duplicate content as well as drawing from a series of 2-3 different meta descriptions or opening paragraphs.

Nobody said getting deep pages indexed was easy and many simply rely on the brute-force tactic of links alone, yet 60% of the ranking factor comes from on page SEO and on page continuity. If you understand that as the premise, you can get pages indexed and ranking with just a few links each from the right sources and bury your competition.

Sitemaps – One of the best use of sitemaps is to create a sitemap of your sitemaps and then consolidate them to your key pages that pass the most link flow.

If you had a top level category called shoes (using the example above), then your sitemap linked from the top level category should be to a sitemap that contains all of the pages that have shoes. Each brand, subcategory, etc. should all be accessible from that sitemap (xml or html).

As a result, those pages are food for search engine spiders and as long as they (a) link back to the top level category and (b) the homepage, the cycle is complete. The idea is, not to have any page more than 4 folders or clicks away from the homepage and the more specific you are with your content the better it can rank on its own (making the home page less significant to its ranking factor).

Wikipedia applies this for hundreds of thousands of keywords and ranks in the top 2 results for virtually any keyword from any topic as a result. If you only apply 25% of their method, you can do extremely well in contrast to someone simply using a flat site architecture and relying on navigation alone to push ranking factor into thousands of “me too” shopping cart / product pages or hum drum blog posts or supporting articles.

I will have to pass on the value of using 301 redirects in the video follow up of this post since, at this point, it would have been a great topic for an e-book or webinar as each topical point leads to 10 more granular tactics that could be implemented.

I hope this has provided you with a few ideas or concepts for implementing a self supportive site architecture. For every tip provided, there are 10 more such as leveraging tags, canonization issues, etc. So, this is a wrap for this 3 part post.

Granted, there are multiple intricacies and layers to every metric discussed, each in fact could be taken to the extreme from the level of minute details to a thesis level dissertation.

However, the take away here is, if you apply principles of optimization across a broad array of metrics you increase the likelihood of attaining a higher relevance score for each page and developing a broader range of authority for your domain.

Optimization is to increase search engine exposure and positioning, yet positioning only matters if the content is geared for the user to take action.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

By SEO Sapien in Featured

Social media has come to play an incredibly important role in the marketing campaigns of a variety of different businesses. Here are 8 rules of social media optimization that you must follow to ensure that you maximize the results of your social media marketing campaign.

1. Increase Your Website’s Linkability

The problem with a lot of websites is that they are static. Their content remains the same and nothing on the site is updated on a regular basis. Increasing the linkability of your site is one of the first and most important steps of social media optimization and SEO. The easiest way to get started with this is by adding a blog to your site and updating it regularly.

2. Develop a Clear Social Media Optimization Strategy

All marketing campaigns have a strategy behind them and SMO is no different. Define your objectives and set goals that will help you reach your desired outcome, whether that is credibility, a boost in reputation, site traffic, or increased conversions. One of the biggest mistakes that many companies make is not approaching SMO with clear goals or a strategy.

3. Stay Fresh

Don’t be afraid to be different in social media. The social media landscape is constantly morphing and the companies that dare to be unique are the ones that end up with the most successful SMO campaigns and getting national PR. Keep up with all the new tools and products that pop up to stay on top of your game.

4. Make It Easy for Readers to Tag and Bookmark

When you add features like the “add to del.icio.us” and the “Retweet” buttons to your content, it serves as a direct reminder for people to share your content. Many bloggers receive a 100% increase in retweets when they add the button. When a lot of people tweet or Digg your content, you get a lot of social proofing. Nonetheless, you don’t necessarily have to make it easier for people to tag and bookmark since great content will be shared no matter what.

5. Help People for Nothing in Return (Yet)

To put it simply, in social media, you have to give value to get value. You can pass along links that would help someone resolve an issue or give them advice if they need it. Eventually, people will come to see you as a source of information. This will lead them to link to your site or tag it as being an authoritative site in your niche, gradually boosting your reputation and improving your search engine ranking.

6. Participate Fully in the Community

Participation is the core of social media. Social media is a two-way street. You must create awareness of your brand and spread your message by participating in social media outlets on a regular basis. Your reputation and message will spread faster and further if you actively participate.

7. Know Your Target Audience

In order to make content and market ideas that are compelling to your target audience, you have to know them well. You have to realize that you can’t appeal to everyone. That’s why it’s important to know who your main audience is so you can tweak your messages to appeal to them. In order to learn who your audience is, you have to become a member of the community yourself.

8. Be authentic

Social media users are becoming more and more skilled at spotting fakers so to avoid being shunned and prevent damage from being done to your reputation, be authentic in your interactions.

SEO Sapien is a SEO Company. We offer affordable and guaranteed search engine optimization services. You can visit our site at http://www.seosapien.com for more information and SEO Prices.

By admin in Featured

technology2Video is the new king in search engine optimization (SEO), and without it on your site, you are selling yourself short – very short.

With the web already vastly overcrowded with text pages a billion times over, it is much easier for a company to land at the top of the search rankings with video on its website. In fact, according to a Feb. 12, 2009 story that ran on BusinessWeek.com, video has an 11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results, while a text page has a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

This week, Google revealed they have been working on the next generation of web search, code named Caffeine and have invited the public to take it for a test drive via web developer preview.

The new search infrastructure is the beginning of Google’s advance towards improving indexing speed and scale as the size of the web grows increasingly cumbersome. Google is seeking feedback on the changes from experienced users and web developers. From the official blog post:

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences…”

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard about Caffeine was the Microhoo deal. It seems like too much of a coincidence that Google would allow a public preview of their new search architecture within a week of their two biggest rivals forming a partnership. I thought it was a “Hey, we’re doing more important stuff” kinda announcement.

But Head of Google’s Web Spam Team Matt Cutts insists it has nothing to do with their competition:

“I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.”

Some bright spark has already set up a page to show you what SERPs look like before / after Caffeine.

What do you think? Is the timing of the Google Caffeine announcement purely coincidence? Notice any major SERP changes using Caffeine? Please post your comments below.

By Nelson Tan in Featured

article writingEven if your best friend owns a top publishing company, giving you an immediate “in”, this does not guarantee publishing success.

First, you have to write a quality book that has a clear target audience. And your book must answer a common problem or need that audience shares. Then you have to develop a marketing plan, and stick to it for at least two years.

Let’s begin with the process that should commence before you write your first word. Begin by reading A LOT. Read both books you passionately love and books you can’t seem to make it past page five. Then figure out what the author did in the book you loved, and what was wrong with the book you couldn’t finish. Write down these points so they are crystal clear to you. Read other people’s books for inspiration and to discover what you should avoid as a writer.

By admin in Featured

What do you write on the main page of your website? I first started the page with a welcome message and a little bit about myself. I wanted to give the visitor a little bit of my personality. Since I can’t personally be on the page to welcome everyone, I always try to put a little of my personality into the words on the page.

I then start telling the visitor about what I am promoting and how it has helped me build my businesses.

To build my credibility I have also placed a few testimonials on my landing page for those who visit my site and don’t know who I am. The last thing I do is give them something for free just like on my salesletter page. This way if they don’t click through to my salesletter page, they are put into my autoresponder, so I may have a chance of getting them to my salesletter page where I can ask them for the sale.

What you need to create an “original mini site” type site:

Domain name, Hosting, Something to promote, Content

I gave the “original mini site” type site its name because it’s like the regular every day site with one exception. It focuses on one topic instead of many. It’s a mini version of an original every day site.

I always get my own domain name when creating an “original mini site” type site. When I pick what my “original mini site” type site is going to be about I want to get a domain name that has my keywords in it. Take for example my site. I use it to promote my joint venture how to package I offer.

“Original mini site” type sites do take longer to build, but because they have more content, you can use SEO to get your “original mini site” type site indexed in the search engines. You should put a lot of time into optimizing your “original mini site” type site for the search engines. It’s the best method for getting free-targeted traffic if done correctly.

“Original mini site” type sites can also help to make you more known and give you credibility. Things aren’t like they used to be. A handshake and a smile don’t go very far anymore. People have to feel that they can trust you before they buy from you or give you their personal information. You can gain their trust by showing them that you are a real person who really does know what they are talking about.

How do you do that? Well, there are a couple of ways to do that.

You can use testimonials. The testimonials don’t have to be yours. If you are promoting an affiliate program via your “original mini site” type site, contact the owner of the product and tell them how you are promoting their product and ask to use some of the testimonials off of their site. If it’s your product, give it away free to people and in turn ask for a testimonial.

You can also gain credibility and trust by writing articles about what you are promoting. Again, if you are promoting an affiliate program, ask the owner of what you are promoting if they have any articles available for you to use for promoting their product. Find out more about affiliate marketing at http://www.honestreview.info/profitlance/index.html

About the Author: Dr. Ross Denvers – Learn more about online business with Profit Lance

By Allen Taylor in Featured

This past week, WordPress released version 2.8.3 of the most popular blogging platform in the world. Sadly, many of you won’t update your blogs to the latest version. Even more sad, too many of you are still on older versions of WordPress predating 2.5. One client on mine who was recently hacked was on version 2.3.3. A blog of my own was still on WordPress 2.7.1 and it was hacked. Boy, it was a nasty hack too.

Hackers can wreak havoc on a blog in a number of ways. One of the worst ways is to install a script in the code that reproduces itself and redirects your site visitors to a site where they can download malicious malware. This hurts you in a number of ways.

  • If your site visitors end up on a site you don’t recommend and download a harmful program, they may lose trust in you and never return to your site
  • If your site is off line for an extended period of time while you clean up the code then you could lose valuable readers and revenue
  • Your own computer may be redirected and download malicious malware when you go to log in to your blog to make a post
  • If site visitors tell their friends that they downloaded malware from your site then you’ll lose future readers as well.

How I Discovered A Top Ranking Site I Own Is Distributing Malicious Malware To My Site Visitors
My blog has the No. 1 ranking in Google for its niche key term. That makes it a pretty popular blog within its niche. And WordPress 2.7.1 isn’t that old of a version of WordPress. Still, it got hacked. Here’s how I found out:

I went to login to make a post and landed instead on the home page of my blog with a big red box taking the place of the content. The words, big and bold, at the top of the page read “Reported Attack Site!” My site was effectively taken down by Google in order to prevent me and my site visitors from being affected by malicious malware. Meanwhile, I logged in to Google Webmaster Tools and ran a diagnostic on the site to find that there were a couple of dozens of pages infected with malicious malware. Google listed the pages. Now it’s clean up time.

How Hackers Get In

Hackers look for weaknesses they can exploit in a blog or website, usually a CMS. An old and outdated version is such a weakness. Also, weak passwords such as one word passwords that are easy to guess can be a late night snack for a hacker looking to do some damage. A combination of these two very common weaknesses can be an open door invitation.

If you are on any version of WordPress other than WordPress 2.8.3 then I urge you to upgrade immediately. At the same time, you should change your passwords to make them stronger. Security experts recommend that you use lower case and capital letters, at least two numerals and two special characters, and to make your password long. At least 8 characters, but 10 or 12 is better.

Your password should be something similar to this – Ot#3Y@p9 (just an example, not a real password).

What To Do If Your Site Is The Target Of Malicious Malware Pushers

If you find yourself a target of malicious malware and your site is considered an attack site by Google – a common occurrence for sites that are hacked and malicious code installed against the owner’s wishes – then you need to clean up your site code immediately, before you lose your rankings and your loyal readers.

The first order of business is to back up your site and remove all files from the server. Next, install the latest version of your software immediately and make sure you include a fresh copy of your Config file. You should also re-install your theme, but don’t use the same one you backed up. Use the original file and upload it to your server. That alone should be enough for most sites to be restored, but if a hacker has installed scripts and source code in your database files then you’ll need to go into your cpanel and clean up the code. That will require a developer or someone who is familiar with code cleanup.

It’s not as expensive as you would think it would be to perform a code cleanup and remove any malicious malware, but it’s an expense that you can avoid. You’ll get off cheaper by upgrading your software so if you are not on the latest version of WordPress – WordPress 2.8.3 – then I’d urge you to make sure you get that done today. If you are currently a customer of ours, call today for a free upgrade to your WordPress. That offer is good through the month of August.

Allen Taylor manages blogs for a list of clients in a variety of industries and niches. He writes Taylor’s Internet Marketing Blog and owns several websites in more than one niche. He is a full-time marketer and ghostwriter. 717-528-4005.

By admin in Featured

My dad the newsman tells a story today that portended more than he realized at the time it actually went down. Years ago in a Midwestern town there was rumor of a raucous protest to take place at a local school board meeting. The town paper’s editor (who may or may not have been my dad) sent his reporter to cover the flap. When the reporter arrived on the scene, all was quiet, but he noticed people sitting around in their cars. So he knocked on a window and asked, “Is there going to be a protest here today?” The answer: “Not until the TV cameras show up.”When the reporter called his editor and described this scenario, he was told bluntly to return to the office. The editor refused to cover the stunt in the paper. Back then, this preemptive block had an impact, and news coverage of the protest was instantly watered down.

It is interesting to consider the implied journalistic ethical question: If a news event is contrived, should the media cover it? But guess what? In the age of social media and citizen journalism, for many events, especially on a local stage, this question really doesn’t matter. The community takes care of it — for better or for worse.

Think about the Town Hall Meetings on the Obama administration’s proposals for healthcare policy reform, now taking place nationwide. Amid suspicions that the protests raging coast to coast at these meetings are orchestrated by conservative interest groups, event organizers are well aware that every meeting is a You Tube campaign busting at the seems, ready to rip. Whether sanctioned news organizations cover the episodes or not, no matter the level of truth to the staging — the story can and will propagate within social media.

This reality can be leveraged with fear as its currency. Whether we believe the level of cahoots and bullying or not — the power shift of those making coverage happen is fascinating. An official position on whether news organizations should cover these events is almost moot. Airtime will happen at the hand of citizens.

My mind goes to other illustrations of these shifting tides:

  • Think about the trembling restaurateur who has come to regard every diner as an amateur food critic. In fact, every amateur food critic is only one scathing post away from blogging a restaurant into oblivion.
  • Customer service issues are no longer under the sole watchful eye of Consumer Reports, or other standard reviewing entities. With a few well-placed tweets, dissatisfied consumers, with their legions of followers, can unleash groundswells of change.
  • Live events and political coverage have taken on new dimensions, with Twitter and the new acceptability of blogging live during events. With computers open and hand-helds ablaze, the coverage flows real-time. Gone are the days of stringers racing to payphones during breaks in the action, filing stories that will appear in the next day’s newspapers.
  • Consider those abrasive but popular politicians who, even if not a single news organization ever quotes them again, can create bizarre and broken narratives through the channels of social media democratically available to all of us. A reasonable base of followers and a few keystrokes are all that it takes.
  • Watch the burgeoning practice of reputation management in search engine marketing — used both to quickly plant the seeds of slander and erase the traces of the same, sometimes within hours. Celebrities are well served by having this know-how on staff, and it’s hardly a learned profession. It’s just knowing one’s way around keyword behavior and optimization. This crafty version of damage control works hand in hand with social media and buzz campaigning.

Some of these trends are important and liberating. Some of them are disturbing and kind of sad. But one thing is certain: The gateway to coverage is no longer the exclusive watch of sanctioned news organizations. While philosophic statements can be made on the validity of a news event by seeing whether or not a news organization opts to cover it — increasingly, such stand-offs are only symbolic. If the social sphere wants something covered, it will be covered.

This phenomenon says nothing of quality, accuracy and value standards. We can debate whether citizen journalism coverage is more or less potent than that of the big dogs — but there’s no doubt that coverage itself has been totally redefined in this age of social media.

Kendall Allen runs most of her media and marketing pursuits through a company she established, Influence Collective, LLC, based in New York City. The group advises and manages special projects in integrated media and marketing for clients, including Carolyn & Co. Media, where Kendall is overseeing the launch of upcoming digital publishing and community ventures for women and career. Contact her here.

By Dave Talbot in Featured

This really is the chicken and egg question of the internet age but depending on who you ask will determine the actual answer you receive.

A graphic designer based website development company will argue in a majority of cases that the design comes first of course. And let’s face it without that aesthetically pleasing to the eye design a visitor will bounce off your site within a matter of seconds or so they would have you believe. But then that raises the big question of how did they get there in the first place?

The most common web development curve goes along the lines of website gets designed ..looks great let’s go for it. Needs some content ok, copy and paste something out of our corporate /company leaflet…..time passes and no traffic!

And then more time until eventually perhaps 6-12 months later the situation is either so dire or the company are spending a fortune on Adwords that finally the SEO expert gets called in (or somebody gets intrigued by one of those SEO e-mails that seem to hound webmasters these days), and before you know it you are on a 6 month search engine marketing campaign to try and rescue some website rankings.

Is this really the best way to go? The thousands of business owners that have been through this exact cycle will certainly argue that it most definitely is not, as this hope and pray web development criteria delays any websites success by months and sometimes years, and even more frighteningly results in thousands in lost profit, turnover and ongoing prospect capture.

What is really laughable though is that if you actually read the sales pitch on any one of the myriad of web design companies own websites many of them blatantly claim to be SEO experts as if it is a badge of honour or perhaps a must have tick in the box but a quick check of their portfolio soon reveals that if they are the search engine marketing experts, then it is clearly evident that their clients are definitely not on the receiving end of this claimed expertise.

So what is the real answer, can you really optimise a website before you launch it? Absolutely, web design and SEO should go hand in hand and the thought process of optimising a website and SEO friendly website design should form the foundations of the web development brief right from the outset, as it is the site structure, and ultimately the content that will capture free organic web traffic and also mark the website as a potential authority site or an also ran.

The search engines don’t care about what the site looks like but so often this initial chance to make the best impact when the site first gets indexed is wasted, if all the search engines find is a poorly optimised site with scant regard paid to any SEO requirements or keyword capture.

Extra time and money spent on pre development SEO (which should at the very least include keyword research and SEO copywriting) gives an outstanding return on investment as invariably when the site goes live and gets indexed it will achieve a far better website ranking from day one and even in some cases a page one result straight away.

If a web designer is not promoting web design SEO as part of your initial client brief then they are selling not only themselves short but also the client, if they don’t have the expertise themselves then best practice would be to team up with a non competing SEO professional to give the client the best possible start and return on investment on their new website.

And to any business owners who are commissioning a new website, if your developer does not offer this service then find one who does as a little extra investment will see your website many months ahead of where it would otherwise be.

Author: Dave Talbot: Correct search engine optimisation is a vital ingredient for any websites success, and for new web development projects this is just as important as it is imperative to give the search engines the right initial impression of your website when it is first indexed. To find out more about the essential SEO services you should employ to give your website the kickstart it requires visit =>> http://www.advancedwebmarketing.co.uk

By John Sylvester in Featured

email marketingAround the middle of last month I received a phone call from a friend who runs a similar web design agency to ours, with a request for help in putting together coherent SEO/SEM packages for seven of his clients. Before we met, I looked at his clients’ websites and found there was much to do.

When looking at the SEO, virtually all of these sites used keywords in the title that had been plucked out of thin air; most of them had no relationship with the copy whatsoever. With research, we made recommendations for changes in both title and on-page copy. The easy part was the SEO; the difficulty was then to educate the client about how they need to be involved. The feedback from one company was instant and unusual: they accepted our recommendations without question.

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