Web Marketing Guide - Website Design Tips

If achieving top 10 search engine placement is the goal for your pages, then getting indexed by search engines is the first step. If search engine spiders are not visiting your site as often as they should, then here are 5 on-page SEO web design and development techniques known for enticing crawlers to visit, index and rank your content. Although there are hundreds of criteria that can affect ranking and relevance, the following 5 tips are known to produce profound results when implemented in unison.

1. If your content is stale?, then freshen it up!

Make changes, search engine spiders like change, but make sure you add value. Try adding a blog and making at least 3-5 posts with relevant content per week. This will unleash the spiders to check out all of the pages they can crawl which can adversely improve your search engine rankings across the board.

2. Do you have multiple pages with similar titles or on page content?

If you have multiple pages that essentially say the same thing, this also can affect dilute your authority for the keywords in question. If you have pages that have more than one topic per page then group them on their own page and name that page with the title of the main keywords. If they have page rank, then you can implement a 301 redirect to a new page that is more in line with the new keyword rich page to get a good running start for those terms.

Another method is, choose one page that has the most content for conversion and relevance and then link from all supporting pages to the new page you want to rank the highest.

3. Are your site maps current?

If search engines can not get to the deep pages in your site, then chances are they are dormant or rarely see the light of spiders.

To aid this, make sure that any subdirectories include XML or ROR site maps. You can also use keyword rich anchor text (links) at the bottom of the pages to connect relevant pages with keyword-rich text.

Aiding crawler and user agents to get to all of the pages in your site can make your entire website more relevant and pull lackluster pages into blockbuster rankings, if you perfect your make over skills. Another option is simply starting fresh with new content (such as a word press blog) or new keyword-rich pages.

4. Do you have an .HTACCESS file to eliminate duplicate content on your own pages?

Using an .HTACCESS file can ensure that your site is not penalizing itself as a result of the http version and www versions of your pages. It is rather easy to implement and is well worth the investment in time. You can also use an .HTACCESS file if you are creating sub folders in your site and wish the index page to be something else other than index.html or whichever extension your site uses.

5. Is your site over optimized?

Sometimes a simple blog post is enough to hit and maintain a top 10 ranking, on the other hand if you prepare an elaborate plan to build 200 links to a new page, cross link it with other pertinent parts of your site, publish the page through 4 social book mark sites that will stream your content and constantly tweak the page in question, you may in fact be going too far.

Each industry is unique, the search engine optimization community for example is fierce with the more competitive terms, here today gone tomorrow is nothing new in SEO, as rising to the top is one thing, but staying there with tactical SEO defense is another.

The point being, each industry has a unique barrier to entry, some require links from authority sites to crack the top 10, others require aged links or older posts before the search engine gives it the OK to land in the top 10, but without looking at each industry in detail it is better not to make random assumptions.

One method is, take a look at the top 5 sites for a search on your favorite search engine, if the results are from sites that appear to have diverse results from newer sites (check the cache before clicking) you may in fact be able to determine just how long that page has been at the top of the food chain. If you see mostly fresh blogs and posts at the top, chances are you could do the same with your pages based on the top 5 sites using a similar keyword density or method.

Make sure you do not abuse design or structure elements like an excessive amount of bold keywords, more than 2-4 keywords in the h1, h2, h3 tags, long / diffused or stuffed titles or lackluster descriptions. Less is more as search engine algorithms have evolved, tricking them with simple on page inflation techniques only pushes you further away from the top 10 once they do the math on your keyword density and proximity.

More and more pages are rising to the top 10 with 1-3% keyword density (keywords used 1-3 times per 1000 words, for the total word count of the page), so no need to go overboard. It is more about "phrase-rank" and the theme of your website as a whole that can exemplify relevance and catapult your pages to the lime light.

If your pages are themed (with no more than 3 targeted key phrases) search engine spiders can analyze and extract the subject matter to assess the content. They even know if it's grammatically correct or if it's P.H.D. or elementary in composition. So, sometimes it is not necessarily one thing or another specifically, but rather a combination of elements that can result in your pages not engaging their true potential. By following the guidelines and synchronizing your on-page and off-page factors (content, coding, site architecture / links, social bookmarks, promotion) then, over time you can establish website authority and garner pages that rank higher in search engines.

Remove the obstructing element in question and sky is the limit, but first you have to have a good idea of where to start. This is a quick top 5 SEO Checklist, but in reality there are over 200 of such criteria that determine ranking, relevance and organic search engine positioning.