IndexFlashKeyword PositioningMultiple Places for KeywordsA Front Page TrickThe ALT TagBefore You Go Spending Big Money on a Professional Website Designer or start designing yourself, read this article and make sure you or your designer knows how to design a website that search engines will like. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As a web designer myself, I know firsthand what they teach you in college about being a good designer. Even though I learned all the important design concepts like color theory, the importance of graphics and white space, etc., I came away knowing nothing about how to actually design a site to get search engine rankings. Due to the lack of training in design schools, there are many, many web design companies out there today that know nothing about properly designing a web page. It wasn't until I started doing some research that I realized there was a whole world of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that I didn't know about. Most designers love to make your site aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps they use newer technologies like Flash design or graphics-intensive pages. While these techniques make your site look nice, they are not practical if you want a visitor to find your site in a search engine. Here are some basic concepts to learn before you start designing your website. Flash I know it's tempting to have an all Flash site because let's face it, they're pretty awesome. The problem with having an entirely flash site, however, is that it essentially doesn't exist for search engines. A flash source file is embedded in the html and therefore offers no content that search engine spiders can look at to rank you. Unless you are already well known in your specific industry or have a very identifiable brand (e.g. Pepsi or BMW), you shouldn't use an all-flash site. But what if you really, really want to have flash? Here are some ways to get around this problem. First, you can create two websites for your visitors. An HTML version and a Flash version. You can let your visitor decide where to go. This way you won't leave them frustrated if they have a dial-up connection and aren't browsing with broadband. There's nothing that gets your prospect excited faster than having to wait ten minutes just to see your fancy flash intro. By having both versions available, you also give search engine spiders a content-rich HTML site so they can rank you accordingly. Secondly, you can add flash components into your main site to get some cool effects without taking forever to download. For example, I've seen a lot of websites lately where the top of their site header is made in flash or their buttons are made in flash to make them stand out more. These are two good ways to use flash without overdoing it. Just make sure your copy text is keyword-rich to compensate for the flash. Keyword Positioning This next part assumes that you have already researched and collected targeted keywords to work with. If you haven't done keyword research for your services or products you sell, then you have some work to do before this next step. There's a phrase you'll hear in the SEO world and that's "keyword rich text." This simply means that when you write the body textfor your website you need to phrase it in a certain way to include your keywords. This doesn't mean you enter a keyword every two words. Search engine spiders consider it spam. This means you pay close attention to your copy, making sure you include keywords within it that make sense for the overall service or product you're selling. Here's an example of a keyword-rich paragraph that sells an information product about public speaking. Keywords are in quotation marks. Are you interested in becoming a better "public speaker" or improving your "public speaking skills"? You can become a "paid public speaker" and earn a lot of money by "public speaking" to a wide variety of audiences. Learn all the latest “public speaking tips and tricks,” including learning to “overcome stage fright” and “add humor” to your presentation. All of these keywords were researched and found to be highly targeted to the phrase “public speaking.” Now I went a little overboard with the keywords for the example, but you get the idea. There's another phrase called "keyword density." This refers to how many times a particular keyword or phrase is found on a website page per 100 words. You walk a fine line between having enough keyword density or having too much and causing search engines to consider your site as spam. However, keep in mind that not all search engines are the same. Some might like a keyword density of 5%, while another might prefer 7%. I suggest testing your copy for about a month and keeping an eye on your search engine rankings. If you get a high ranking, keep your text as is, but if it's lower than you want, try tweaking your text and keyword density to see if you can get the ranking you want.More Places for KeywordsThere they are other places where search engine spiders look for keywords in addition to your website copy. If possible, try to get a domain name that contains one of your keywords. For example, if you sell dog collars, a name you might want for your website would be www.dogcollarsales.com or something like that. It may take some thought and time to come up with a related name that someone hasn't already chosen, but it can be done. Another good place for keywords is in the page title. Instead of entering your business name that most people don't know, instead enter a keyword-rich phrase or phrase. Using the example of the dog collar business again, here is a cover page you could use. Dog Collars: We sell dog collars and other products for your beloved pet. It clearly tells search engines what the page is about. Remember that your website title is indexed by search engines and is part of what is shown to those who are searching for that keyword. So if I typed dog collars into my search engine, the top title and description of my meta tag would show up in my search results. Make sure you think carefully about your title. This rule also applies to the meta tag description which is also displayed when a search engine views your site. Make it just one or two keyword-rich sentences. The keyword meta tag has less impact today than it did a few years ago, but I still recommend adding some keywords. Don't go overboard and write 50 keywords or your site will be considered spam by search engines. Most websites designed today rely heavily on graphical content and not much of it.