Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Web Design
SEO web design is not difficult to achieve, despite what you might think. There are literally thousands of expert articles about the subject out there if you look for them, but all of them seem to be saying basically the same things: you need to hire an expert marketer in order for SEO web design to work.
This isn’t really true, though. SEO web design is really very simple, when you boil it down to its basic concepts. There are only two things that you need in order to have a site that will rank high in search engines: good keyword density and a well-thought-out keyword marketing plan.
That’s really all there is to it. Of course, what seems very simple is not. Oh, grasshopper, now we get to the nitty-gritty. Sure, you could hire a professional search engine marketer and would probably get great results for doing so. I’m not going to tell you not to. What I am going to tell you is that if you have the know-how and the time, you can do most of that marketer’s SEO web design work yourself. A lot of what I’m about to show you is what that marketer would ask you, as the website designer, to do for her anyway.
First, you’ll need to make your keyword list and research how feasible those key words and phrases are towards your achieving good rankings. To do this, you’ll need to sit down with your site and have a one-on-one with the content. What is the site about? What is it promoting? What are the major words and phrases that seem to be recurring throughout the pages? Even if the site has not been copy written for keyword density, there are certain key words and phrases that will naturally jump out of the text because they are what describe the site’s purpose (what it’s selling or conveying). A website about dogs, for instance, will have lots of dog words like “dog,” “pooch,” “canine,” and so forth. These are the “natural” keywords the site contains.
Now you just need to dig a little deeper. What phrases and subjects are appearing regularly on the site that aren’t so obvious, but are integral to the site’s purpose? This site about dogs might be a site whose ultimate purpose, despite it’s pages and pages of content about canine issues, is to sell a dog training book and a handful of dog-related products (say custom leather collars, for instance). Alright, now you’re getting to the nitty-gritty. The purpose of the site is not to convey information, but rather to sell products through the marketing plan of giving away great information. This is a proven technique and has worked many times.
So now you have some key words and phrases to work with. Hopefully you’ve got a fairly lengthy list too, because now for the fun part: role playing. You’re now the customer who’s looking for dog training information on a search engine. What are you going to type into that search bar? Get creative, but be realistic. Things like “dog training” and “learn to train my dog” are obvious. What about variations on these themes and similar phrases that might not contain the word “train” at all? Maybe “dog tricks” is also something to consider.
Now you’re probably looking at a fairly lengthy list of words and phrases. Good. That’s what you’re after. When you’ve racked your brain, copy the list and hand it to one or two people. Tell them what the site is for (or send them to it) and ask them if they have any ideas to ad to that list. Meanwhile, you can start reverse-searching those keywords to see how often they’re being used. If you don’t know how to do this, put the phrase “reverse keyword search” into Google or About.com and you’ll find plenty of information on how it works.
Take the lists your friends have given you and work those too. You’ll want to concentrate on two things: what words/phrases are most often searched and which “niche” (underutilized words/phrases, or phrases other sites aren’t optimizing for much) can be capitalized upon to promote your site. Now we’re getting to the real meat of the SEO web design game.
Hopefully you’ve worked your way into a solid list of six to ten words or phrases you can work with (less with fewer pages, more with more pages, use your judgment). Now is where the whole SEO web design thing starts to happen. Take those phrases and apply them to the pages they’re appropriate to. Change the content (or have your copywriter optimize it) to fit with your new SEO phrases. While that’s happening, start looking at page titles, file names, ALT tags and more. You want those keywords to appear everywhere, but not in such a way as to be overloaded (called “keyword spamming”). It should make sense to a human looking at the page too. Use keywords and key phrases as filenames for graphics files, the ALT tags to go with them, etc. Use other keywords in your title tag and page content, working for density without overpopulation: two or three times per paragraph is at the outside edge of too much.
If the site is fairly large and content-rich, you can optimize pages or entire areas of it towards two or three key words and phrases each, capitalizing on various search terms throughout the site. Building these words and phrases into your SEO web design efforts is the key to making it happen. Soon enough, your efforts will start to pay off as your site rises higher and higher in the rankings. SEO optimization is not really that difficult once you know what you’re doing!
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