According to a September 2002 report by Jupiter Research, the second highest ranked online activity is search engine usage. With more than 3 billion pages being indexed by major search engines, how important is it to your business for your website to be found by a potential customer?

A targeted Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign will provide your website with preferential positioning in selected search engines.

To be competitive, optimize your website to be included in the top 3 pages of a search engine results page (SERP) for the relevant search term queried by the user and analyze the results on an ongoing and timely basis.

Include Relevant Keywords in Content

Web pages should be rich in text and include search terms (keywords and phrases) that are relevant to your business and your targeted audience. Include only the search terms that are relevant to the subject content and have a unique descriptive title for each page. Text in graphic images isn’t readable by spiders and the ALT tag is not enough, make text images real text.

Due to the competitiveness of some keyword phrases, ongoing changes in search engine ranking algorithms and other competitive factors, it is important to monitor your site’s search engine position on a regular basis and adjust pages as needed to meet placement goals.

Design for Functionality

Design navigation for both your target audience and search engine crawlers to easily complete each desired action. Your target audience needs to easily find information and feel comfortable wherever they are within the site. Search engine crawlers read the URL structure (domain, directory and file naming) to determine relevancy and follow links to index individual web pages. If you choose to use dynamic or flash menus that are not search engine-friendly, be sure to include a secondary form of global text navigation.

Many design issues can impact search engine indexing, such as splash pages, flash navigation, session IDs, frames & dynamic delivery. Website technology that distracts from content or provides no static content will also negatively affect search engine results.

Review Source Code

Search engine spiders read source code to index text on a page and follow hypertext links. They like simple and easy-to-parse HTML so if there are any errors in the source code of your web pages it could stop spiders from accurately crawling the pages.

I know what influences the relevancy rankings on high-traffic search engines and directory sites and design sites accordingly.

Contact Basimos Internet Marketing Solutions to schedule your FREE initial consultation on search engine optimization for your website.