Hopefully, those examples give you a fairly good idea of benefit of using these two powerful practices. For more about using CSS, I can recommend downloading sample chapters from Dan Shafer's book, HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS, at SitePoint.com.

Besides these two optimization techniques, however, we're also hearing about all kinds of ways to optimize our web sites for search engines these days. The competition for those coveted top placements is fierce, for sure. We've heard all about how important it is to have good, pertinent content in textual portion of our pages, how effective it can be to include our site's keywords within alternate attributes (i.e, ALT="keyword") of our image tags, and how valuable a link to/from a high traffic, like-minded web site can be. All this is certainly true and well worth effort to make our web pages rank higher in search engines, but with all this improvement to web site maintenance, what is downside? Well, take note, so you can say you saw it here first.

I've detected two pesky problems in this web page wonderland. One is absence of navigational links for search engine spiders to follow, and other is possibility of javascript-disabled web browsers. That's right; as fabulous as it is to store our navigational menu in one javascript file for easier updating, it removes all key links from our start page so search engine spiders have no other pages left to index on our site, and javascript-disabled web browsers can't see a menu at all! What's a webmaster to do? Well, here's how I decided to handle it.

I put my navigational menu with its various links to all my site's other pages on two key pages: start page and site map page. This way, when search engine spiders come calling, they can follow every link from my navigational menu to every other page on my site, and, at least, javascript-disabled web browsers will still have a menu to follow. The same is true of my site map page. For all rest of my pages, however, I decided to leave intact line of code calling javascript file containing my navigational menu in order to take advantage of its centralization benefits. The more pages I add to my site over time, more beneficial this approach will be, too. I see it as having best of both worlds: easy site maintenance and search engine optimization.

So, if you want to lighten your web site maintenance load while keeping your site optimized for search engines, I recommend using CSS to consolidate your site's style attributes, to include a tableless, yet table-like, appearance and centralization of a single javascript file containing your navigational menu. Just don't remove your navigational links from your start and site map pages.

You can visit either of my two web sites at http://webmarketersguide.com or http://www.parsonplace.com to see how I've done this. You're welcome to email me anytime at info@parsonplace.com with any questions or comments.

Natural Optimization specialists never really focused on optimization of contact and location pages on websites, but now it's becoming a vital tool to drive more qualified traffic to sites. In order to make sites local search-ready, they should start creating sitemaps that include every store location and then build individual landing pages for each specific location with a brief overview of store along with a map and detailed directions. Without this, Google does not have a path to index pages and information. Doing this small step will increase your qualified traffic as well as increase sales in your retail store or business.

By making your keywords city-specific and including more location-specific information on your site, Google Local can access your contact information and, as a result, drive more related traffic to your site.

Take Hard Rock Café. Their Web site is an ideal example of a site that is perfectly optimized for local Search Engines like Google Local. When entered in as a search term, Hard Rock Café's number one listing links to their home page's restaurant location page. Search users can instantly access information on Hard Rock Café in general, as well as learn more about location and contacts.

Local search is one of most hyped areas of development in Search industry today. Other Search engines including Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, MSN and CitySearch are hot on Google's tail to perfect their own versions of local Search Engines. Soon, not having your site optimized for local Search Engines will make your business's site obsolete. The impact of local search is already apparent, and it is still only in its infancy.