Once they have produced what hopefully is an outstanding website you then need to ask them if they would include a link to your homepage from their own website, preferably their homepage. Search engines these days take these backward links into consideration when they decide where to position your site in their results. As a general rule of thumb more backward links you have more visitors to your site you atre likely to have.

If you want to promote website even further, google adwords is a favourite of mine. This is where you pay to be seen on right hand side of results in Google, in sponsored search section.

Stephen Hill is a web designer from Birmingham. He has a website at http://www.internet-webdesign.co.uk.

3. Content

Many search engines look at main body of page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within text.

TIP:

Use competitive keywords relevant to purpose of page within main body of page.

Always try and ensure that keywords are prominent within text body, i.e. they appear near beginning of page, they are defined using ‘heading’ tag, they are typeface in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.

4. Page Title

This is arguably one of most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected.

Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes page content.

To keep within limits of many search engines number of words for Title shouldn’t exceed nine.

5. Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is Page Description.

This is text found under META Description tag and is displayed to users in search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to use of good keywords when writing description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before user, has even opened it!

6. Graphics

We have covered use of graphics briefly above, emphasizing importance of using an Alt tag containing relevant keyword(s).

Although use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn’t overpower textual content of your page. As a general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio (70 text/30 images).

7. Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on web that’ll create your site map instantly. Google recently come up with collaborative crawling system called Google Sitemaps (BETA) - https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html , that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages.

8. Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to other pages on your website if navigation bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it’s always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at bottom of every page on your website.

Follow basic suggestions mentioned above will help lay foundation to apply further good search engine optimization advice which will make difference in your overall search engine ranking.

This finer area of SEO is beyond realm of this document and will require further investment based on individual needs.

Paras Shah Chief Technology Officer VIP PowerNet, Inc. Phone: (713)787-6501 Email: paras@vippowernet.com