So you have a beautiful website that you paid a pretty penny for and you are completely happy with it ... except no one can find it. Many web designers do not understand search engine positioning, so when they design your website little or no thought is given to elements of design that may affect your rankings on search engines. On other hand some search engine positioning companies offer services that will boost your rankings but at expense of your design. A good search engine positioning company can get your website ranking for key phrases without affecting overall design and navigation of your site. You can make small changes to your website on your own as well utilizing tips noted in this article. There is a happy medium, you can "have your cake and eat it too."

The first step in designing a website that will rank well on search engines is to build proper table structure. This framework for your website will easily guide search engine spiders through your site taking route you want them to. A good table structure is essentially a map to spiders, it guides way as they travel through your website.

A standard website should use table structure below:

This table structure is very beneficial to your website ranking as it guides spiders to text rich, most important content of your site as quickly as possible. The spiders will enter your site at first table, header, and then travel through to empty cell in row 1 of second table, next stop is your content area, "meat" of your website. After going through your content spiders will then continue onto row 2 where you have inserted a table holding your navigation, if your navigation is image based, as most is, it holds very little content that matters from spider's perspective. The spiders will then follow through to row 3 where you have your footer, a place to add in valuable text links rich in targeted keywords.

Top search engine rankings for trademarked word "Vioxx" were dominated by Merck-owned web site http://www.Vioxx.com as of September 30, 2004. The site is likely to keep that ranking now that hundreds of thousands are flocking to search engines and typing in "Vioxx" to learn if they or their loved ones are at risk of heart attack from taking medication.

News organizations are all linking to http://www.Vioxx.com site from online news stories about health concerns and financial repurcussions to Merck of sudden recall. Merck has run full page ads in top newspapers nationwide addressing sudden action and sending those millions of readers to http://www.Vioxx.com site and http://www.Merck.com site to read disclaimers and learn how to get refunds for medication they already have in their medicine cabinets. The inbound links will soar at a point when they probably want it most so they can present their case to web visitors.

Taking second position is FDA page outlining recall and linking to more info at FDA site http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/vioxx/default.htm Third place for single word "Vioxx" also belongs to an FDA page and fourth and fifth positions are owned by a site that appears to be a drug index at http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/rofecox_ad.htm

Sixth place is currently held by http://www.medicinenet.com/rofecoxib/article.htm at a medical site that dominates for many drug and medical terms due to extensive discussion boards and informational pages about thousands of medical conditions and their treatments. Seventh through tenth position are CNN's news story on recall, then Yahoo News with a similar story, two online pharmacies with curiously blank pages. Try to sell Tylenol from those pages guys - don't waste traffic with blank pages!