How to create a search engine friendly website

This is an article that will help your website get listed in the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

#1. Using HTML Text

The first thing to remember when designing and building your website is that search engines currently can only read actual text. Any text that is placed inside an image, flash file or video can not be read by the search engines and thus can not be used in the indexing process by the search engines. Make sure that all of your text is readable HTML text.

#2. Navigation

Make sure that your navigation is quick to find and easy to use. This means no rabbit holes. Rabbit holes are links that go to a page with new links or no links at all, and the only way to get back to the last page you were on is by hitting the back button. This is a good way to frustrate your user and will guarantee you don’t get ranked in Google.

#3. Site Map

Make sure that you have a site map on your website. This is a page with all the links on your website. Search Engines will look for this page and use it as a way to further find all the pages on your site.

#4. Adding Text To Your Images, Flash Files and Videos

All of the images and buttons on your site can have an ALT tag on them. This is a piece of code that allows you to add text on the backend of the picture. In this code, you want to add a line of text with your keywords in it. The search engines will find this and it will help with indexing your site. Also, you can add ALT tags to your Flash files and videos.

#5. Link Building

Link Building has to do with outside websites than with your own programming, but it is the most important part of being indexed by Google. The most important links are incoming links. These are links coming from other relevant sites related to your keywords. The more you have, the higher your ranking will be in relationship to your competition. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to use online directories. There are many types of directory websites. Look for ones that will allow you to provide a link back to your website. There are many that are free, but a lot of the good ones with higher page rank will cost you. The better the incoming page rank, the more it will help your website. Be cautious where you put your link. If the site is lower than your current page rank, it will actually lower your page rank as well.

#6. Meta Tags and Page Titles

One of the most commonly abused ways of trying to get listed is with meta tags. Five to ten years ago, this was a great way of getting listed. Now it is a very small part of the indexing process. However, you still do want to have them. Do not over saturate your website with hundreds of meta tags because this will actually hurt your ranking. Instead, just list as meta tags the relevant keywords pertaining to your site. On the title of each page, list your keywords in order of importance. This will help rank in Google as well.

#7. HTML Extensions

HTML Extensions are the names of the HTML pages that you create for your different pages. For instance, if the page is about website design and your keyword is website design, you want the HTML extension to be www.yourwebaddress.com/website-design.html. This tells the search engine spiders that the whole page is more relevant to your keyword. Use this understanding throughout your site based on your keywords and pages.

#8. Key Word Density

On your main landing page and any other relevant pages you want to be listed, make sure that the page has readable text keywords. You want to list them as many times as possible without it being unnatural to the page content. For example list placing your key word over and over again in a sentence will actual get your site flagged and black listed. The major search engines see it as cheating and will keep your site from being listed at all.