How to design sitemap for your website?

Search engine optimization involves many components including linking, keyword research, content development, page titles, and other methods used to improve your search engine rankings. All of these methods can increase your results piece by piece but there is a way to combine many of these elements into an SEO method that can improve your web ranking and drive targeted traffic to your web site. This method is designing a site map to be used with your other search engine optimization efforts. Knowing how a site map can help you improve your SEO results will help you to better design your site map and make it conform to the guidelines of ethical and successful SEO.

Site Maps Defined

A site map is a graphical or textual representation of each of the pages on your web site. Site maps can be very complex and include professional graphics and they can also be very simple and have only text. A site map helps people find the information they are looking for on your web site. You can use a site map to incorporate some of the major components of SEO and improve your search engine rankings in the long run.

Site Maps & Text

Text-based site maps are the most effective for search engine optimization purposes. This is because you can use your chosen keywords in both the content of the site map and in each link to other pages within your site. If you have carefully chosen your keywords, implementing them into your site map can benefit your search engine optimization efforts and help improve your search engine rankings.

Site Maps & Links

Links are a very important part of successful search engine optimization. When search engine crawlers visit your web site, they look for links that can be used to help determine the relevance of pages and assist with search engine indexing. If you build a web site and have a link to each one of your other pages, this can improve your web rankings and make it easier for search engines to find your site when people search for the keywords you use on your web site.

Site Maps and Content

You can also use site maps to your advantage by writing keyword-optimized descriptions of each page that you are linking to from the site map itself. Your descriptions can include several keywords that describe your products and services and make it easier for people visiting your web site to find what they need. In addition to helping you optimize your web site, site maps are a valuable resource for visitors to your site.

Search Engine Optimization vs Search Engine Marketing

Sort Out The Confusion And Start Implementing Them Both!

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is actually one element of SEM, or Search Engine Marketing. Search Engine Optimization is the process of configuring, or optimizing your website with the appropriate keywords you wish to be associated with, in a manner that will make it easily “seen” by search engines. Some of the more common SEO tactics include:

1. Having Keyword rich web pages

2. Having Keywords in the title of your pages

3. Having Keywords in your domain name

4. Naming the images in your site using keywords

5. Naming the Alt tags of images using keywords

Search Engine Marketing is the process and the methods used to promote your site to search engines. The most common tools are:

1. Search Engine Optimization

2. Article Marketing

3. Video Marketing

4. Social Network Marketing

5. PPC, or Pay Per Click Advertising

In most of these methods, the idea is to generate high quality, relevant content that is keyword rich and placed on sites other than yours, This content contains back links that point back to your site. Google and the other search engines use these factors to rank you in the search results people enter. The more back links you have from original quality content, the more important and relevant you are to Google’s results and page rankings.

The important parts above are that the back links to your site must come from relevant, original content. If you have used some of the spamming services or link farms to try to build your back links, Google may penalize you and possibly even black list your site.

Back links generated “Organically,” meaning that they are from high quality, relevant content are also very important to Google, whereas Paid advertising – even Google’s own PPC program – does nothing to help you get higher up in the page results rankings.

So now you know. And whether or not you use SEO or SEM, or both, I suggest you do something with your site ASAP. Your competitors are already doing this. How much of an advantage do you want them to have over you?

Promoting Search Engine Marketing Through Visitors

Want to increase your sales? I’m willing to bet the answer’s “yes.” After all, that’s what SEO (search engine optimization) and getting traffic is all about. But if your visitors aren’t buying once they arrive at your site, your hard work’s going down the tubes! Use these 6 SEO conversion secrets to convert your visitors into sales…

SEO Secret #1: Create a compelling listing Your site’s description in the search results is your first chance to make a good impression with prospective buyers. So make sure it grabs your visitors by the eyeballs! Rewrite your title tag and meta description tag – the parts that show up in the search engine listings. Experiment with new ways of describing who you are and what you do. Repeat until you hit on the combination that persuades the most people to click through to your website. Just make sure your main keyword phrase appears first in both tags.

SEO Secret #2: Create a powerful headline The average visitor to your site will spend just FOUR seconds deciding whether your site has what they’re looking for. A headline that intrigues, excites, or inspires will leave your visitors in no doubt… so they’ll stay long enough to see what else you have to offer. Start by stating the main benefit of what your page is offering. Will your customers learn money-saving tips, for example? Then frame your main benefit with a power statement like “How to…” or “Discover…” or “Uncover the Secret to…” (And don’t forget to include your main keyword in your headline and subheads!)

SEO Secret #3: Create keyword-specific pages Create groups of related keywords for each page or section of your website (e.g., an article, blog post, or salescopy). When people land on a page that focuses on the keyword they searched for, they’re much more likely to stick around – and buy your products! Just include a lead-in or link somewhere to your main sales page. Sometimes just a keyword-rich link is enough, especially when you’ve impressed them with your content.

SEO Secret #4: Use images and multimedia to your advantage The best images help your customers understand what your website is all about. The more directly they relate to your product and content, the more they’ll reassure your visitors they’ve come to the right place. Audio and video can also be great sales tools when used correctly… so long as your listeners are ready for them. Turn off the auto-start feature on video or audio you include on your site. If you can create an optimized page for each video or podcast, your conversions will be even better.

SEO Secret #5: Include an internal search box Adding a search box is an easy way to help your visitors find what they’re looking for. (And according to MarketingSherpa’s Ecommerce Benchmark Guide, 43% of consumers use an internal search box if it’s there.) And a search box offers a prime SEO opportunity, too! Using tools like Google Analytics, you can find out the exact words your market is typing to search for things they expect to find on your site. Use these keywords to optimize other pages of your website, and to test using pay-per-click.

SEO Secret #6: Encourage immediate sales A call to action is what’s going to get your customers to buy today. But is yours full of keywords that will reassure your visitors that their problem will be solved? There you go – six SEO secrets to help you turn your visitors into customers. Try them out and watch your sales soar!

Adobe Photoshop Tips for Web Designers

Learn 5 simple tips you can do in Photoshop to make sure you, the web designer, are using in order to create efficient, user-friendly web sites.

1. 1024 pixels wide or less - If the is one thing that web site visitors hate, it’s having to scroll left and right in order to view a whole web page. Make sure if you are designing a web site in Photoshop, keep it to 1000 pixels wide or less. This allows users using 1024×768 monitors to see the whole page and leaves a little room for window edges, etc. To be totally safe, you may decide to make your pages 800 pixels wide, however as only 8% of site visitors are using an 800×600 resolution (according to a January 2008 W3Schools report), we may finally be safe to make the jump up to 1024.

2. Always “Save for Web” – Even in the age of ultra-fast internet connections, page load time is still an issue. Photoshop helps out a lot with this by exporting images with very compact file sizes using the “Save for Web” mode. A great testament to this is saving the same image using “Save As” and “Save for Web” as 2 JPEGs with the highest quality setting. The image outputted by “Save As” will have a much larger file size. NOTE: Only use “Save for Web” when file size is more important than image quality. The images exported by “Save for Web” will see a slight quality reduction, but when designing for web, it`s something we must accept.

3. When you do “Save for Web,” save the right format – Photoshop`s “Save for Web” feature lets you choose between JPEG, GIF, and PNG files, and when exporting slices for web design, we are not limited to choosing one format for the entire page. This is why it is always a good idea to check the output file size (in the lower left corner of the `Save for Web` window) for various slices. Try different settings for each slice to get the right balance between file size and image quality. PNG and GIF are best for images with only a few colors; JPEG is better for images with a lot of color or tonal variety.

4. IMG ALT - One HTML attribute that many web designers sadly overlook is the IMG ALT attribute. The ALT attribute is not only good for search engine optimization, but is also a necessary feature for web site visitors with disabilities or those who are on a slow connection. You can set ALT attributes of slices by double -clicking then using the Slice Select Tool. The value should be a description of the image in the slice, or, in the case of a slice containing graphic text, what the text says.

5. Be careful with transparent PNGs – If you are exporting PNGs with transparency from Photoshop for web design use, make sure to test the page in all common browsers before taking the site “live.” Internet Explorer 6 and lower do not support PNG transparency out of the box. This is, unfortunately, a major issue, as the majority of web users are still using it – despite its status, in one man`s opinion, as the worst browser ever made. Luckily, there are several scripts one may use in their HTML code to fix the PNG problem in IE6. A quick Google search for “ie png fix” will find the latest fixes.

Six SEO Secrets to Turn Visitors Into Sales

Want to increase your sales? I’m willing to bet the answer’s “yes.” After all, that’s what SEO (search engine optimization) and getting traffic is all about. But if your visitors aren’t buying once they arrive at your site, your hard work’s going down the tubes! Use these 6 SEO conversion secrets to convert your visitors into sales…

SEO Secret #1: Create a compelling listing Your site’s description in the search results is your first chance to make a good impression with prospective buyers. So make sure it grabs your visitors by the eyeballs! Rewrite your title tag and meta description tag – the parts that show up in the search engine listings. Experiment with new ways of describing who you are and what you do. Repeat until you hit on the combination that persuades the most people to click through to your website. Just make sure your main keyword phrase appears first in both tags.

SEO Secret #2: Create a powerful headline The average visitor to your site will spend just FOUR seconds deciding whether your site has what they’re looking for. A headline that intrigues, excites, or inspires will leave your visitors in no doubt… so they’ll stay long enough to see what else you have to offer. Start by stating the main benefit of what your page is offering. Will your customers learn money-saving tips, for example? Then frame your main benefit with a power statement like “How to…” or “Discover…” or “Uncover the Secret to…” (And don’t forget to include your main keyword in your headline and subheads!)

SEO Secret #3: Create keyword-specific pages Create groups of related keywords for each page or section of your website (e.g., an article, blog post, or salescopy). When people land on a page that focuses on the keyword they searched for, they’re much more likely to stick around – and buy your products! Just include a lead-in or link somewhere to your main sales page. Sometimes just a keyword-rich link is enough, especially when you’ve impressed them with your content.

SEO Secret #4: Use images and multimedia to your advantage The best images help your customers understand what your website is all about. The more directly they relate to your product and content, the more they’ll reassure your visitors they’ve come to the right place. Audio and video can also be great sales tools when used correctly… so long as your listeners are ready for them. Turn off the auto-start feature on video or audio you include on your site. If you can create an optimized page for each video or podcast, your conversions will be even better.

SEO Secret #5: Include an internal search box Adding a search box is an easy way to help your visitors find what they’re looking for. (And according to MarketingSherpa’s Ecommerce Benchmark Guide, 43% of consumers use an internal search box if it’s there.) And a search box offers a prime SEO opportunity, too! Using tools like Google Analytics, you can find out the exact words your market is typing to search for things they expect to find on your site. Use these keywords to optimize other pages of your website, and to test using pay-per-click.

SEO Secret #6: Encourage immediate sales A call to action is what’s going to get your customers to buy today. But is yours full of keywords that will reassure your visitors that their problem will be solved? There you go – six SEO secrets to help you turn your visitors into customers. Try them out and watch your sales soar!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Designing Your Website For SEO

With over 80 percent of website traffic coming from search engines, it’s no wonder I am often asked the question “How can we get a better position on the search engines?” Still, with all of the attention on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), companies are not investing enough of their marketing effort/budget on SEO. In fact, while most companies consider SEO important to their marketing success, very few are actually doing it (some studies show fewer than 40%), and those who are…not completely.

Search engine optimization (SEO) means ensuring that your web pages are accessible to search engines and structured in ways that help improve the chances they will be found and listed as close to the top of the list as possible.

How do you stack up?

This article defines the types of search tools, reviews the optimization areas that most impact your position:

Meta Tags: Page Titles, Descriptions, Keywords

When a search engine visits your website it will first look at your Page Title, Description, and Keyword Meta Tags. Before submitting your website to the search engines, pay close attention that your Meta Tags for each page are descriptive and accurately reflect that page’s content. While the list of keywords in your Meta Tags were once a key element to optimization, it is now more important to be sure each page includes your keyword, or keyword phrases, up to three times within the page content itself (or at least 3-10% page density). Also, search engines will check for keywords near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text of that page. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right at the outset. SO, as far as the Meta Tags are considered, the most important are the Page Title and Page Description, so pay close attention to how those are treated in the code of EVERY page.

Content and Structure

First and foremost your site’s pages must contain “quality” content. Quality is defined by the degree of usefulness the content has for the expected visitors, comprehensiveness of that content, the direct relation of that page’s content to the Meta Tags in the code of that page, and the quantity of content (Websites with fewer than 100 pages are going to have difficultly ranking).

Also, don’t build your site with frames or extensive use of Flash, as generally these design options are not able to be spidered by the search engines’ robots. And while dynamically generated sites using technology such as ASP, Cold Fusion, and PERL, can have a great impact to the site’s functionality, they can cause issues for search engine placement because the pages don’t actually exist until a visitor triggers the page and a search engine spider doesn’t trigger a page when it crawls the code. The other problem is that this type of technology adds question marks into the URL and many spiders can’t read a link past the “?” in a link. There are technological ways around this, but it can be tricky. If you’re going to use dynamically generated web pages, be sure you’ve addressed these issues first.

Limit your use of graphic representation of text. Spiders can’t index images, so even though graphics help you control the “look” of the text, you will want to avoid using them when representing your keywords on that page.

Finally, the content on your site must also be accurate and updated regularly. As your home page is often the first page to be spidered, be sure to design it to be the page that is updated monthly with new information and news. Also, consider using your company name as often as possible, rather than the more casual use of “us” and “our.” Basically, follow the rule of thumb of always getting specific…not “our products”, but “our sales and marketing tools.”

Link Strategy

Multiple links from RELEVANT third-party sites to your site are very important for many of the search engines. The search engines do give you points for quality links so linking for linking sake is not the answer here. The major search engines use link analysis for search ranking, which is the process of determining the relative importance of each link pointing to your website and in some cases the context of the link. This is vastly different from earlier days, when search engines factored sheer popularity into their algorithms.

A solid link strategy is essential for top search engine placement, but takes significant time and effort to complete. The first step is to identify the potential sites you want to link from and to set up a place on your site to reciprocate. Then contact those sites and ask them to include you on their site (consider paying for this “sponsorship” and/or bartering for it). When you post links on other sites, remember that text links are important to include alongside logo links and the text of the link should be the keyword or keyword phrase(s) you are optimizing for.

Finally, be sure to cross link within your own site (use “anchor text” for each link). Many of the robots will follow links from your site to other areas of your site and index those areas. For this reason, add a site map from your home page that is a text-only link outline of your entire site. Again, the text of the link should be the keyword or keyword phrase(s) you are optimizing for.

Submission

The final step to optimization is submitting your site to the search engines and directories. You can do this yourself to the three majors-Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

The bottom line? Search engine optimization is a tedious, but necessary task. And, it can take a few months to see tangible results. Depending on the importance of search engines to your marketing strategy, you may want to consider hiring an expert.

Go-To-Market Strategies is a resource center for sales and marketing professionals and business leaders. Our tools, templates, and services help companies achieve big aspirations with limited budgets.

Advantages of Using CSS in Web Design

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets; it is a simple mechanism language that allows users for adding style to structured Web documents. Example – layout, fonts, colors, spacing and aural cues. CSS is a breakthrough in Web design as it allows web designing developers to organize the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once and change to the new markup which makes sense and then redefine it to fit web design.

Through CSS, Web designing can be controlled by displaying the characteristics of a site from one central document. With CSS, web designing can be established by creating attractive pages with much flair. CSS Web Design provides web sites for businesses and organizations who want to use the internet to expand and develop their business. To design web pages with CSS, you need to know the standards and advantages to understand how browsers’ attribute and respond on the Web design results. CSS include a wider variety of stylistic capabilities to meet the necessities of web design developers; this grant the designer more control over site appearance.

Advantages of CSS

CSS express how to display (Inline style) HTML elements

The HTML documents can be displayed using different output styles. HTML tags were originally designed to define the content of a document. Cascading Styles sheets define how HTML elements are to be displayed. Style sheets bring genuine leading and sophisticated margination to the web designing.

CSS allows for smaller file sizes

Cascading Style Sheets save bandwidth, diminish the overall amount of code in web pages and vastly reduces the size of your files when compared to old-style markup.

External Style Sheets can save you a lot of work

CSS can save you a lot of work when designing a website. Most modern browsers now support CSS so it’s safe and easy to use.

External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files

CSS allows external style sheet to control the layout and web design of the whole site. The best way is generally to use an external CSS file; it controls many different elements throughout the entire site instead of defining the same elements again and again in all of the HTML files.

Web Designing is normally stored in Style Sheets

Web design for the entire web is a thoughtful appearance for design issues and how they differ from designing for the web page through CSS. Smaller Web site web designing companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further mounting the growth of the web development. CSS allows web design authors to move much of that information to a separate style sheet resulting in significantly simpler HTML language.

CSS allows you greater control of page structure

The main ability of CSS is to control the page structure without needing to use presentational markup. Using CSS you can hide content from certain browsers in certain situations and multiple style definitions will cascade into one. It explains to create two and three column float based layouts and horizontally center a design on a page.

Cascade Style sheets also offer much more flexibility in terms of the presentation effects it provides. Such as margin, color, border, background and much more. CSS develop strategies for maximizing forward and backwards browser compatibility. There are plenty of exposure of web design and testing tools that can aid in the creation of attractive, standards-abiding documents.

Four Simple SEO Web Design Tips

Many benefits can be gained through solid search engine optimized web design. Although many web designers can create beautiful designs and layouts, many put little thought into search engines. Many designers code in a way that does take full advantage of their design by implementing good SEO practices on the site. Solid on site design that is optimized for search engines can result in the increase of rankings by pages. Many established sites that are already receiving traffic could drastically increase their organic search engine traffic through SEO web design.

Design a site for search engines is simple. It really comes down to properly coding a web design with modern coding practices, while also acknowledging the semantic value assigned to certain tags in HTML. SEO web design starts with clean modern coding, which means a slim CSS and XHTML based design that avoids using tables for layout. The next important approach to SEO design is using the factors included in HTML to target your page.

The title tag is one of the most important SEO factors. It is important to have a unique title on every page of your website. In addition, the title should include the keywords that page is targeting. The keyword prominence can be increases by placing the keyword closer to the front of the title tag. It is easy to fall into the habit of designing titles for bots only, but it is important to develop solid ad copy with your title take. A well designed title can draw more clicks than a keyword stuff tag, which means more traffic and more conversions.
The next major factor is to use the semantic value of header tags. The H1 tag, for example, is meant to give the overall heading for a page. There should only be one H1 tag on ever page and it should be unique. This tag should include text that gives the overall topic of that page. Effort should be made to include keywords in this tag since search engines give extra weight to words that appear in header tags. It is also important to use H2 tags to assign value to keywords in sub topics, but do not dilute the value of H2 tags by using them for headings of menus, such as blog sidebars.

Another simply on site SEO factor is using bold and strong tags. Visually these tags emphasis text and they also emphasis text for search engines. Semantically this makes since. If the word is important enough to make it stand out to humans, it is important for search engines to stop and evaluate the keyword.

These are all really simple ways to improve you site’s web design. With a few minor changes, your site can become optimized for search engines. These are just four simple quick optimization techniques. There are several more than can be used to improve search engine ranking. All web designers should have a basic understanding of SEO focused web design, so they can provide designs that are not only beautiful but functional.

Blog Updation a part of ethical search engine optimization

Blog updating is one of the most important things you can do to dramatically improve the search engine rank of your website. Constantly updated websites climb to the top of Google, Yahoo!, and Live like it’s nobody’s business. If you haven’t been updating your blog with 100% unique content on a weekly basis, it’s not too late to start! You can always begin improving your search engine rank by implementing frequent blog updates.

If you don’t have a blog on your website to update, there’s some really good news that you’ll enjoy getting: Blog programs are absolutely free! In fact, you can even install SEO plug-ins on your blog that will further move your website up in the search engines.

One of the best SEO plug-ins for your Word Press is the “All in One SEO” plugin. This plugin allows you to add a unique title, description, and keywords to every single post. This small step will help set your website apart from millions of others that are not taking additional steps to “talk to Google.” And if you’re interested in top search engine rank, you need more than a nice design and a great service or product to offer online – you need a website that speaks to Google and tells it in every way possible what your website is about.

By being friendly with Google, the search engines will be friendly with you. They want to provide fresh, quality content to their internet surfers, and you just need to show them that you are a consistent source of new and valuable information.

Web Design and SEO Tips For the Newcomer

Find your Keywords!

Keywords – the words that people will use to find your website. Choosing the right keyword and being consistent with it is vital to your websites success in the search engines.

There are many tools on the market to help you make the right keyword decision. Tools such as Wordtracker will highlight keyword opportunities. We are looking for popular keywords in terms of expected traffic delivery but have a low competition score from other competing sites. This score can be called KEI.

KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index is a measure of performance. KEI is a ratio of business against competitiveness. The lower the KEI number the harder to get results in the search engine results pages.

As a general rule avoid any keyword with a KEI of under 0.1 as this will be very difficult to target and you could be wasting your efforts.

Go for longer, perhaps 3 word keyword phrases that carry good traffic. The benefits being that they are usually easier to target and provide better, more qualified traffic. Try to avoid broad, non specific terms.

Competitors to that keyword?

Find out how many backlinks your competitor sites have – there are many to choose from, just do a search for backlinks tool. They all give varying results but don’t get distracted by that, just find a tool and use that in all cases, this will ensure that the results you get are at least relative.

No1 competitor HTML

Have a good look at the top two or three websites HTML for that keyword. Have they done anything that you can improve upon? usually be looking closely at three different sites you can arrive at a best method to use for your site. Ensure that title, heading and other tags include your keywords – remember to be consistent as mentioned earlier.

Improve your HTML

Aim to write valid HTML code. The search engine robots prefer clean code and a valid site will usually guarantee that all of your site will get crawled. Always take the time to write original content too – avoid the copy / paste syndrome that plagues many sites. The search engines thrive on original content, make sure that they notice yours.

Search engines are always looking out for duplicate content and will choose not to display your pages for a given search if it thinks your site is not the originator.

Some HTML tips with SEO in mind:

Description tag – take the tine to write an appropriate description tag for every page of your site. Google will display this in it’s results pages and a well written description here should lead to more searchers actually clicking your link and becoming a visitor.

Title tag – This is probably the most important piece of HTML. Always include your keywords here and write an accurate keyword rich title tag for every page of your site.

Keywords tag – It is good practice to put a list of related keywords into this tag although don’t overdo it and do not include any keywords that are not relevant to your web page.

Keep the code clean, use DIVs and not Tables where possible as this has many benefits and it means the ratio of content to code is greater. Try to use your keywords in heading tags throughout the pages.

Take the time to write original copy that uses the chosen keywords throughout. Write the text for a human to read though and not as though you’ve written it for a search engine. Over use (or spamming) of keywords will work against you always.

Try to get the good text content as near to the top of your code as possible. You could use CSS positioning to help with this.

Navigation – Use keyword rich absolute text links with a title where possible and not relative links.

Link to the domain name itself when linking back to the homepage and not /index.html. The search engines will then find the content in one place and not try to index two URL’s – a very common mistake.

To target several keywords, create several pages to do this using the above methods. You cant expect one page to perform for everything.