Zee Designs

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines. The earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it typically will receive from the search engine.

SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and programming to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove features that might create barriers to a good search engine acceptance and ranking.

Unlike the “olden days” of SEO, current SEO requires far more than just adding the relevant keywords or submitting the site to the engines. Now, the search engines use sophisticated techniques to judge the relevance of each site. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different (undisclosed) criteria to avoid manipulation of rankings. The search engines continually change the criteria and their priorities.

These days, SEO is only part of a much broader website marketing focus where other online marketing strategies are used in cooperation with SEO to enhance traffic flow to the website. There are Search Engine Optimization Specialists who charge $1500 - $3000 per month to do all the work of keeping sites on top. It this is what you require, we would be happy to refer you.
 

These days, traditional SEO methods have become only part of a much broader website marketing focus. Other online and traditional marketing strategies can be used in conjunction with SEO to enhance traffic flow to the website. You market your website and your website markets you. That is the reason we request that you fill out a marketing questionnaire before we start SEO work for your site. It helps us know how to position you and which audiences to target.

There are Search Engine Optimization Specialists who charge $1500 - $3000 per month and spend hours doing all the work of keeping sites on top of Search Engine lists. If you are looking at less expensive alternatives, then you have to start out with an understanding of SEO, a good understanding of the audience you wish to reach, and a solid marketing strategy to supplement your SEO efforts.
 

Put your website address(es) on all letterheads, brochures, invoices, cards, menus, signs, ads, and promotional items. Zee Designs can help with marketing, design, and print services. Put your website addresses on your email signature. Mention your website to your clients and friends and new acquaintances at networking events.

When an older web site has had the same look for many years, the website may have a totally different look from your current print materials and organizational image. In such cases, it is wise to update the site to achieve a consistent branding. Sites with obsolete technology or a stale look detract from your image.

Virtually all the marketing opportunities listed on the Marketing Questionnaire are ways to promote your website as well as your business. The Marketing Questionnaire is a great tool to start you thinking about new opportunities, and the Zee Designs Team can help you create and implement a comprehensive plan.
 

You will do best when you can zero in on those who are most interested in what you have to offer. Who are your current clients, members, patients, audience members, or aficionados? Where are they located? How did they find you? What are they looking for and how are you currently helping them? The more you know about your current audience, the easier you can target your offerings and marketing to them and others like them.

Next, it is good to consider what markets you might have missed in the past. The easiest way to expand your business is to discover new niches, new ways to present the same products and information to different markets.

The easiest way to grow your business exponentially is to:

• Sell the same products or services to your current clients more frequently,
• Sell current clients new products or services related to existing ones, and
• Bring in new clients.

To increase the traffic to your website, to increase your business, it takes a plan that takes into account where you are now and what more you wish to achieve.
 

Search engines send out little animated “robots” to search the web for sites, to rate them, to categorize them, and to put the information about the sites in directories to reference as search results. These directories are indexed for rapid searches. Eventually they will find your site. You can also go to Yahoo! or Google and submit information about your own site. Zee Designs can register your site for you as part of a SEO project.

Most people, would like to be noticed in a way that lands them at the top of the listings rather than as listing number 45,379, and how to accomplish that is a totally different question!
 

Easy question, difficult answer.

1. Whose search results are you referring to and what are they searching for?
2. How much competition do you have in your field locally, nationally, and internationally, if applicable?
3. Are you local, national, or international in your targeted audience?
4. How are people going to look for you?

Doing a search on “restaurants” yields over 318,000,000 results on Google. Searching for restaurants in Las Vegas can generate between 977,000 and 13,400,000 results, depending on how people punctuate their search. If the searcher further qualifies the search by adding a type of food, it will cut down the list further. If you wish to have a high ranking for the people who are your most likely clients, then your first step is to consider how they will be looking for you! Then you can work with Zee Designs to determine how best to reach these people in a variety of ways.
 

This is a highly regarded secret, and every Search Engine uses a different set of methods which change over time – and some engines use several different methods, all on the same day! We can share what we’ve learned and help you come up with a solid strategy that can stand up over time. The reason methods constantly change is so that programmers are less likely to abuse the system.

For instance, it used to be that keywords played a major role in search ratings. Not true today. Programmers were putting words in keyword meta data for websites that had nothing to do with those topics, so search engine results were skewed. To guard the integrity of their results, the search engines started disregarding keywords or giving them lesser importance.

The same thing was also true of doorway pages. Doorway pages used to be the mark of a sophisticated site. Doorway pages are pages specifically made for the search engines, and now too often contain hundreds of links that are of little use to the user, or automatically redirect to advertising. This trend made the search engines downplay their value in the rankings. Now landing pages are used by sophisticated users for specific tracking purposes. For example, a client with a magazine ad wishes those links to go to a specific page. Another example is at the end of an online order, providing a link to a landing page of a complimentary site. Doorway pages are abusive to the system, and landing pages, done correctly, are not.

Search engines nowadays care much more about what others do in relation to your website than what you do (or have done) to your website yourself. That is, if you make a great site about widgets, how does Google know your widget site is better than others? Among other things, it will check to see how many other sites link to yours using the word "widget." ("Click here for info about widgets", "This is an awesome widgets site", etc.) There are other factors involved, including metadata, good URLs, how long your site has been around, but links are a big deal for Google - at least at the moment!

Know that there's no magic bullet. The best way to get a good position in search results is to become a valuable, authoritative resource for your chosen subject that people link and refer to frequently. You do that by creating great content and sharing it with everyone you can. A well programmed site that is updated periodically with content relevant to your topic is a good start and can be built on as time goes on.

Deciding how to use the various aspects of your website to enhance user response, satisfy the search engines, and fit into your overall marketing plan is a continuing process.

Keywords are still important—in a different way than in the past. Most search engines pay scant attention to meta tag keywords. The words used in the URL, in the page titles, and particularly in the content on the page, are important. Content is key, so use your keywords frequently (without being obnoxious and blatantly repetitive) and strategically on the page along with related wording in context.

There are many places where keywords can be used on a webpage including:

• Domain name – The domain is the name of the site, as in www.zeedesigns.com. When choosing a domain name to register, you can choose one that contains one of your keywords.
• The URL – The URL is the actual name of a specific page in the website. A URL could be a lot longer than a domain name. For instance, a URL could be: http://westmoreacademy.com/makeup-school-facts. The first part of the URL is usually the domain name with the name of the page and perhaps other information following. When using keywords in the URL, the first word after the slash is best, second is second best, etc.
• HTML Header components are entered by programmers and looked at by search engines.
  • Title tag – This is the text used when bookmarking a page, or saving as a browser Favorite. Use the keyword close to the beginning. The optimal length of the title is 10 - 60 characters with no special characters. The title appears to users in the title bar of the browser.
  • Description meta tag – It is used to show the theme and appears in some search results. The optimal length of the description is less than 200 characters. Search Engines no longer rely upon this tag for ranking, even though they will often use it as one part of their formula.
  • Keyword meta tag – It is used to show the theme, and using less than 10 words is optimal, with your keywords meta-tag total length between 200 and 500 characters. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text to avoid being penalized for irrelevance. When a single word appears more than twice as a keyword, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly has abandoned the use of this tag, although other search engines may use it.
• Page Content
  • The most important thing is to have content-rich pages that are congruent with your theme, and use keywords (and text that supports the keywords) believably.
  • Factors to be aware of include:
    • Keyword density in body text – Ratio of keywords to total text average 5 - 20% - (all keywords/total words). The ideal ratio can vary according to the topic. If you go over it could be seen as spamming.
    • Individual keyword density - 1 - 6% - (each keyword/total words)
    • Keyword use in heading text emphasizes the importance of the keyword.
    • Keyword font size can emphasize its importance
    • Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords) is good. Directly adjacent is best. For example, when someone searches for the words “scholarship golf tournament” and the website has those three words in the content together in that sequence, then the site would be given a higher relevance by the search engine than a site that has “scholarship” in the first sentence, “golf” in the third paragraph, and “tournament” in the last line.
    • Keyword phrase order - Does the word order in the page match word order in the search text? Try to anticipate what words people will use to search, and match the word order.
    • Keyword prominence (how early in page/tag does the keyword appear) can be important. Use in text at the top of the page in a bold large font. Be mindful of tasteful use of emphasizing text in this way so that it is readable and appropriate.
• Alt text (used with graphics) should describe the graphic - Avoid leaving it blank or filling it with meaningless or unrelated text that you think will appeal to search engines.
• Links to other pages within your site:
  • Put keywords in link text only if they make sense.
  • The filename "linked to" can contain the keywords.
  • Use hyphenated filenames, and not long ones - two or three hyphens only.
• Links to other sites – use the same guidelines as links to pages within your own site plus:
  • Only link to pages that are related to your subject matter, that expand on your theme, or supplement it.
  • Wherever possible, have sites that you link to return the favor and also link to your site. Reciprocal links boost your ratings.
  • Only link to high quality sites, sites that are relevant to your topics and are content-rich.
     

For keyword selection, try the Search tools available in Google AdWords. There are two tools that are very helpful: The Keyword Tool and the Search-Based keyword tool.

The Keyword Tool lets you enter the URL of your business website, or of any site related to your business. The AdWords system will then scan your page and then suggest relevant keywords – which may turn up enlightening surprises. It works best with short keywords of one or two words in length to make it easier for Google to determine the most important words and deliver appropriate alternatives. It also allows you to find keywords based on your site content when you use the Website Content option. The keyword tool can help you identify synonyms or tailor results to a language or location.

The Search-based Keyword Tool is similar to the Keyword tool except that it uses your own URLs to display a list of relevant user queries that have occurred on Google.com with some frequency over the past year; these suggestions can be found under the Keywords tab, in the "New keywords related to (site)" section. In the “Keywords related to your search” section, you can see a broad list of keyword ideas that may also be relevant.

These tools can give you an idea whether the keywords you are using for your site really match the content that is present, a key item affecting search ranking.
 

There are many places where keywords can be used on a webpage including:

• Domain name – The domain is the name of the site, as in www.zeedesigns.com. When choosing a domain name to register, you can choose one that contains one of your keywords.
• The URL – The URL is the actual name of a specific page in the website. A URL could be a lot longer than a domain name. For instance, a URL could be: http://westmoreacademy.com/makeup-school-facts. The first part of the URL is usually the domain name with the name of the page and perhaps other information following. When using keywords in the URL, the first word after the slash is best, second is second best, etc.
• HTML Header components are entered by programmers and looked at by search engines.
  • Title tag – This is the text used when bookmarking a page, or saving as a browser Favorite. Use the keyword close to the beginning. The optimal length of the title is 10 - 60 characters with no special characters. The title appears to users in the title bar of the browser.
  • Description meta tag – It is used to show the theme and appears in some search results. The optimal length of the description is less than 200 characters. Search Engines no longer rely upon this tag for ranking, even though they will often use it as one part of their formula.
  • Keyword meta tag – It is used to show the theme, and using less than 10 words is optimal. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text to avoid being penalized for irrelevance. When a single word appears more than twice as a keyword, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly has abandoned the use of this tag, although other search engines may use it.
• Page Content
  • The most important thing is to have content-rich pages that are congruent with your theme and use keywords (and text that supports the keywords) believably.
  • Factors to be aware of include:
    • Keyword density in body text – Ratio of keywords to total text average 5 - 20% - (all keywords/total words). The ideal ratio can vary according to the topic. If you go over it could be seen as spamming.
    • Individual keyword density - 1 - 6% - (each keyword/total words)
    • Keyword use in heading text emphasizes the importance of the keyword.
    • Keyword font size can emphasize its importance
    • Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords) is good. Directly adjacent is best. For example, when someone searches for the words “scholarship golf tournament” and the website has those three words in the content together in that sequence, then the site would be given a higher relevance by the search engine than a site that has “scholarship” in the first sentence, “golf” in the third paragraph, and “tournament” in the last line.
    • Keyword phrase order - Does the word order in the page match word order in the search text? Try to anticipate what words people will use to search, and match the word order.
    • Keyword prominence (how early in page/tag does the keyword appear) can be important. Use in text at the top of the page in a bold large font. Be mindful of tasteful use of emphasizing text in this way so that it is readable and appropriate.
• Alt text (used to caption graphics) should describe the graphic - Avoid leaving it blank or filling it with meaningless or unrelated text that you think will appeal to search engines.
• Links to other pages within your site
  • Put keywords in link text only if they make sense.
  • The filename "linked to" can contain the keywords.
  • Use hyphenated filenames, and not long ones - two or three hyphens only.
• Links to other sites – use the same guidelines as links to pages within your own site plus:
  • Only link to pages that are related to your subject matter, that expand on your theme, or supplement it.
  • Wherever possible, have sites that you link to return the favor and also link to your site. Reciprocal links boost your ratings.
  • Only link to high quality sites, sites that are relevant to your topics and are content-rich.
     

Using too many keywords will backfire, marking your site as a potential spam site. In the early days of search engine optimization, people would put their keywords all over the page in the same color as the background, boosting the number of times the words were used. They’d even use high volume-producing words, even if the words had nothing to do with their site. Search engines are much more sophisticated these days, so if the percentage of keywords on a page is too high or the keywords don’t match the content, either the site will get a low rating or be banned!

File Size
Smaller files (<40K) are preferred. ZD-CMS™ websites separate the formatting from the html pages, resulting in much smaller file sizes and cleaner content, both of which search engines love.

Hyphens in the Domain Name
Hyphens are used in domain names to make them easier to read and to indicate spaces, which are unusable. One or two hyphens can be excellent for separating keywords (i.e., pet-smart, pets-mart). Four or more can look like spam to a search engine. Ten or more are seen as spam, with rank demotion probable.

Freshness of Pages
Rankings are higher if the site changes over time, and when the site involves news, retail, or auction, the more recent the better! More frequent updates draw frequent spidering, which means the cached information the search engine has is more recent, which can improve your ranking. Some search engines look at the ratio of old pages to new pages.

Freshness of links may be good or bad: excellent for high-trust sites, perhaps worse for newer, low-trust sites. Search engines take care to ensure that spam sites where masses of links are updated daily from databases receive lower rankings.

Page Theming
Create the page content on the website to exhibit a clear and consistent theme and general consistency. Use your search terms, and also words that are similar to some or all of those terms, including plurals and synonyms.

URL length
Keep it less than the 2,000 characters allowed by Internet Explorer to be safe - less than 100 is even better. The ZD-CMS™ uses “pretty URLs,” which means the domain name is followed by a slash and a page title or record title without special characters, numbers, which search engines don’t like. Short, understandable, keyword relevant, and search engine friendly.

Site Size
Search Engines like big sites because larger sites are presumed to be more professional, better funded, better organized, better constructed, and therefore better sites. This can backfire if the site content is sparse or incongruent with the purported topic. Small sites with better content are preferred to large ones that have been generated artificially to look large.

Site Age
Sites that have been around longer do better than new sites when they have been updated over time. New pages on an older site will get faster recognition. There is often a temporary boost for very new sites - from one (1) week to three (3) weeks in Google and Yahoo.

Navigation within your own site
Ensure all links to other pages on your own site are valid and that you can get to any page in 2-4 clicks. ZD-CMSTM websites already have the efficient, logical, consistent, and conventional navigation with a tree-like structure the search engines prefer. Appropriate links between lower-level pages also enhance rankings. ZD-CMSTM websites have these built in.

Navigation outside your own site

• Link only to sites that are congruent with your purpose and periodically monitor these sites for changes. Links can and do go bad, so you may end up unknowingly linking to a page that has different content than when you originally linked to it.
• Do not link to “link farms.” A link farm is a Web site that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites.
• Ensure that outgoing links are on topic, with descriptive wording.
• Avoid changing links on a page continually. Keep them relatively stable over time.
• Ensure that all external links (links to sites other than your own) are valid. Check all links periodically.
• Use fewer than 100 links outside your site unless you have a very large site.

Visitor behavior can affect page ranking:
Search engines can glean traffic information Internet Server Providers and other available network resources. Google Toolbar is a less desirable way to get visitor behavior information. If you install the toolbar and enable page ranking, it will show the ranking of the sites you visit. The downside is that it slows your page loading as it starts tracking everything you personally do online. You lose all privacy, which is one of the many reasons Zee Designs does not recommend using the tool bar. The Google Toolbar comes bundled with many software packages you might install from CD or DVD, as well as many of those you might download from the web. There is always a way to opt out of installing, so use vigilance. If accidentally installed, it can be uninstalled easily.

Things that search engines look at with respect to visitor behavior:

• Page traffic - # of visitors, trend
• Page Selection Rate - How often is a page visited?
• Time spent on page - Relatively long time = indicates relevance hit
• Bookmark add/ removal frequency - Bookmarks are a good sign. The more recent the better, the more frequent the better.
• How they left, where they went - Back button, link clicked, etc.

Zee Designs has Website Usage statistics that are automatically generated so you can monitor these trends. We can also install Google Analytics if you prefer that method of tracking your site’s information.

Site Metrics (Traffic Statistics) can affect page ranking:

• Site Traffic - # of visitors, increasing trend is seen as good
• Are the sites that link to your site highly rated sites?
• Keyword searches used to find you.
• Time visitor spent on domain. A relatively long time indicates a relevant hit.

Domain Owner Behavior:

• If you register for 5 years or more, engines knows you are serious. Register for 1 year, they wonder if it is a throw-away domain.
• Are associated sites legitimate? This is one very good reason to own .org, .biz, .info versions of your domain.

Note: For ALL the POSITIVE factors listed above, PAGE RANK (how many links from other quality sites point to your website) can OVERRIDE them all. The next section on Incoming Links will explain all about Page Rank.

Incoming Links:

• Page Rank is based on the Number and Quality of links to you. To find out your Total incoming links ("backlinks"):
  • in Yahoo search, type in: linksite:www.domain-name.com linkdomain:www.domain-name.com
  • in MSN try: http://beta.search.msn.com and Use link:www.domainname.com
• Acceleration of link popularity can be good or bad. If it happens too fast, search engines may consider it an artificial boost caused by cheating in some way.
• Page ranks of referring pages (pages that link to you) indicate the quality of links to you.
• Link text of inbound links to you may rank higher if it contains keywords or key phrases.
• Age of link – Older is better.
• Frequently changing link text is considered a suspect practice, and search engines assume the links are automatically generated in some way.
• Popularity of referring page – High popularity = desirability, respect.
• Number of outgoing links on the referring page - Fewer is better because it makes yours more important.
• Position of link on referring page - Early in HTML is best.
• Keyword density on referring page - Numerous compatible search keyword(s) “proves” relevance.
• HTML title of referring page
• When the referring page has the same, similar, or related subject or theme it boosts results. Links from sites with unrelated themes lower your rank.
• Link from "Expert" sites are a big time boost. For example, if your website is linked to by The New York Times, it counts for more than if it is linked to by Mervin’s Roadkill Review.
• Image map or javascript links may be seen as a way to hide a link.

Too much of a good thing, shortcuts, or tricky programming can create unintended consequences!

Avoid:

• Text presented in graphics form only, without ACTUAL text on the page. Text represented graphically is invisible to search engines. Using alt tags for images is good for screen readers and search engines. This is a ZDI standard procedure.
• Affiliate sales sites with little or no unique content are seen as placeholders. Customize any affiliate sites you have to make them your own.
• Over Optimization - over-compliance with well-established, accepted web optimization practices can get you in trouble. "Red Flags" may include:
  
  • Too high keyword repetition (keyword stuffing)
  • Overuse of H1 tags
  • Meta tag stuffing – using too many tags
• Links to bad neighborhoods, like link farms, Free-For-All sites (sites that allow anyone to add a link). Check EVERY site you link to periodically. A site may go "bad," and you can end up being penalized, even though you did nothing wrong. For instance, some failed sites have been taken over by unscrupulous webmasters, just for the traffic. This is not good for you, if you think you are linking to the originally legitimate URL.
• Forwarding your visitor to another page other than the one he/ she clicked on, (using meta refresh) will lower your rank.
• Vile language such as ethnic slurs or the George Carlin seven (7) bad words you can't say on TV, plus the 150 or so that followed lower your rank. Be sensitive to combinations of normal words, which when used together, become something else entirely.
• Poison words - The word "Links" in a title tag has been suggested to be a bad idea. There are many other words that go in and out of fashion or suggest spam.
• Excessive cross-linking - If you have many sites (>10) with the same web host, prolific cross-linking (linking to each other) can indicate that the sites are more of a single entity than separate sites. Easy to spot, easy to penalize.
• Stealing images and text blocks from another domain
• Copyright violation – Search engines respond strongly if you are reported.
• Keyword dilution - Targeting too many unrelated keywords on a page, which detract from the theme, reduces the importance of your REALLY important keywords.
• Page edits - can reduce consistency in your keywords. If your last edit substantially altered your keywords or theme, the search engine may draw information from both the new page and the saved information from the old page, reducing your rank. Over time this will correct.
• Frequency of Content Change - Too frequent changes lowers your rank as much as too infrequent updates. News sites are an exception to this rule.
• Pages generated from databases - These kinds of pages can be shielded from the web spiders and the ZD-CMS™ takes care of this. One disadvantage of some other content managers is that they are unable to provide this built-in service.
• Excessive Javascript used for redirects, or hiding links.
• Flash pages - Provide an HTML alternative, or experience lower ranks. Even with the progress that has been made in the past few years, Flash sites are still more difficult for most search engines to navigate.
• Use of Frames – Spiders still have problems with Frames, which is one of the many reasons that frames are rarely used in modern websites.
• Robot exclusion "no index" tag in the header programming where inappropriate - Intentional self-exclusion can be a positive strategy that redirects the spiders away from pages you wish to remain private or which would lower your ranking if included.
• Single pixel links - A red flag for one reason only: this is a sneaky link, a trick that unscrupulous programmers used to play that modern search engines are too smart to miss.
• Invisible text - The text is the same color as the background, so is unseen by the viewer. It is still visible to the search engine spiders and seen as an attempt to manipulate rank.
• Duplicate content –Engines pick one (usually the oldest), and shoves it to the top, and pushes the second choice down, often far down.
• HTML code violations - Simple and correct HTML verification contributes to your page quality score and increases the rankings. Zee Designs web pages are clean and correct.
• Spam-like phrasing - Some phrases have been associated and correlated with known spamming techniques, so you will be penalized when using them.
• Traffic Buying - Have you paid a company for web traffic? It is probably low quality traffic, with a zero conversion rate.
• Rapid incoming link accumulation (often accomplished through the tactic of link buying) -  Old links are valued, new links are not.
• Using obsolete terminology - The meaning of words can change over time, due to current events. For example, “twitter” and “tweet” mean something different today than they did years ago.
• Zero links to your site - You MUST have at least one (1) incoming link (back link) from some website somewhere, that Google is aware of, to remain in the search index.
• Link-buying - Google hates link-buying, because it corrupts their PR model in the worst way possible. Does your page have links it really doesn't merit? Did you get tons of links in a short time period? Do you have links from high-PR, unrelated sites? Any of these things may make your site suspect.
• Cloaking - Presenting one webpage to the search engine spider, and another webpage to everybody else. This is done via the server, delivering content based on the IP addresses or the header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a script on the server delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. Google promises to ban any site that does this.
• Violating Terms of Service
• Poor Server Reliability - over >99.9% is good. Zee Designs delivers this with their hosting. What is your uptime?

Things you may not have much control over include:

• No more room in the search directory – Because of the sheer number of sites today, adding up to many millions of pages, some pages of large sites are being dropped from the directory. The assumption is that only the “most important” pages on a large site are worth tracking. After people get to right part of the site, they will find the page they require. Balancing this is the fact that larger sites get points for their size.
• Rank Manipulation by Competitor Attack – Some businesses use hijacking, redirection, and content theft to ruin their competitors.
• Search Engines change their ranking factors and priorities – on a daily basis – sometimes more than once a day. This means your ranking may change without warning.

It is important to be vigilant, check your ranking and traffic, and make modifications when required.

Back links or reciprocal links are links to your site from a site that your site links to.

Search engines have directories and they are good places to be, if they are one of the main directories like Google or Yahoo. Some trade organizations have their own directories, and they are good places to go to if you are interested in targeted niche markets. Directory listing is a boost only if the directories that link to you are real directories, rather than link farms, and respected in their niche markets, which requires that you understand your markets. Some directories require payment to belong, notably Yahoo!

Search engines index the sites they accept for rapid search results. If you wish to be found by the people you wish to reach, it is important that the search engines properly categorize your site through the keywords and the content that you use to back it up.

The type of domain is an important indicator of the content of a site.

• .gov sites seem to be the highest status because they are verifiably “official.”
• .edu sites seem to be given a high status for the same reason.
• .org sites seem to be given a high status because they are noncommercial.
• .com, .biz, .info, or similar types of sites are often used by spammers, resulting in the need for higher scrutiny.

In addition, the technology and the programming used can affect search engine rankings. For example, sites programmed with frames or as flash-only sites are at a disadvantage.
 

Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a finite space without wrecking page design. Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie explaining a complex product. Art and entertainment sites have a real need for multimedia, and Flash is the perfect solution.

As part of a total solution, Flash is great! As the basis for an entire website, it introduces challenges for Search Engine Optimization. While Flash sites are graphics-based, Search Engines are text-based. For years the two worlds had trouble intersecting.

In recent years, Flash has been billed as having added new features that make it more conducive to SEO, and Google has bragged about its ability to handle Flash files. Despite all this, trusting Flash content to get good SEO results is like trusting a Seattle summer wedding to be rain-free. It could happen, but no one would call it a wise bet. The interfaces between Flash and the search engines is still too new and there are issues to overcome.

• Low ranking based on links:
  • There's no way to link to individual elements on a page unless the Flash developer is specifically building for this scenario - and even then, there's almost always some portions that are missed.
  • Some Flash content is only linked-to by other Flash content wrapped inside shell Flash pages which means some very low Page Rank documents.
  • Flash Doesn't Earn External Links Like HTML. An all-Flash site might get a large number of links to the homepage, but interior pages almost always suffer. People can’t copy and paste a few quotes into their own pages and link to your site.
• Keywords and other SEO Basics Ranking Features Are Often Missing.
  • Google can index the files in the SWF to see words and phrases, but in Flash, most text isn't in nice clean format tags and may be rendered inaccurately.
  • Anchor text, headlines, bold/strong text, img alt tags, and even title tags are not simple elements to properly include in Flash, and 9 times out of 10, the designer won't build them in properly. Developing Flash with SEO in mind is not just more difficult than doing it in HTML, it's not part of the cultural lexicon of the Flash-development world.
• Those creepy-crawly spiders get lost
  • Google's Flash-crawling technology is proprietary, and while we all know and can test what search engines see from a content and link perspective in HTML, there's no "test my site's Flash file crawlability" feature so we don’t know how the engine's going to translate your material.
  • A Lot of Flash Isn't Even Crawlable. Google said they don't execute external javascript calls (which many Flash-based sites use) or index the content from external files called by Flash (which, again, a lot of Flash sites rely on). These limitations could severely impact what a visitor can see vs. what Googlebot can index.

(Note: Adapted from the SEOmoz Blog, where you can learn more about Search Engine Optimization.)

Hoping that search engines can decipher your Flash is not a substitute for providing index-able HTML content. There are things that can be done to make Flash sites more accessible to Search Engines and Zee Designs can help.
 

Your site can be made into a hybrid site that contains both Flash and HTML elements.

Any content you embed in these files can also be available in text format to be accessible to search engines. Providing text-based equivalents of these files can help other search engines crawl and index your content. In addition, a text-based version of your site will let viewers using older browsers or mobile phones access your content easily. However, now that Google can index Flash in greater depth, there is the potential problem of duplicate content with sites that have an alternate HTML version for users without Flash player installed, and duplications are frowned on.

There are other, more sophisticated programming methods that use javascript for embedding and retrieving the information in the Flash files.

Zee Designs can help you evaluate your Flash-based website to determine which approach would work best for you.
 

Many Content Management Systems use technologies that do not interface well with search engines. The ZD-CMSTM was created with SEO in mind.

Meaningful, linkable URLs

The ZD-CMS™ provides simple, meaningful URLs for all website pages. Not every CMS does this. For example, here's a URL from the Joomla CMS:

http://www.vegas-events.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

There's no indication what kind of content is on that page. You won't know until you visit it. After redoing the above site in the ZD-CMS™, the URL became:

http://upstatevegasevents.com/testimonials

Now you can tell immediately what's on that page (and so can the search engines). It's also easier to link to from an email or to tell someone over the phone. Search engines will rank it higher, also, because the URL is understandable and congruent with the content.

Clean HTML/CSS

Our sites are created using cutting-edge standards for code. Pages generated by our system are clean and as free as possible of clutter, which makes it easier for search engines (and accessibility software) to understand the meaning of the pages. Google is blind: it can't see cool designs; all it cares about is the semantic interpretation of your site - the meaning. Our sites are structured behind the scenes with this in mind.

Progressive Enhancement

Zee Designs uses JavaScript extensively on our sites to enhance the user experience and add a "wow" factor. At the same time, we realize that not everyone has JavaScript enabled: in particular, disabled persons and search engines. We reconcile our desire for fancy visuals with the needs of disabled users (including search engines) by using a technique called progressive enhancement.

Progressive enhancement means we start with a site that works for everyone, regardless of their abilities, technical or otherwise. Next, we use JavaScript to enhance the experience for those who have it. If you don't have JavaScript, that's fine, the site will work, and you'll be able to access everything. If you do have JavaScript (around 95% of users do), you'll get a little bit of extra smoothness and sparkle as a bonus.

Metadata

Each site and each page within a site can have metadata associated with it, such as keywords, description, author, and so on. This helps search engines get a feel for what kind of content a page contains. Search engines are always looking for meaning, and metadata helps communicate important chunks of information directly to them in a machine-readable format.
 

Nothing is ever done when it comes to Search Engine Optimization because the industry is constantly changing. There are always new opportunities. Websites require maintenance, and it takes work to remain at the top of the rankings.

It is entirely up to you, your business plan, and your financial situation. There are companies that charge upwards of $1500 per month, just to manage a site’s SEO on an ongoing basis. For most people this is overkill. Zee Designs will be happy to refer you if you require this level of special care.