As the economy begins to recover in certain parts of the world, more and more online marketers are looking for affordable ways to drive qualified traffic to their sites. That’s why, now more than ever, you need to optimize your site for the search engines.
How to Optimize Your Website for Both Google & Inktomi
The search engine environment continues to evolve rapidly, easily outpacing the ability of consumers and SEO practitioners to quickly adapt to the new landscape.
How to Optimize for Inktomi in 2004
Inktomi is a rising star in the search engine wars, and it is likely that they will soon challenge Google for the title of most relevant search engine. While the majority of webmasters these days would rather optimize for Google and hope for the best in Inktomi, this strategy will need to be shifted for the year 2004. No longer should Google optimization be the only method for which webmasters promote their sites. We discovered in past Google updates that reliance on one search engine for unique visitors is a short sighted and bad strategy. If your rankings tank, then so does your traffic. In order to take the sting out of lost rankings you will either have to work hard to get the rankings back or redo your strategy altogether. So be warned, if you are not in Google and not in Inktomi in 2004, then you might as well remain invisible.
Optimize Your Website At Design Stages
Are you now thinking, what does this mean? Let me just say that most of my customers could have had their websites rectified whilst still in the design stage instead of costly repairs once finished. This does not only go for those who pay, but more than ever, those who learn web design for themselves to design and manage their own website. The costly ones are generally those who pay a web designer as they have no knowledge of web design and thus need to pay for all the repairs to be made by an SEO, whereas someone with a little skill in design can simply make most of the modifications themselves, making a much lower cost.
How To Optimize Your Google Description
When it comes to describing your site, Google assembles what is known as a snippet description to display in their search results. Sometimes it’s a good description – one that prompts potential visitors to click on your link. Other times, it isn’t. Take the case in point where the following page (ranked at #1) in a keyword search for scuba dive “entices” the potential site visitor by listing the various PADI locations from around the world…
Optimize Your Home Page for New Visitors
BabyCenter.com is one of my favorite sites. With a big red arrow in the center of the page, accompanied by “Start Here!” this site stands out simply because it devotes the central area of its home page to addressing the needs of first-time visitors. (Figure 1)
Forget High Rank: Optimize For User Queries
I am constantly amazed by the search engine optimization (SEO) dialog that centers on page content. Statements like, “I want my page to come up first on the search engine” or “My page is first on Google” are signs that the person just does not understand the challenge. Search engine results start not with the page but with the user query, and that is what we have to understand and manage in order to develop a customer-centric Web strategy.
Optimize Your Graphics for the Web
Heavy graphics cost you money and traffic. They cost you money because heavy graphics require both significant storage space and bandwidth.
Which keywords should you optimize your site for?
In this article, we focus on the correct way of finding out the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines. This article will give you the formula for the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) – a mathematical formula which I have developed to help you determine which keywords you should be optimizing your site for.
Optimize Your Graphics for a Fast Loading Site
Heavy graphics cost you money and traffic. They cost you money because heavy graphics require both significant storage space and bandwidth. Since your web host will usually give you a limited amount of storage space and a maximum data transfer allowance, heavy graphics can cause you to exceed those limits, in which case you’ll have to pay extra.