About Search Engine Optimization

Optimization Design Tips

For search engine optimization, the most effective strategy is to treat your site as a whole and organize it by topics. Using a tree structure, start with broad content (main topics) at the top and then proceed down to more detailed material (subtopics).

For example, if you have a site about groceries, you should create a main "Fruit" page that links to an "Oranges" page that then links to a "Orange Juice" page which would be a subtopic of "Juice". You might also want a "Meat" page that links to "Steak" that links to "T-Bone".

Go as many levels deep as needed to create one page for each of your targeted keyword phrases. (see example below) Make sure each page has a unique and descriptive keyword phrase in the title.

Link vertically to the topics above and below as much as possible. Vertical linking will increase traffic to your home page by reinforcing your in-site Link Popularity.

Link horizontally across related topics, but avoid linking non-related topics. DO NOT link your " T-Bone " page to your "Juice" page! This will hurt your ranking on both.

Create several links to each page, and use your link descriptions to reinforce the theme by inserting your keyword phrase like this: <a href="keyword-phrase.html">Keyword Phrase</a>.

Be certain to put the exact keyword phrase in the file name, as shown in the example above. File names are one of the criteria search engines use to determine ranking. When the text link matches the file name you get a double impact on search results.

Help Spiders Crawl Your Site

Search Engine Optimization is useless if the spiders are not able to crawl your pages! Build a Site Map that allows a user to click through every page. This helps the search engine spider index all the pages. If you have more than 50 pages, create a multi-page, hierarchical site map with less than 50 links per page, because most spiders will not follow more than 50 links on one page.

If you have dynamic content, make sure the search engines can index it.

Read Search Engine Optimization of Dynamic Content.