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What is Search Engine Optimization? There's a science behind driving traffic to your site.
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Web or Print? There's a big difference. This article is a good starting point. The more my clients know about what goes into a web or graphic design project, the better.
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I spent 12 years in the software testing field. Much of that was spent testing websites on different browsers and operating systems. Think your site is okay if it works on your single browser? Not quite. Browser testing is essential during the development process. Click this link to see some browser-specific bugs that every web developer must deal with.
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Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process that can help a web page appear higher in search engine rankings. Ideally, you want your site to appear when searchers enter specific keywords in a search engine. For example, say you are a candy store owner in Burbank. If someone uses Google to look for “candy Burbank” you would want your web site to appear near or at the top of the list of search results.

SEO is especially important for commercial enterprises where there is a significant amount of competition. While a web site can certainly benefit from SEO, note that there are many factors that come into play, such that there is no way to guarantee a specific ranking in the search results. There is now way to ensure, for example, that your site will appear at number one on Google. Still, SEO should be taken into consideration.

Keywords Are Key!

The first step in optimization is to determine which keywords visitors use most in searching for what your site is offering. Each keyword, and related synonyms will be checked to determine their individual effectiveness. Those ranking highest will be used in each of the pages of the site. This is a vital step since many keywords either aren't highly effective or have too much competition (try searching for "sunglasses" and see how many results are returned). We also need to take into account:

  • Keyword Weight (the total number of keywords per page)
  • Keyword Density (the number of times keywords are used in body copy)
  • Text Quality (more descriptive and useful text on a page tends to rank higher)

Okay, Let's Optimize!

Optimization, simply defined, is preparing a web page to be indexed by search engines. This is accomplished in several ways. Once the proper keywords are determined, these need to be placed in several areas to maximize the chance for inclusion in search engine indexes. Keywords need to appear in several places on a page to accomplish this. In essence, the more places keywords or descriptive text appears on a site, the better the chances are that the pages will be indexed by search engines.

Off-the-page Factors

"Off-the-page" factors concern those things that are not in the web pages themselves, but which aid greatly in getting search engines to rank a page higher. These include:

  • Inclusion of links to other sites (which helps establish your page as an “expert” or “authority”).
  • Having your site listed in various directories
  • If possible, having other sites link to yours.

Each of these contribute to a greater “link popularity.” Search engines tend to rank those pages higher that have outside links pointing to them.

Submit, I Tell You!

Once optimized, the site will be submitted via software to search engines. In most cases, these search engines may have already found and indexed your site (by using their “spiders” or “bots” which have already “crawled” through your pages). In addition, manual submission will be performed when necessary.