Winnipeg Web Design

Search Engine Positioning

This topic has come up quite frequently in the past couple projects I have worked on. The common question is usually asked “Can you guarantee that our company will be first on GOOGLE?” My answer always is that I can’t. There are far too many factors involved that I have no control over, but there are the few I do.

• First off, code in a semantic way. Use h1 tags for the most important titles, h2 for the next important etc.. Don’t use an h5 just because its smaller. All these attributes can be changed later with a technology called CSS.
• I have heard this many times “Content is King”. A lot of times we put way too much emphasis on how a site looks, instead of what we should put on it. You know what? Google does not index your graphics. It crawls through your site and grabs the text on your site.
• Use the title tag appropriately. This is what actually shows up as your heading when your site is found on google. On the left should be your most specific keywords, such as the page name.
• Avoid long dynamic urls such as index.php?page=mypage&section=mysection&prodID=5. Instead use your friend mod_rewrite to make your url more google friendly. http://brenelz.com/My-Page/My-Section/Widgets
• Most importantly, design your site for a HUMAN, not for a search engine. People have tried to cheat the system for a long time now, and google notices and might even ban you. If you design your site with accessibility in mind, google will reward you in return

Related posts:

1. Part 5: Online Marketing and Search Engine Marketing
2. MAMA – Search Engine for a Web Pages Structure
3. Search Engine Friendly URLS

Written by Brenley Dueck