Search Engine Optimization

Let me start off by saying that there is a lot of search engine optimization companies out there with shady practices. All of them will tell you that they can make you #1 on Google and that they can optimize your site better than whatever company is doing it now. Keep in mind that these companies are trying to sell you their services so it's not like their going to say "yup, you have done everything just right and there's no services we can provide you with." Don't get me wrong. There are some quite good SEO companies out there. You just need to be weary of who you select. Like anything else, if what they tell you is too good to be true, then it probably is. With all that being said, there are things you can do to improve your websites rank within the search results and any website design company should be following these basic practices.

• Keyword Selection - When you begin a website the most important part of search engine optimization is your keyword selection. Don't select 100 keywords because you will only be able to give each one a small amount of attention. A good amount of keywords is around 4 or 5. Your keywords can be search 'phrases" that consist of 2 or three words as well. If you were one of your customers, what would you be typing into the search box to find your services? A few good tools to use in researching your keywords / keyphrases are: Google Keyword Tool, Google Trends, and Google insights

• Meta Tags - Many search engines don't utilize the "keyword" and "description" meta-tags anymore but it is still good practice to code them anyway. There are tons of tags and this is not meta-tag 101 so we'll just cover what I consider to be a well rounded set of meta-tags that should be used. Ill do this by defining that meta-tags that I've used in my own site design:
  • <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    • This defines the type of content and the character set that the web page uses
  • <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en">
    • This defines what language your web page content is written in.
  • <meta name="keywords" content="web design, web designer, website designer, website design, Lewisville, Plano, Frisco, Little Elm, Denton">
    • This meta-tag defines your keywords that your site is going to be focusing on.
  • <meta name="description" content="Jeremys Portal is a website design company in Little Elm, TX. We design custom websites tailored to your unique needs.">
    • The "description" meta-tag does not affect your search results but DOES show up IN search results
  • <meta name="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, FOLLOW">
    • You can use this tag to tell a search engine to index your page or not
  • <meta name="Author" CONTENT="Jeremy Ray">
    • Tells who is the author of the displayed content.
  • <meta name="ICBM" content="33.174966, -96.925372">
    • This is a micro-data geo-location. It's good to use these in a website design for any business that has a specific location.
  • <meta name="geo.position" content="33.174966;-96.925372">
    • This is another micro-data geo-location. It's good to use these in a website design for any business that has a specific location.
  • <meta name="geo.placename" content="Little Elm, Texas">
    • This is another micro-data geo-location. It's good to use these in a website design for any business that has a specific location.
  • <meta name="geo.region" content="us-tx">
    • This is another micro-data geo-location. It's good to use these in a website design for any business that has a specific location.
  • <meta name="zipcode" content="75068" >
    • This is another micro-data geo-location. It's good to use these in a website design for any business that has a specific location.
  • <meta itemprop="name" content="Website design company in Little Elm, TX.">
    • This is a micro-data item property.
  • <meta itemprop="description" content="Jeremys Portal is a website design company in Little Elm, TX. We design custom websites tailored to your unique needs.">
    • This is another micro-data item property.
  • <meta itemprop="image" content="http://www.jeremysportal.com/images/web-design.png">
    • This is another micro-data item property

• Image Names - All of your images should have proper file names that incorporate your keywords. Your image file names should not be mvc0025.jpg. They should have a name relating to your key phrases and describing the image. For example: in my website design the file name for the "Featured Site" image is "featured-website-design.jpg" All images should also have meaningful "alt tags" defined. Properly defining your alt tags will also help keep your website design html-compliant as well as ensuring usability for the impaired.

• HTML File Names - Just as with image files, your html files should have proper file names that incorporate your keywords.

• Page Title - the title tag should be properly defined and be different for each page. It also helps if your title contains some of your keywords.

• Inbound Links - The more websites that link to yours, the more important the search engines think you are. How you get them is up to you, but just get them. Lots of them!

• Content - Last and probably the most important part of any website design in the content. search engines strive to provide users with relevant content. provide lots of content and make sure it is rich with your keywords. I think that website owners should always write their own content because no one knows you business like you do. When your done writing the content, a good website design and development company should be able to consult you thru producing a final draft that's full of your keywords without it sounding stupid.

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