Laying the Foundation for SEO Success

Everyone wants to be number one—so how can your site rise to the top on popular search engines?

Here are some SEO fundamentals that you can do now to help you in achieving top rankings.

First, your Web site’s architecture needs to be optimized. When a site’s architecture features a clear hierarchy, text links, and CSS--robots and spiders will be able to more effectively index your site.

Organize your navigation based on keyword phrases that are representative of your site. Further, if your site has many pages, link to the most important pages from every page of your site (top-level and sub-level navigation), and link to the other pages from section header pages and/or a site map.

Other building blocks of achieving a high-ranking site include:

• Unique page titles – Each page on your site should have a unique title (about seven words in length). As page titles are the main draw for visitors and weigh heavily in the algorithms of all the major search engines, make sure you start your page title with a keyword and end with a call to action.
• Powerful content - Use text that your company's target audience will type into search queries. If you're selling CAD software, make that a ubiquitous term in page headings, descriptions, navigational buttons, etc. Experts say keyword density in content should be in the 5%-20% range.
• Thoughtful design – Use more text than HTML elements for maximum search engine indexing. Other design-related barriers to spidering include the use of Flash, frames, and JavaScript--so keep it simple. Have your images take advantage of keyword-rich alt text as well.

In our next blog, we will discuss more building blocks and sum up the basics.