| Building a Search Engine Friendly Website
How to prepare your website, at the beginning, for SEO
Search Engines are often unpredictable, and sometimes it
takes months and much effort to improve performance of your
site’s listing. Everyone will tell you about the link
building and site’s popularity. But first of all, before
doing any SEO effort, your site should be Search
Engine-ready. Whether you are just staring out the
development of the website, either in-house or with the
development firm, or updating your existing site, below points you should
definitely follow (use it as a checklist) – all pertaining to Web site
development assuming you have developed the list of top 1-2
keywords. If you choose one, it’ll be easier to maintain
your site and get better results.
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Create proper URL “filing” system |
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When creating locations for your pages, use short but
keyword-descriptive structure. For example, with keyword
“web design”, put top product pages in to /web-design/
folder, name your files web-design-package1.htm, so that the
link will look like this:
www.mysite.com/web-design/web-design-package1.htm.
Keep
similar structure for all your pages.
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Provide quality content, especially on the home page |
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It is very important to provide high-quality content for
your product. Include keywords in the copy and integrate
hot-links (see below) to the internal pages. Keep good
ration between keyword and surrounding text.
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Hot-link from your pages, don’t use images |
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Use keyword-oriented text, implant hot-links (direct text
link) to the navigation to internal pages. Basically, when
you want to provide a link to the next page, try not to use
images (see point below), and use keyword in the link:
Instead of “View our products” link, use “View our web
design products” (assuming your main keyword is “web
design”). On any link (text or image) add a title tag using
your keywords (<a href=”sample url” title=”web design
services pricing”>View Web design prices</a>)
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Limit number of links on the page |
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The more links you have, the less value each of the
following those links pages have. Use only those that are
important to you and ALWAYS try to put the keyword.
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Limit flash images and re-design
gif/jpg images |
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Search Engines can not recognize flash images, and can not
read (at least for now) the text inside the image. Whenever
you can, avoid creating images for the text-driven messages.
For example, if you want to create a pretty header for each
of your products, consider creating a little icon to go in
front of your header written in text. Using Buttons? Cut out
top, sides and bottoms of the button shape and create an
inside section where you can simply write the name of the
button in html.
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Create separate meta tags for each page
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Avoid duplication of your title/description tags – Search
Engines may assume it’s the same page, especially if you
also reuse the same body content on multiple pages. Create
independent tags using keywords in the title and
description. Remember, that this is the information that is
visible on the browser, so “sell” your product to get an
in-bound link.
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Use Header tags on each page |
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For content headers on each page, use <H1> and <H2> tags,
instead of <font> tags, and use keywords in each. Search
engines will put priority on these tags.
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Provide text shortcut links from your home page |
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Add text hot-links from your home page to your main product
pages utilizing keywords. Example, on the very top of your
content, add a line of links: “web design overview | web
design product1 | web design product2”
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Keep your code clean - Use little script on the page, or
hide it |
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If you are using script (java script for example) on your
home page, it will take valuable space in the page code and
“dilute” your valuable content in search engines’ eyes. If
you must use any type of script, you or your programmer
should find a way to hide it… search the web for tools on
how to do it.
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Helpful tip (extracted from my valuable experience :-)
Use high-quality words around your keywords, such as “buy”,
“pricing”, “features”, “reviews” in the title/description
tags, as well as around your links – SE’s and visitors will
pay more attention.
Example for Title:
Web Design Services - Features and
Pricing Overview

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