Search Engine Optimization - is probably the most important aspect of web design. There are a lot of things that you need to take into consideration when building your website. Especially, if you want it to be search engine user friendly. We hesitate to use that term loosely, however, understanding how the search engines work determines the type of website design you should build. I can't begin to tell you how many designers have had to start all over again .... reconstructing their sites to become search engine friendly. First of all, the search engines INDEX TEXT ONLY! That's the gold "content is king" not flash nor images but content, content and more content. Are you getting the point so far? Now this is not to say there are no exception to the rules - technology is on the way (maybe a year or two away) when this won't be a problem. But for now, let's stick to the basics... what really works? Search Engines are intelligent and use complex algorithms to read data, tricking them is not really a good strategy.
Often you hear companies bragging that "if you do this one thing you can get top placement." I would argue however, that it's not any one thing that you do but a combination of many little things that can get you top positioning. I would think you need to keep doing those things to stay there. Make a practice of optimizing each page especially, if you are offering a product or service, optimize each page for a particular product. I would recommend that if your website has a lot of frames then "don't listen to me" but you might need to start all over again because the search engines will basically ignore you. If you have frames and you don't want to change it I advise you to put in a <noframes> tag in the <HEAD> of your main frame page, and cram it with what amounts to a whole web page full of text, headings and alt tags, links etc.
For the most part, what you want is traffic and believe me 'everybody and their mother" is going to tell you how to drive traffic to your website. What you want to look for are those who offer you top positions on the web, but in reality they are driving traffic away from your site. Trust me on this one flash looks great and has its place but if you really want increase traffic 'you must conform.
Article contributed by:
Larry Robinson