Table of contentsKeyword placementFlashMore places for keywordsA front page tipThe ALT tagBefore spending a lot of money on a designer professional website or start designing yourself, read this article and make sure you or your designer knows how to design a website that search engines will like. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Being a web designer myself, I know first-hand what you are taught in college to be a good designer. Even though I learned all the important design concepts like color theory, the importance of graphics and white space, etc., I walked away knowing nothing about how to design a site to rank in the engines research. Due to the lack of training in design schools, there are many, many web design companies today who know nothing about properly designing a web page. It wasn't until I started researching that I realized there was a whole world of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques out there. that I didn't know. Most designers like to make your site aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they use newer technologies like Flash design or very graphics-intensive pages. Although these techniques make your site look good, they are not practical if you want a visitor to find your site in a search engine. Here are some basic concepts to learn before you start designing your website. FlashI know it's tempting to have an all-flash site. because, let's face it, they look really awesome. The problem with an all-flash site is that it is virtually non-existent for search engines. A flash source file is embedded in HTML code and therefore does not offer any content that search engine crawlers can look at to rank you. Unless you are already well known in your industry or have a very identifiable brand (think Pepsi or BMW), you should not use an all-flash site. But what if you really, really want to have flash? Here are some ways to work around this problem. First, you can create two websites for your visitors. An HTML version and a Flash version. You can let your visitor decide where to go. This way you won't leave them frustrated if they have a dial-up connection and aren't surfing on broadband. There's nothing that will annoy your potential client faster than having to wait ten minutes just to see your fancy flash intro. By having both versions available, you also give search engine crawlers a content-rich HTML site so they can rank you accordingly. Second, you can add Flash components into your main site to give off cool effects without taking forever to download. For example, I've seen many websites recently that have the top part of their site header done in flash or their buttons done in flash to make them stand out more. These are two great ways to use flash without overdoing it. Just make sure your body copy is keyword rich to offset the flash. Keyword Placement This next part assumes that you have already researched and gathered targeted keywords to work with. If you haven't done keyword research for your services or products that you sell, then you havework to be done before this next step. There’s a phrase you’ll hear in the SEO world and it’s “keyword-rich text.” This simply means that when you write the body copy for your website, you need to word it a certain way in order to include your keywords. This doesn't mean you insert a keyword every other word. Search engine bots consider this spam. This means you put a lot of thought into your body copy, making sure you've placed keywords in your copy that make sense for the overall service or product you're selling. Here is an example of a keyword-rich paragraph selling information. product on public speaking. Keywords are in quotation marks. Are you interested in becoming a better “public speaker” or improving your “public speaking skills”? You can become a “paid public speaker” and make a lot of money “public speaking” in front of a wide variety of audiences. Learn all the latest “public speaking tips and tricks” including how to “beat stage fright” and “add humor” to your presentation. All of these keywords were searched and found to be highly targeted to the phrase “public speaking”. Now, I went a little overboard with my keywords for the example, but you get the idea. There is another term called “keyword density.” This refers to the number of times a particular keyword or phrase is found in a website page per 100 words. There is a fine line between having enough keyword density or having too many and search engines consider your site spam. Be aware, however, that not all search engines are equal. Some might prefer a keyword density of 5%, while another might favor a density of 7%. I suggest testing your copy for about a month and keeping an eye on your search engine rankings. If you're ranking high, keep your copy as it is, but if it's lower than you want, try changing your copy and keyword density to see if you can get the rankings you want. More Places for Keywords There are other places search engine spiders look for keywords besides your website copy. If possible, try to get a domain name that contains one of your keywords. For example, if you sell dog collars, the name you might want for your website would be www.dogcollarsales.com or something like that. It may take a little thought and some time to come up with a related name that someone hasn't picked up on yet, but it can be done. Another good place for keywords is in your page title. Instead of putting your business name that most people don't know, instead put a keyword-rich phrase or phrase. Using the dog collar business example again, here's a title page you could use. Dog Collars - We sell dog collars and other products for your beloved pet. It clearly tells search engines what the page is about. Remember, your website title is indexed by search engines and is part of what is shown to someone searching for that keyword. So if I type dog collars into my search engine, the above title and description from my meta tag would appear in my search results. Make sure you think about your title. This rule also applies to your meta tag description which is also viewed when a search engine displays your site..