Search Engine Optimiztion Website Design Versus Search Engine Optimization Tip! Site That Is 'Link-Worthy' - Having other sites link to yours is a vital element of any successful search engine optimization, as all of the major search engines place a good deal of emphasis on your sites overall link popularity. Don't blame Internet Marketing Advisors - it's not our fault! Search Engine Optimization, SEO for short, has rules to follow. To the extent you follow the rules, the more likely you are to place higher on the search engines, ahead of your competition. A client just asked me to give my opinion of a certain designer. I went to his site and looked at several sample sites they built. Nice to look at, but not for search engines. Example: Tip! Learn search engine optimization. Client: Electrical services. Keywords: Emergency, electrician, repair service, home, residential, commercial, Needham, Boston, Waltham, Wellesley, New England You can't win these. The right way would be to put “Needham electrician” together as one key phrase and optimize a page for that. "Emergency" applies to hospitals, etc., and is useless. A simple indicator that whoever did the thinking doesn't understand SEO. Better: “Needham emergency electrical.” See? More of a niche means more likelihood of less competition. “Emergency” standing alone as a keyword will clash with every kind of ANY emergency Skip the flash intro pages. People don't like them (except designers and web owners who think it's cool) - they aren't cool to search engines or most people who are impatient to get to what they SEARCHED for. Uncool for people especially on a revisit! Our twin core competencies follow the marketing model (for people) and the search model (for engines and ranking.) You need both. Tip! keywords placed at the very end of a page are important because it tells the search engine that a page which started out describing a concept such as “search engine optimization” is still talking about it even at the very end. Marketing: drive people to the most desired action. If you don't, they may move on. Their searched term (keyword or phrase) got them there. Now what? Satisfy their search then MOVE them to a most desired action! A contact, a sale, more detail, a consultation, whatever. You might be surprised how many contact pages are buried within a site. Why not link to it right under the detail you just provided for the searcher/visitor? Search: Many do the whole website backwards. They write and design it, then pop in keywords - usually general ones, like our electrical friend above. Better to find the keywords you can win, THEN write and design around them. The key: niches. Better to have ten pages, each devoted to one niche, than all pages devoted to general keywords that put you #1999 on the search results. Few searchers even get to the second ten results. Tip! Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization. Bob Wood is president of Internet-Marketing-Advisors, which focuses on both the human and web sides of websites, delivering visitors through higher search engine rankings, and turning them into customers. He is co-founder of ComStar, America's SEO Network