Webmaster Tools & Resources

When designing websites, it's good to know what is acceptable and what isn't. This applies to both human and robotic viewers of your site. In other words, what kind of aspects and features will appeal to your human audience and also please the search engine spiders? Webmasters who have been in the search engine optimization business for a while will know most of what this site puts forth. But for those of you just starting out, this information is crucial. So, what makes a search engine friendly website?

This is a more often asked question than you may think - believe me. It's one thing to make it friendly - you want to make it irresistible! What do I mean by that? Fairly simple: you want each and every search engine to like your site so much, that they'll rank it in the first top ten listings on their search results pages. Here's a list of things to consider when putting together a website. While there isn't a single formula that will get you a number one ranking, these are sure to increase your chances.

Keyword Selection:
Depending on the keywords that you are going after, getting on that first page of results might turn out to be very tough, so be sure to choose your words carefully - first lesson of search engine optimization. The basic model is to choose keywords that are popular enough to bring in decent search engine traffic but not too competitive so that it's impossible to get rankings for. Keyword selection is the first and foremost step to a successful website.

Meta Tags:
The way you use your meta tags can still have an impact on your site's overall performance. Although Google and other search engines have eliminated or downgraded the value of meta tags of late, they can still be quite useful. It is especially important to have an accurate, well written description tag that includes your keywords, as the search engines will pick up on this and sometimes this description will be what shows up in the search engines under your URL. When creating your meta tags, you must make sure to optimize them with keywords, but not so much that you'll be penalized by the engines. Visit the META tags section to get a better understanding of their use and importance in the search engine world.

Keyword Density:
The number of times that a keyword or search phrase appears on your page is significant to how relevant search engines consider your content to be. You may find that there are several keyword density numbers that seem to work when you study the search results yourself; however, in order to get the true value, you also have to take into consideration other factors such as linking and meta tag content for instance. Researchers and search engine analysts have come up with various keyword density tools, which will allow you to analyze your pages and tweak them towards better rankings.