How to Increase Your Page Rank by Optimizing Site Design
Copyright Herman Drost

One highly effective method for attracting more web traffic
is to first optimize the design of your web site. This will
increase your page rank because search engines love sites
that have clean code, are fast loading and contain lots of
well written content. This ultimately results in gaining
traffic which leads to more sales, a sign you have
developed a profitable web site.

10 factors to include in your web site's design that will
increase page rank:

1. Do the necessary keyword research so your web copy is
filled with words that visitors enter in the search
engines. Weave these words throughout the content of your
web site.

2. Create meta tags that include your targeted keywords.
Make sure you write an attractive description for your
description meta tag. It's what visitors will read first
when they have find your site in the search engines. If the
description does not capture your visitors attention
immediately you will lose your visitor to a competing web
site.

3. Create a meaningful Title tag. The title tag is what
visitors will see at the top of the browser window when
your site first appears. It is the most important tag to
consider when designing your web site. Place your main
keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Don't place you
site's name first. Most visitors will not be searching for
your site name. They find you with the keywords they
entered in the search engines.

4. Use heading tags for the headings and sub headings of
your web site content. Incorporate your keywords in these
tags. Search engines give a little more weight to these
tags. They also grab your visitors attention faster than
normal text.

5. Name files using your targeted keywords. When naming
your css, image, javascript files etc, include your
targeted keywords. Don't overdo it by using the same
keywords for every file. It may be flagged as keyword
spamming by the search engines.

6. Include keywords in page and directory names. Instead of
giving your pages generic names, be creative and
incorporate keywords in their urls.

Let me give you an example:

If your site carried several pages of different types of
t-shirts, instead of naming your pages:

www.domain.com/shirt1.html www.domain.com/shirt2.html

rename them:

www.domain.com/custom-t-shirt.html
www.domain.com/spanish-t-shirt.html

This will help the search engines to identify the keywords
in your page url. If a site owner links to this page you
will benefit by already having your keywords in your web
page address.

7. Use keywords in your link text. If the links on your
page have relevant keyword text in them, your page will
receive higher rankings in the search engine results than
those sites that don't.

For example, a link on your site (or from another site
pointing to yours) with the text "custom t-shirt" will
cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches
for "custom t-shirt" than if the link simply said "click
here."

8. Optimize your images. Try to avoid using images to
display important names, content, or links. Search engines
don't spider images only text. Use ALT tags if any of the
main content on your web page can't be formatted in regular
HTML. 9. Create external files. Instead of loading your
site with lots of css or javascript code, place all the
code in an external file between your header tags. This
will drastically reduce the load time of your pages and
allow the search engines to easily spider your site.

10. Create lots of attractive content. Web copy that is
well written will naturally attract visitors. Site owners
reading your content will naturally want to link to your
site without even asking for a link back.

Tip

Avoid using templates for the design of your site unless
you are not worried about getting high rankings. This is
because they are often not optimized for the search engines
i.e. contain proprietary code, don't validate for correct
html, and are slow loading. Get a customized design so you
can optimize it during its development. This will help
increase your page rank as you market your to the search
engines.

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Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
and owner of iSiteBuild.com
Web Site Design, Web Hosting, Web Site Promotion

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