In my last post, Follow Through on Your Web Design Media with Search Engine Optimization, I repeatedly mentioned keyword placement in your multimedia filenames, Alt tages and why certain kinds of formatting helps boost search-engine visibility. I didn’t delve into many specifics of why you would want to use keywords beyond your design elements because it would have taken too much time. I figured that I’d circle back today and get into keywords a bit more. It’s such an important topic, I’ll be writing about keywords and keyphrases again (and maybe again). When I think about search-engine optimization, I think about it from two perspectives: The first is the front of the page — the copy the reader sees — and the second is the back of the page — the HTML the searchbot sees. Here are a few things about search-engine optimizing copy to keep in mind: 1. When people talk about keywords, what they’re really talking about are keyword phrases. 2. Stuffing the front of your pages with your keywords willy-nilly isn’t going to work. Searchbots look at keyphrases and sequences of keywords, the proximity of keywords to each other, where they appear on the…

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You don’t have to be an athlete to appreciate a pro golfer’s drive off a tee, a designated baseball hitter’s swing or an Olympic gymnast’s agility on the high bar. Whether it’s distance, power or grace, it all comes from properly following through. Web designers also need to follow through textually on their designs–whether they’re simple photographs or sophisticated Flash animations. It’s those final steps in the design process that ensure your design is found by searchbots and people alike. Here’s the big idea: Searchbots feed on keywords. Although they’re tuned to go after formatted text, filenames, HTML tags,  captions, multimedia and so on, its all about the keywords you use. Keep that in mind as you read further. A Quick Word about Formatting Searchbots give more weight to formatting such as bold face, italics, lists, bullets, anchor text links and foreign language characters. Decisions about formatting usually begin with the copywriter, but you shouldn’t assume Web writers know more about formatting or SEO than you do. The size of a headline is often as much as a design decision and a copywriting one. It helps you and the copywriter to know that, for example, big…

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One of the nice things about WordPress is that it’s as friendly to search engine optimization as a beagle is to a bowl of ice cream–even before you start tweaking it. Long ago, I settled on WP because I was more interested in using it as a simple content management system than an actual blog. All I really wanted to do is build a no-fuss place–comprising four or five pages–where I could showcase my work and experience to promote my Web writing business. I don’t really know how WP compares to other blogging platforms because I haven’t used any of the others. In recent years, I’ve been paying more and more attention to SEO best practices. I quickly learned a while ago that Web writing and SEO were immutably tied and there’s really no way to separate the two skills. You need to be on your game with both skills or you’re never going to get the ball from the business players. Anyone who tells you differently  probably sells replica watches from the trunk of his car on the side. Optimizing WordPress for Search Engines with plugins I’ve had a chance to try out several SEO plugs…

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It’s no secret that the ailing economy has hit everyone, even us bloggers who depend so heavily on Google Adsense and page impressions. It’s become increasingly harder to grow and maintain those high page views, while also competing with other bloggers in your niche. As a blogger you don’t want to pay a high rate to advertise your blog and risk not getting a return on your investment; nor do you want to do an adwords campaign. You want quick, easy and free ideas for marketing your blog. Lucky you! Here are five free ways to promote your blog. 1. Social Networking. In the web 2.0 times we currently live in, this may seem like a dead giveaway, yet many bloggers don’t take full advantage of it. Make sure you use the social networks and take advantage of the sites that are most advantageous to you. Create aFacebook fan page, develop a fan base on Twitter and promote your blog on these social outlets. 2. Article Submission. Similar to social networking, article submission is another way to get your blog in front of more eyes. Stumbleupon appears to be the best place…

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Although the concept of shared online bookmarks dates back to 1996, the term social bookmarking is a relatively new and was first used in 2003 by Delicious web service. The term ‘tagging’ is also associated with social bookmarking. Using social bookmarking, users can search, save, manage, and organize web pages/websites for sharing or for remembering. With the rising number and growing popularity of online book marking services, social book marking is also called social book marketing. Over time, book marking services have proven to be excellent tools for online marketing. When combined with Search Engine Optimization, social book marking can be the key to success of online marketing campaigns. Higher rankings by search engines facilitate brand awareness. The primary objective behind search engine optimization is thus, to ensure better rankings, and thus, social book marking has emerged as an effective tool for providing back links and getting higher traffic, which in turn help in securing better Search Engine Rankings. Bookmarks represent links through tagging. Unlike a hierarchical structure, tagging is done through a bottom-up method, which create many broad categories to fit in the links. As a result, the users can assert the metadata…

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