Why is On Page SEO Important?

SEO has two separate and distinct focuses –On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is executed at the web site itself. Getting improved search engine placement begins with the website. The opening paragraph on each pages needs to be keyword rich without repeating the title of the page. Meta-descriptions and Meta-keywords are important, too. Updating these on a regular basis is essential.

Websites with a high search engine rank have a couple of things in common. First, they have feature pages and pages of relevant content. This means if you're selling accounting services, you should have a lot of articles about accounting, taxes, and bookkeeping. These articles should be key word rich and designed to capture the attention of Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, AOL and other major search engines. The more keywords you have, the better your search engine rank. Another characteristic of successful websites is the number of inbound and outbound links they have to and from other sites. When other websites link to yours and when you link to others, it makes your website appear more important, significant, and genuine.

By adding articles to your website on a regular basis, you boost your rankings. The web crawlers and bots will see the changes and give your site a higher ranking because frequent changes means you care about your site and are willing to spend time changing it and adding to it.

Why is a high ranking important?

A high search engine ranking means you are on the first few result pages of a search engine. Most people, when they are looking for something on the web, rarely go beyond the third page. The first page is the most sought after spot, but there are only ten slots available for each of your keywords. There are millions of websites hoping for the number one position on a page, so it takes work and persistence to attain Page One ranking.

If you are an ecommerce site, it is even more important to have high rankings. You want people to find your site first. Even with a physical store location, a wise business person will sell his or her items on a website. You will be able to reach more potential buyers in a much wider area than if you use just direct mail or catalogs. Setting up a website is just the first step. Next, you will want to get traffic to your site and this means a high page ranking. A high page ranking is achieved by diligent Search Engine Optimization.

At this point, you may be thinking that only companies with a large marketing department are able to achieve high search engine rankings for their websites. That is not always the case. Because high search engine rank is so critical to web-based businesses these days, there are a lot of companies that specialize in getting you the best placement possible. These companies can provide you with original, targeted content for your site, and submit your URL to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other engines for consideration. Ciniva Systems, www.ciniva.com, an award winning Virginia based web design company specializes in search engine optimization, utilizing the latest trends and techniques to ensure your site gets the highest ranking possible.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing traffic to a website by increasing the ranking and position of that website. It is not about who has the prettiest site with the most bells and whistles.

Sometimes the most gorgeous websites can have terrible rankings because they are not optimized properly, while a site that is basically simple and even horrible in appearance gets really high ratings. What is the principal difference?

There are some simple rules of thumb that you can use to optimize your website and all you need are a few simple web design skills. Whether redesigning a site or creating one from scratch, these rules should apply.

Never use frames when creating a website. If your site uses frames, you may want to think about changing to tables. If you are going to change your site, make certain your HTML is clean and free of unnecessary code.

Each page should include two to three paragraphs of keyword rich body text. For example, if you sell tanning products at your "The Tanning Place" website and the name of your closest competitor is "Up Town Tan," you will want to write a paragraph that goes something like this: Are you looking for an up town tan? Then come to the Tanning Place for that gorgeous up town tan. We feature only the best tanning products from the best sources to give you a beautiful up town tan. Not only are you promoting your own website, if someone enters the term "up town tan" into the search box, then your site will appear along with "Up Town Tan," and you can possibly convince someone who was looking for "Up Town Tan" to come to your site, instead.
The paragraph may seem a little repetitious and simplistic, but your goal is to attract web crawlers and not literary agents. Your high school English teacher will not praise your efforts, unless she has switch to SEO as her career.

Do not duplicate content on each page or even from site to site, if you own more than one site. Make certain each one is differentiated as far as content. It is better to have fewer pages with no duplicated text.

Use internal text links instead of images with links. Web crawlers will not find the link if it is buried behind an image. When you use images, make sure you include alt tags on all of them. This gives you an opportunity to tell the search engines what your site is all about, once again.
Splash pages may look impressive for visitors, but they do little to increase your rankings. Keep your graphics to a minimum because text is what improves your page ranking.

Do not try to attract or fool web crawlers by hiding text, such as making it the same color as the background. It may take a little time, but you will be caught and penalized for this and other black hat practices. I mention again, you are not being graded on your literary ability so do not be afraid to write a couple of keyword rich paragraphs.

Karen Vertigan Pope writes for Ciniva Systems, an award winning Virginia web design company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Karen_Vertigan_Pope

What Has to Be Done Before Your Site is Optimized?

Ciniva Systems understands the importance of Search Engine Optimization in bringing your website to the attention of other people. Having a great website is just the beginning of the story. You want people to visit your site and to participate in whatever you have going on, whether it is selling a gadget, collecting names for sales leads, or simply informing people about something that is near and dear to your heart.

SEO is not easy. SEO is an ongoing project. Once your site is at the top of the list, you have to work to keep it there. SEO is so important and so time consuming, many site owners hire competent people to do the job for them. Here are a few tips we use to get us started.

Before we start any search engine optimization campaign the following question should be answered.

What are the site owners hoping to achieve with their site? More sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity? Without a clear direction, optimization is very difficult. If the site owners don't have a clear focus, our trained staff will assist them in determined what they want to accomplish with their website.

The next step is to do a site review to determine what is needed for the site, itself. A site analysis will offer useful information, such as target keywords used, meta tags and other meta data used and general search engine compatibility. We find out if all the links are working, is the HTML code clean, what is the page load time and other useful information that will help us determine if the site is really ready for a full-blown SEO project. If not, we make it ready.

Determining the site's requirements is next.

When Ciniva creates a site, it is ready for SEO immediately. If Ciniva is doing a site redesign, a determination of the technology used to build the site is essential. Did the site's creator use frames? Flash, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, HTML, XML? Does the site have database driven content? How much content is there on each page and is it keyword friendly? All of this will be determined in the initial site analysis. Many things in a site may have to be changed before SEO will be effective.

Google Readies Social Network Apps

It is well know that linking to social networks improves your ranking with Google. This article explains:

Belatedly recognizing the importance of social networking as an online service and advertising vehicle, Google Inc. this week will unleash its strongest response yet to the rising threat and skyrocketing popularity of MySpace and Facebook.

On Thursday, Google will announce OpenSocial, an initiative with a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) at its core that is designed "to spread social applications across the Web," the company said.

These common APIs have been designed to let developers create social networking applications that will run on multiple Web sites, simplifying the making and distribution of these programs.

Partners supporting OpenSocial include various well-known software developers and social networking sites: Oracle, Salesforce.com, Hi5, iLike, LinkedIn, Slide, Ning, Friendster and Plaxo. Neither Facebook nor MySpace is on the list of partners at press time.

Good news!

Read the entire article here.

Copyright cops to target YouTube, MySpace

Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, contends the wildly popular websites YouTube and MySpace are violating copyright laws by allowing users to post music videos and other content involving Universal artists.

"We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of US dollars," Universal Music CEO Doug Morris told investors on Wednesday at a conference in Pasadena. "How we deal with these companies will be revealed shortly."

Read more at the Sydney Morning-Herald.

As sites likes MySpace and YouTube increase in popularity, so does the need to have an accompanying website to supplement your online presence. Whether you use the Internet for business, education, or e-commerce, a custom designed website can have a greater impact than an account elsewhere. Custom websites are more flexible than sites like MySpace in terms of design and web applications, and the added convenience of stats and other tools can help improve your business. Contact CINIVA today for more information on getting your business on the Web.

How To Analyze Your Website

By Jerry Bader (c) 2006

How good is your website? Does it do its job? Is it effective? These are all good questions that every business owner and marketing manager needs to ask him or herself. The website has become an essential tool for business. We all know we have to have a website, but are we using this venue to its greatest advantage?

Most people responsible for their company's websites have stats packages and counters to tell them how many hits, how many unique visitors, where they are coming from, what their IP
addresses are, what browser they're using, and of course the all important monitor resolution. So what! Who cares? The real question is do we have an effective website?

Now if you have a transactional website, commonly referred to as an e-commerce site, you know the number of sales you are generating from your site, which is important, but do you
really know how effective your site is? How many orders are you losing because of bad layout, awkward design, confusing navigation, and poor copy? How many potential clients have you
chased away because you haven't put a phone number on your site and an accessible real-person that can answer questions?

A website is your business' public face. Big businesses can look like mom and pop operations and mom and pop operations can look like General Motors. The design of your website should not
be taken lightly, its budget should not be an afterthought, and the designer you hire should be someone who understands more than code. Your Web-designer should be a multimedia-marketing advisor, someone who can counsel you how best to deliver your marketing message, and someone who can go beyond technical issues.

Read more at SiteProNews.

E-commerce on the rise

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2006, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, was $26.3 billion, an increase of 4.6 percent (±1.7%) from the first quarter of 2006. Total retail sales for the second quarter of 2006 were estimated at $984.9 billion, an increase of 0.9 percent (±0.3%) from the first quarter of 2006. The second quarter 2006 e commerce estimate increased 23.0 percent (±5.4%) from the second quarter of 2005 while total retail sales increased 6.6 percent (±0.5%) in the same period. E-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2006 accounted for 2.7 percent of total sales. - US Census Bureau (read more)

As e-commerce sales rise, it becomes more apparent that retail businesses need to consider an online storefront to broaden reach and attract new customers. Why sit idly by as your competitors reap the benefits of selling their goods online, when an online store can increase the potential for sales and customer loyalty? Maintaining an online storefront is simple, economical, and allows for increased opportunity to advertise your business. CINIVA Systems can help you on the right track to launching the virtual end of your business with an attractive, user-friendly interface.

CINIVA Systems has designed e-commerce sites for several Virginia businesses, including The Bead Cottage, Ribbitt Toys, and RPM Custom Rods. We have also developed the online store for the Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center and Anne Gimenez Ministries. From books to beads, diet pills to safety equipment, if you have it we can help you sell it. Contact CINIVA today to learn more about opening your new online store.