Fundamental SEF Guide 

Website Development Guidelines for Search Engine Friendly Websites

What makes an effective website?
What are the basic elements of an effective website that will CONVERT visitors to sales prospects once they've arrived?

Keep the Design Simple
Keep it simple. Don't go overboard on flash and photo images, not that either them is bad for a website. Remember that you're not out to entertain, you're out to inform, educate and motivate people to contact you!

Be direct about your goals, your target audience and your capabilities. Be professional at all times. Communicate your strengths and credentials, but don't boast. Make sure your content can be understood by your audience. Don't talk over their head. Please spell check your content and also grammar check it. "Too" and "to" are examples of common grammar problems that can go unchecked. You may also want to check how your webpage looks in all types of browsers. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Don't confuse our audience with too many options (keep it simple again). You can easily lose a visitor from a crowded web page with a lot of options.

Web content writing is different than other types of copywriting. Keep your sentences brief. We recommend not more than 200 to 300 words per page. Break up longer articles into multiple pages, which is also good for search engine optimization.

Use Relevant Keywords
Each web page should have a core theme. You should research the searched keywords on the theme of each page to be search engine friendly. You can use keyword research resources sites such as GoodKeywords, Wordtracker.com, Nichebot.com, Google Suggest or another keyword research tool of your choice.

No matter which keyword research tool you use, you should choose your keywords carefully and also check what keywords are being used by your main competitors. It's also important to check the number of searches made each month for your keywords. Just because you like a keyword, does not mean other people search on it. In many cases, you'll be surprised to learn others use different variations of your favorite keywords. You also need to review the keyword density of your web pages.

Place your keyword in the Title tag of your page and in the first Headline on the page. If possible, use the keyword in the URL. That is the best case scenarios. For example: www.yourdomain.com/keyword.html. This will help the search engines find your page quicker.

Optimization Tips
Everyone wants their website to have high rankings in major search engines, especially in Google. While there are a lot of factors to achieve good search engine rankings, here are some basic things you can do. Use a simple web page hierarchy. Keep your pages no more than three clicks away from the main page. Linking all your pages to your index (home) page is a good practice. Use a blogging system to create search engine friendly web pages through an RSS feed that will syndicate your content and place it into the search engines.

Make sure you have well written Mega Tags, title description and content. Use a robots text file for to tell the search engine robots which pages to include or exclude when they crawl your site.

Create as many links back to your site as you can. In addition to quantity, the relevancy of the links to your site is also very important.

These are just a few tips for search engine optimization.

Easy Navigation
A great webpage will have easy and simple navigation. Link your page to and from your main index (home) page if you can. You should also link to it from your sitemap page. Many webmasters put all the main links on their site at the top or the bottom of all their webpages, so that a visitor can freely move around and find what they're looking for. Consider your visitor's navigation comfort and experience in mind at all times.

Make sure you don't have any broken links on any web page. You may be surprised how many don't work, if you link out to other sites. Those links often change and you can be the last to know about it. Search engines don't like broken links, and neither will your visitors.

Check the quality of image downloads to ensure they actually do load. And, check the load speed of your images. If they are too slow, increase your compression rates for faster downloads, or reduce the number of images. Visitors don't have patience for slow loading images.

Up to Date Content
A great website has up to date content. It's important to update your webpage often. If a visitor sees that your content hasn't changed in six months, they have little motivation to return to your site. Plus, that sends a message that you don't consider your website an important enough communication medium to keep your content up to date. Make sure that information you present is recent and accurate. Up to date and relevant content will keep your visitors interested and coming back again, and referring your website to others too.

Bookmarkable
A great webpage is bookmarkable. Your visitor will want to bookmark one or more of your webpages and return to it when the page offers something of value or uniqueness. Think of ways you can provide bookmarkable content. In some industries it can be tools, resources, white papers, access to new and relevant information, etc. Make it easy for your visitor to bookmark your page by using a bookmark script. Use a favicon, which is a small logo you place on your site and it will be automatically picked up and displayed in your visitor's bookmarks, drawing attention to your page. Consider a bookmark and favicon like bread crumbs, all leading the visitor back to your page.

Interesting
Every great website should be interesting in some way. Even in the most conservative industries, you can make your web pages stand out from the crowd. Try to make it unique, and if it's considered professional in your industry try to make it cool. Cool is not just for the 20-something. You can be cool and tasteful through certain colors, photo images (without going overboard), even tasteful humor used in moderation. When your web page is interesting, you're more likely to get repeat visitors and referrals. Have you forwarded a web page link to someone through email?

Summary
As you plan your next website updates, keep these ideas in mind. Start with a simple design, research relevant keywords, proof-read text and test for broken link, create good navigation and optimize for the search engines, provide valuable up to date content and information. Make your webpages memorable and bookmarkable. Make it unique, interesting and even cool so it stands out among your competitors.

Last but not least, don't consider this a once a year effort. Your website is available worldwide 24/7/365. It should be a high priority to maximize its potential to be one of the most valuable communication medium to your business.