November 6, 2006 So often I speak in first person. Not really known by the public, the SEO Factor team is actually more than just myself sitting in my underwear smashing away at the keyboard. So I wanted to shed some light on other members that make up this family, and give them a chance to let their voice be heard. First up is Alysson Fergison. Some background. I have spoken time and time again on the importance of content in the world of SEO. Most of the members of SEO Factor (myself included) couldn’t write a thank you letter, let alone good website copy. However, this is one of the most important factors in website design and SEO. We had a member of our team that was and continues to provide content and copy for our optimization projects, press releases, and articles. In taking hold of his dream, he has recently become the managing editor for a very prestigious entertainment magazine here in Jacksonville. Enter Alysson. She has written a few articles for us and our customers, and we will be working with her on honing her SEO knowledge. She has a lot to learn and big shoes to fill, but even more willingness to do so. So, without anymore of my rambling, here is a nice little writing about content and SEO by Alysson.

What Your Designer May Not Know About SEO

by Alysson Fergison The vast majority of website owners, and website designers for that matter, don’t understand the importance of search engine optimization or SEO. Many believe that having a gorgeous website is enough to generate traffic. Wrong! Crawlers can’t read images, so a website without text is like building a mansion at the bottom of the ocean. Many business owners would prefer a more cost-effective means of increasing their website’s ranking within search engine results. That means going back to basics: meta tags and text content. Flash sites are expensive and extremely popular. Animation, audio and streaming video are all very impressive to those who visit your website. The question of the day is: how do people find your website? If your hope is that they will find you in a Google or Yahoo! search, that won’t happen with a graphics-intensive Flash site. It may be absolutely beautiful, but it will not appear in a keyword-based search. That means only the people who already know your URL will be able to find your website. If you’re looking to promote your website, start by optimizing it for search engine friendliness. While the appearance of the website is certainly essential to converting prospects into paying customers, having a search engine friendly website is the single most important aspect of generating website traffic. What exactly does «search engine friendly» mean? Essentially it means that you have well-written, relevant text, and that the words in your website title and description meta tags appear properly on your page. Remember, in order to outrank your competition, we have to start with having a more relevant site than your competitors’. Provided that your meta tag information is correct and relevant, the more words you have within your site, the better your ranking potential will be in keyword searches. The title and description meta tags are the most important meta tags within your site. The title meta tag should include several of your keywords, but should not exceed 80 characters. The description meta tag should include every keyword in your title, as well as several more of your keywords as a summary of your site content and shouldn’t exceed 200 characters.

If you’re looking to increase the traffic to your website and generate more revenue for your business, start with search engine optimization. Having the proper meta tag information and text content within your website is extremely cost effective. If you’re able to make the changes yourself, it will cost you nothing but time. Many website owners don’t want to invest a great deal of money in Internet advertising without first getting an idea of the potential business the website is capable of generating. Rather than investing hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars in advertising your website, start with making sure your existing website is optimized to be search engine friendly. Help your customers find you on the Internet as inexpensively as possible and decide later whether investing in additional Internet advertising, such as pay per clicks, is necessary.

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