Optimized Web Page Template

By Case Stevens

I want to give you a free web page template that will be search engine friendly. Why?

Well, I assume you want your web page to come up as high as possible in search engines because that generates free traffic.

On the other hand, your page has to deliver value to your visitors. Most people on the web are not searching to buy something. They're surfing the web to find information to solve a problem or fill their needs. If your page delivers that, they'll be back.

Fortunately that is exactly what search engines want you to do. Their job is to present the best web pages possible to any search action. How do they do that?

Well, to be honest: I don't know! The only people who do know are the developers of search engine software. And there are a lot of experts on the web who try to find out how they do it. But that's a full time job and I don't have time for that.

The only thing I know is that search enines can't see what we see on a web page. Just go to any page and click 'View Source' in the menu of your browser. That's how they see a page. They spider it, analyze it and perform some arithmetics with it, way beyond my comprehension. But they can't read images or graphics or flash and they (still) have a lot of troubles with Javascript, dynamic generated pages, fancy menus and frames. Their software only does exactly what it is programmed to do. With millions and millions of pages on the web, they can't solve every possible situation. It's just a general approach.

So, if you make it easy for the engine software to spider and interpret your web pages, there's a big chance you come up high in their rankings. At least you have a big advantage. That's why I always use a simple HTML-editor. It does exactly what I put into my pages and it doesn't include extra coding. Right now I'm using AceHTML Freeware, but I also like Arachnophilia a lot.

If the above is true, and I think it is, then your pages have to be as simple as possible. It should be a clean mixture between text and HTML tags, with lots of text and as few tags as possible.

Still, you have to include some techniques to satisfy the search engine software. There are a few point you have to keep in mind:

1. the name of a web page should alwasy be the main keyword of that page; don't mix keywords; instead write seperate pages for each keyword and link them;
2. always include the main keyword in the Title-tag; keep the Title limited to 7 or 8 words;
3. always include the Description and Keyword tags and use your main keyword here; although these tags are less and less important at the time of writing this article, you'll never know if that's going to change in future;
4. always use one H tag and include your main keyword in it;
5. always use one IMG tag and include your keyword in the ALT variable;
6. put your navigation and menu on the right side, so your text is investigated first;
7. try to use your main keyword in an anchor (A) text; I use a link at the bottom of every page to the top;
8. use your main keyword at the very beginning and at the end of your text; include some variatons like plurals; don't overdue this!

An excellent way to test if your web page is well designed is to use a free software program that analyzes your page. You can find this little gem at http://www.analog.com/

These are the main elements to create a good web page. If you click the link below you will see a page that contains this article and some extra comments. You can save that page (in the menu of your browser click 'Save As' and save it on your hard disk. Use the page as a template. Of course you have to include your own graphics, but don't overdo that.