Building Your Website - Optimization

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
As I mention in my previous article, building your website so that it attracts Search Engines is an absolute must! There are many things within a website that search engine “web crawlers” look for. (Wikipedia describe them as follows: A web crawler (also known as a web spider, web robot, or—especially in the FOAF community—web scutter) is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner.) “Crawlers” are what search engines “send out” to gather up-to-date website information. Search engines use this information for each website to categorize it and to rank it. Some web designers think that all they have to do is to insert some keywords and search engines will love them. This may have been true a few years ago, but, “times, they are a changing!” Search engines are becoming much more sophisticated and are now looking, in addition to keywords, at Meta descriptions, page content, outside links, website continuity and site and content relevance. If you haven’t included all of these into your website you won’t likely be highly rated by search engines! Being too “cute” also does not help! Search engine companies don’t like it when you try to fool them. If they find out that you have been “fixing” your site too much, they may penalize you or, worse, delete you from their search engine entirely. Having someone you can consult with about the intricacies of website construction and search engine optimization will go a long way to having the type of website you deserve and the traffic you need!