SEO and Web Design

Many companies have gone through the expensive process of having a website designed or updated only to discover that the new website can’t be found in the search results. To prevent this costly misstep, we recommend that SEO services be included as a component of any website development project. Where web designers focus on the creative effort of designing a website that is attractive and making your products a services appeal to buyers. The SEO persons focus is on what it takes to make a web...
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Dilbert Exposes the Dark Side of SEO

I was surprised in February of 2010 to see that SEO had become mainstream enough to be the subject of a Dilbert strip. Scott Adams continues here, not only confirming how mainstream SEO has become, but also acknowledging that there is a dark "black hat" side to this industry. ...an easy road to go down, until those chickens come home to roost.
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Don’t use PDFs as Web Pages

I routinely provide SEO audits as a part of my services and a common situation that I encounter is the use of PDF files as web pages. In general, using any non-web file such as .pdf, .doc, xls, etc. as primary content on a website is a bad idea. When people enter your site on these pages, they have no logical way to find information about related products and services (say they land on a page about blue widgets and need information on red widgets) or navigate to your Contact Page. In addition...
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Sketchy SEO Practices, Just Say No.

There's a great Google Webmaster Help thread about a sketchy SEO firm. You know firms like this, ones that promise "first place in Google search results guaranteed". Ok there are dozens (hundreds?) of firms that promise results like this. The problem is that these sketchy "black hat" SEO tactics can work for a while. Truthfully, you may see great results from these shysters for six months or so until you trip an circuit breaker in the algorithm and your website disappears from the Search Resu...
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Eight Tips for Better Ranking

Optimizing your site for search can be a daunting task.  Here is a list of eight things you can do to help your content rank better in Search Results. Optimize the Structure of Your Site (Information Architecture) Clearly communicate the organization of your site through navigation, breadcrumbs, and file path. Organize Your Content Display whatever you are promoting by category and cross-link to related categories to support searches for category, location, country of origin, brand, etc....
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Saving Search Rank When Launching a New Website

On July 14, 2010, I will discuss how to maintain Pagerank when you update or launch a new website with the North Alabama Web Developers group. In this meet-up we’ll discuss Google webmaster tools, Google analytics, sitemaps, and using redirects to map content with the .htaccess file (emphasis will be on Apache/Linux hosting). Please visit the meet-up site for details and sign-up. https://www.meetup.com/web-99/calendar/13878846/ Slides from this discussion are here: Maintain Pagerank wh...
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