Three Things to Consider When Developing a Website

So you have a company or an idea and you want to build a website. There are many things to consider in the planning stages like content, photos, layout etc. A good web site development plan will consider the search engines and should focus on search engine optimization during development. After all, what good is a website that no one can see right?

Here are 3 simple things that will help you in the search engines that you probably have not thought about.

1.) Use Keywords In Your Menu:

Often times when individuals create a website that they forget to be creative on the whole project. What I mean here is that they take their time and come up with great images, a great color scheme, a perfect layout and the list goes on and on but they follow the average website when it comes to menu titles. Maybe it's because most web developers do not keep SEO in mind when they develop sites but for whatever reason, I see newly developed web sites that still need to be optimized after they go live.

Everyone should know what keywords are and how the process of choosing target keyword phrases goes but why are they not using these keywords everywhere possible? A good SEO tip is to use keywords in your menu instead of the boring "About Us" or Contact "menu titles you always see. Denver Painters "instead of just" Contact. "If you are a Denver lawyer and have a resource page, make sure to title it" Denver Legal Resources ".

2.) Create A Google Sitemap:

It's really quite simple, you need to create a Google sitemap if you want them to know about all of the pages in your website quicker. By creating a Google sitemap, it allows the "Google bots" to index all of the pages and content you have developed. A sitemap is the only way the search engines can "see" all of your pages at a much faster pace.

If you do not know how to create a Google sitemap, here are directions: www.tinyurl.com/c3rvqa [http://www.tinyurl.com/c3rvqa]

3.) URL Keyword Optimization

Make sure you change your URL's to the keywords you are targeting on that page. If you've noticed, all of our URL's (after the .com) deal with keywords relating to that page. As a developer you can optimize your links to rank better in the search engines.

Lets look at an example: Visit Wikipedia and type in "Internet" in the search box.

Once taken to that page, the URL changes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet which helps pull up on the searches when you type in "Internet" in the search engines. (happens to be # 1 on Google)

I do not want to pick on anyone to show you a web site who's URL's have not been optimized but check yourself. Type in something like "Denver Lawyer" and visit page 20. Click on a website and check out their URL's. Chances are they are something like: http://www.XXXXXXXXXXXX.com/info.cfm?id=127 which means nothing to the search engines.