Using WORDPRESS Permalinks

Among the web designers, developers & efficient internet bloggers, word press is very popular tool. With Wordpress, which essentially a web software, one can use it to create a beautiful website or blog. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. If a blogger signing into the account of blogger.com to create a blog, he/she essentially uses wordpress as blogging tool. What is more, organizations like CNN, Yahoo, and The New York Times rely heavily on wordpress for active building, upgrading their websites.

        Since making a website in wordpress involves use of many tools, one of such popular tool or technique is called as “Permalink”. Short form for "permanent link," a permalink is a URL that links to a specific news story or Web posting. Permalinks are most commonly used for blogs, which are frequently changed and updated. They give a specific Web address to each posting, allowing blog entries to be bookmarked by visitors or linked to from other websites. Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another web-blogger will use to link to article (or section), or it’s how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change.

Since most blogs are published using dynamic, information & database-driven Web sites, they do not automatically have Web addresses associated with them. Many times, on a blog if a home page associated is related only to a blog & not to a website. In such cases, if any post on blog becomes old or outdated, then homepage may not remain a valid. Under such situations, using a permalink to define the location of each posting prevents blog entries from fading off into empty.

For using in Wordpress, there are 3 basic types of permalinks:

1.       mod_rewrite: "Pretty Permalinks": A major type of permalinks, using mod_rewrite or lighttpd you can produce much nicer permalinks (Pretty permalinks).

Some people eliminate some or all of the date elements (day, month, year) to have a shorter permalink format.

2.       PATHINFO: "Almost Pretty": PATHINFO permalinks look very much like mod_rewrite permalinks but for one exception:

Otherwise, they are the same as the "pretty" mod_rewrite permalinks, and are similarly flexible. Anything that mod_rewrite permalinks can do PATHINFO permalinks can do, with the help of that /index.php part. There is a helpful tool or plug-in that displays the type of permalinks being used and detailed information on the internal rewrite rules used by WordPress.

While using in wordpress, every permalink needs to be chosen based on structure. With wordpress version 2.5 or latest, you can chose structure by going the following way.

 Click Settings> Permalinks panel. With this, you can choose one of the "common" structures or enter your own in the "Custom structure" field using the structure tags. For versions before WordPress 2.5,

Click Options> Settings> Permalinks panel.

Since WordPress 3.0 you can use Custom Post Types and you can define your own types of content - it's more like pages than posts! Thereby you can use automatically the Permalink structure of your WordPress installation. That means, if you create a new post type, you can use Permalinks. But the Permalinks only work if you recreate the Rewrite Rules of WordPress - that's why many users initially have problems with it. So only solution is to rewrite rules of wordpress & chose proper structure of permalink as discussed above.

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Author bio:

Buytemplates.net is a website on template creation that helps you to choose the suitable custom web design, wordpress templates, clock icons and stock images with best features. A useful guide with other services such as icon galore, brochure monster, seo edge and logo angel providing additional features with development, host, promote and maintain the websites.

CSS: USING CSS FOR WEB DEVELOPEMENT

For web designers, developers & content writers, creating a perfectly stylish, attractive & informative website is of great importance. A website, with information, style, graphics, represents an entire outlook for a product, people, corporation or almost anything in the Universe. However there are many people think of a web page as just a visual medium—an aesthetically pleasing experience which may or may not contain information that’s of interest to the viewer. On the other hand, there also are some people think of a web page as a document that may be presented to readers in an aesthetically pleasing way. From a technical point of view, the document interpretation is more appropriate.

                    Basically, web page has 3 basic layers of construction; content, behavior & presentation. The presentation layer defines how the content will appear to a human being who accesses the document in one way or another. The content layer comprises the information the author wishes to convey to his or her audience, and is embedded within HTML or XHTML markup that defines its structure and semantics. A “CSS” or Cascading Style Sheets is the recommended way to control the presentation layer in a web document. The main advantage of CSS over presentational HTML markup is that the styling can be kept entirely separate from the content. It’s possible to store all the presentational styles for a 10,000-page web site in a single CSS file. CSS also provides far better control over presentation than do presentational element types in HTML.

CSS offers a number of significant benefits:

·         All styling is kept in a limited number of style sheets.

·         The overall saving in bandwidth is measurable. Since the style sheet is cached after the first request and can be reused for every page on the site, it doesn’t have to be downloaded with each web page. Removing all presentational markup from your web pages in favor of using CSS also reduces their size and bandwidth usage—by more than 50%.

The field of web design employs CSS widely. There is clearly a need for CSS to be taken seriously by graphic artists. CSS allows complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document. In projects including graphic design brochures, css is used. Even multimedia designers, flash developers rely upon employing css heavily.

Microsoft’s latest operating system Vista gives user amazing running performance coupled with high quality graphics. The vista icons for XP are icons that are specifically designed for the database applications, business applications, internet applications and websites as such. These icons are just used for official purposes. They are not for entertainment. These icons involve technical specifications which may not be understood by a novice user. Hence they are special icons designed only for specific usages. The themes of the icon can be selected for the purpose for which you will be using them. There are also the animated icons and the colors used for these icons are more in number. The vista desktop icons for XP are created with a high picture resolution.

SEO: The New Web Marketing Mantra

Today web marketing or use of internet in marketing of business products & services has become important part of any organization’s strategy for growth. Marketing roadmap for a particular product, service contains use of internet marketing through hiring professional Search engine optimization services (SEO services). It has become top priority for organizations. With Search Engine optimization, today organizations are making process of adding revenues by optimizing their website in such a way that whenever area related to business occurs in any search engine website, the business’s website becomes priority for search engine which will reward by basically sending traffic to that website.  SEO is not really that simple, but the bottom line is, if your page is optimized both on page and off, you generally get higher natural search engine rankings, which leads to traffic for you. It is nothing but an online marketing tool of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

                  With ever growing use of internet marketing to promote business, products & services, organizations are increasingly hiring the firms, consultants, independent organizations offering SEO Services. As the success of any website is not measured by how it looks good and stylish but the success of your website will be measured by the fact how many customer makes. According to facts, only the first 10 SERPs (search engine Result pages) will attract the visitor. Only top 10 search result have a chance to convert a visitor into a new valuable customer. Considering these facts, hiring Professional SEO services, is increasing day by day. If you are looking at hiring any such professional mentor in web marketing, you can be sure of visiting professional firms like SEO Edge. The firm’s SEO services include different solutions to clients based on their customized needs such as Keyword Research, Onpage Optimization, Article Writing Submission, Social Network Links, Blog Comment Link & many more to consider.

Search engine advertising is a popular trend, a service hired by more & more clients to improve web-traffic to their sites.  Gone are the days when a customer looking for a particular product or service, had to look through yellow pages to search relevant advertisements. With Search engine advertising in place, it allows you to find it easily. With Search engine advertising, Businesses have their advertisement displayed very near to search results when someone does an Internet search with keyword. There are different types of search engine advertising but one variety is based on keyword searches. Keyword advertising can be highly effective, because the people who are exposed to the ad are looking for information or products relating to the item. Google AdSense keyword advertising is an example of this type of advertising.

 Today through famous search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, you can buy places in website so that your advertisement gets noticed through internet search. 

A Quick Guide to the Basics of SEO

Starting a new website can be an exciting project and many people get swept along without ever performing adequate preparation, planning and research. All too often, a website is designed and unleashed in a hurry with no attention being paid to one of the most important aspects involved with website development – search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is crucial if a website ever hopes to stand a chance of being ranked by search engines. Whilst there are numerous other techniques that will bring visitors to a website – the majority of traffic will come via search engines, so it is vitally important to get SEO organized before, and during, any website development process.

SEO can be a massive subject – there are masses of online forums, websites, guides and tutorials available on the topic and a lot of people, and companies, have become very wealthy by dedicating themselves to providing SEO services.

If you are considering starting up a new website but are not too sure what SEO really entails, here is a brief summary of what SEO is all about.

SEO – The Basics

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has developed into a very specialized technique over the years. In the past, getting a search engine to index, and rank, a website involved nothing more complicated than some simple keyword stuffing in Meta tags and content.

Webmasters would choose a few keywords that they wanted to rank for and simply ‘stuff’ these words into Meta tags, Alt tags and content. It did not matter if the content became almost unreadable – search engines were not that advanced and simply scored the site on the amount of times a particular keyword, or keyword phrase, was present. If someone searched for ‘fast weight loss’ and a site has that phrase littered all through its content – there was a high chance that it would show up in the search results.

Thankfully, search engines have evolved and now actively discourage keyword stuffing by penalizing websites that use this technique – either by de-indexing, sandboxing, or burying the site way down the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), where it will never be found.

Keywords though, remain as important as ever – they are essential to the whole foundation of the search principle. Whenever anyone types a search query into their favorite browser, a search engine needs to be able to provide that searcher with relevant results and it does this by using keywords (and some more advanced techniques).

Keywords then, are a massive part of SEO and have even become a separate specialization for many companies – there are many businesses and individuals that are solely dedicated to keyword research and keyword strategy and implementation.

In essence, keywords are the brain of SEO and this brain has to be connected to other components by a chain of cleverly organized pathways, called links. Links can be internal or external and play an important role in helping search engines find their way around and collate relevant information for search users.

Internal links help visitors and search engines find their way around a website. They help site navigation and a search engine bot, crawler, or spider will use these internal links to index a website and locate external links to other websites. Good internal link architecture is crucial to ensure other pages, other than the homepage, are discovered by a search engine crawler. Internal link structure is highly regarded by search engines when they assess site relevance and score.

External links connect one website to another. External links can be seen as a type of voting system – the more links leading to a particular website, the more votes it has and the more popular, or relevant, it appears to a search engine. A vote to a website from another site is known as a ‘backlink’ and there are various types of these links.

If two websites link to each other this is called a ‘reciprocal link’, these are popular but not considered as authoritative as a one-way link – this is when one site points to another without the favor being returned. External links are also scored on the authority of the site they come from – so if a link to a website come from a site that is popular and highly-regarded, this link will carry more ‘link juice’. These links will also be deemed more worthy if they come from sites that are topic-relevant.

Linking is another major part of SEO, and again, many companies specialize in providing linking services. The main thing to remember is that good links will use anchor text containing primary keywords to further enhance the websites keyword relevance to search engines. A search engine crawler following a link that announces it is ‘dog training in Texas’ will be more inclined to relate the site to that keyword than if it followed a non-descript link. Anchor text links are essential and bring us back full circle to keywords again.

You may now be starting to realize that SEO is mainly about keywords, and making sure that search engines establish the connection between your website and its keywords. There are many other techniques that SEO adopts to manipulate search engines but they all come back to keyword promotion.

Keywords are placed in headings, titles and domain names. They are bolded and italicized in content body and used in H1-H3 tags to further drive home the fact that they are important. Whilst it is no longer possible to simply fill a site full of these keywords and wait to be ranked, there are many ways to promote keywords without been labeled as a keyword spammer.

SEO has many facets, but for anyone that is new to website development and fazed by the amount of information available on SEO, the easiest thing to remember is that the majority of all SEO work will involve incorporating keywords into a website. This can be achieved via tags, content, domain names and internal links and then promoting these keywords using external anchor text links.

By concentrating on this simplified summary and starting off by learning more about keyword research and link architecture, any new website developer will be heading in the right direction for achieving search engine success by using good SEO practices.

Avoid Some Hosting Packages Offering Free or Cheap Domain Names

A domain name can be one of the most important aspects of a website or blog. The domain name could become a recognized symbol, or become associated with a particular brand and if that domain name had to be suddenly changed it could have severe repercussions for a well-established website.

Building a good reputation and spending years on customer relations and search engine optimization can suddenly count for very little if the domain name that everyone recognizes and trusts disappears into thin air – or even worse, gets hijacked by another company.

But how could this happen? In what horrible scenario would a beloved domain name end up on the scrapheap, unusable and consigned to a domain name purgatory?

The following is a stern warning for anyone thinking of starting a website and for those that have a successful website and may already have made a grave error - without realizing what they have gotten themselves into.

Cheap Web Hosting Can Cost Money

Web hosting is big business and a highly competitive market. There are many web hosting companies that advertize very attractive packages and a lot of these deals will include free, or cheap, domain name registration.

This is a very appealing offer to potential website developers that may be new to the industry and like the sound of getting an all-in-one package deal. In many cases, these offers will be fine and there will be no future repercussions – but this may not always be the case.

It is absolutely essential that a thorough check is made of a potential hosting company before any decision is made. There are some incredible deals advertized and many people fail to check the history and performance of a particular web hosting company before they commit themselves.

Saving yourself a few dollars a month will mean nothing if the web host is unreliable, has a bad reputation and has servers that are constantly down – worst still, many cheap web hosts will suddenly disappear from existence without warning. Spending time and effort on a website that people cannot reach is hardly cost-effective, not to mention the loss of potential earnings – this loss will probably be far greater than the few dollars per month saved by opting for the cheap option. But this is not the main problem.

The problem occurs when you get fed up of the web hosting company’s lackluster service and finally decide to switch to a new, reliable host. Most good hosting companies will make it simple to transfer domain names to their servers, so this whole change should technically be of little concern. Think again.

Is Your Domain Name Really Yours?

To transfer a domain name, a web hosting company will need the Administrative Contact and Registrant Contact details – and in many cases you will need to be able to access and change the DNS (Domain Name Server) details.

The problem is that many web hosts offering free, and cheap, domain names as part of their package use their own company name to register the domain names. They also use their name for the admin contact and hardly ever allow any editing of the DNS details. This way they can ensure that they have all new customers trapped and unable to take their business elsewhere.

If you cannot verify that you are the registrant and administrator for your domain name you cannot transfer it to another web hosting company – well it may be possible, but it will require a lot of correspondence and a hefty admin fee, which will probably make the whole exchange a long and financially painful process.

This can be disastrous news for anyone that has built up an established domain name, or has a domain name that is the actual name of their company. To lose this domain name would be unthinkable, but this could well occur if you wish to change web hosts. The only options would be to ditch the domain name, stick with the unreliable web host, or hope that you can pressure the company to change the relevant details so you can switch – but this will undoubtedly not be a cheap affair.

Do Your Research and Avoid Being Trapped

If you are looking to establish a website, or blog, for the long-term and expect to require a domain name for some time to come – it is in your best interest to fully research any web host that is promoting an offer that sounds too good to be true.

Free domain names are very tempting but can easily end up costing you serious money, and loss of business, should you wish to change web host in the future. Always check the reputation of any potential web hosting company before you sign up. Ask to see their domain registration information, or panel, and make sure that they will be registering the domain name using your details and that you will have full administrative access to the DNS details.

Sometimes it is worth paying that little bit more for peace of mind.

5 Tips for Making Your Blog Stand Out From the Crowd

The internet is littered with a plethora of blogs all competing for the attention of information-hungry search users. On any given search query the results offered up by a search engine will undoubtedly include a large proportion of blogs.

The reason that blogs seem to do so well in search engine results is that they tend to offer the latest information, as opposed to general websites where the content tends to be more static and unchanging. Search engines love fresh, updated, topical content that offers their users almost real-time information to help answer the questions they pose.

It is no secret that search engines favour blogs and this has lead to a massive increase in the amount of private and corporate blogs being created every single day. So with this massive increase in competition, what should a new blog be looking to do to ensure it sticks out from the crowd?

5 Techniques to Beat the Competition



1. Template and Design

Whilst the design of a blog will not influence whether or not a search user decides to select that blog from the search engine results – it can be the initial factor that decides if the visitor stays on the site long enough to read the content, or leaves in a matter of seconds. It is said that a website has 5-7 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention, so as far as a blog is concerned – appearances can mean everything.

The design should be relevant to the subject matter - there is no such thing as a generic template. What is important is that the design should look clean, professional and steer the reader to the content, not distract from it. Keep the template clutter-free and stay well clear of flashing banners, massive adverts and if you choose to incorporate textual ads, like Google Adwords, have them discreetly placed at the right hand side, never have them at the top, or dissecting the actual content – it looks cheap and tacky.

Make sure internal navigation is clear, if you want a visitor to stick around and read all the blog’s content they will need to be able to find it. Have clear links to other pages, and related topics, and you will see a big increase in the total time spent on the site by each visitor.

2. Title, Domain Name and Blog Description

Any search query brings up at least 10 results. If your blog is one of them it has at least 9 competitors all vying for the searchers attention. The listings at the top of the page do have an obvious advantage, but that does not mean that they will be automatically successful. A searcher will be looking for the listing that best suits their need – the one they think matches their query and will provide the information they require.

The very first thing they look at is the title of the listing – this is the actual title of the webpage that is featured. Then they will read the short description to make sure that the listing is relevant and finally they will check the URL to see where they will be taken to.

The listing that has a title relevant to the query, a description that suggests that the answer to their question will be answered, and has a URL that appears relevant and trustworthy is likely to be the successful listing.

It is crucial that a blog uses its primary keywords in the blog title itself and in the title of individual pages. The description must include keywords, revolve around the keywords and should persuade a reader that the blog contains the information they need - try posing a question using the keywords and then stating that the blog will provide the answer.

Relevant domain names are crucial – ideally, they should be the same as the blog title, but at the very least they should include keywords. Always look to use the .com, extension if possible, it is the most widely accepted - if this is not possible then opt for either .net, .org, or .info but stay clear of .biz as it has been abused by internet marketers and still sets off warning sirens to search users.

3. Customer Research

This is an area that is often overlooked by many other blogs and will instantly give you an advantage. Many blog owners are more interested in writing about what interests them and never stop to think about what a reader actually needs – either they don’t think, or they don’t care – whatever the reason, they are leaving the door wide open for you to provide a superior service.

It is always easier to write on a topic that personally interests you – this enthusiasm and prior knowledge will come across in both your writing and design. Readers like to know the person offering the information actually knows what they are talking about. If you can choose a blog topic that you can connect with it will be a big advantage and will reduce any time spent on research.

Once you have your topic, check out relevant forums, Q&A sites and other blogs – are there any specific reader questions that are left unanswered, or that have been inadequately answered? If so, this is your doorway to exploit this failure and provide the readers with information that you now know they are desperately looking for.

If you understand what people are searching for and can provide the relevant answers, your reputation will increase dramatically. The most successful blogs are the ones that people turn to and trust to provide the right answers. Once a blog establishes itself as an authority site, it can expect superior search engine attention and viral promotion from word-of-mouth recommendation.

4. Research Your Competition

This may sound obvious, but it is rarely performed. Look at the most popular blogs in your industry and try to see if you can work out why they are so popular. Do they provide quality answers? Do they make a real effort to engage their reader? Is the content fresh, relevant and different? The chances are that the answer to all these questions will be yes, and so it should be.

Observe how they provide information – the style will depend on the industry and readership – and look to incorporate this into your blog. Check out their templates and overall design, is it something that could be enhanced and modified for your own blog? Is the internal structure easy to navigate? How do they encourage readers to click the links to other content? Look at their entry in the search results – how have they structured their title and description to stimulate interest?

This is not cheating or copying, it is ethical research. You are not looking to steal ideas and go head-to-head against these blogs – you would lose if you tried as they are already established. What you are looking for are chinks in their armour: Is there something they have missed, something they are not covering? Can you expand on their content and offer a greater insight into certain subjects?

You are looking to use their ideas, supercharge them and offer superior information. Searchers that require more information, on a subject that a big blog may cover but not expand upon, can find that information on your blog. Blog readers love leaving comments and recommendations – especially on rival blogs – and if they start to find better content on your blog, it won’t be long until a lot more bloggers start to know about it.

5. Networking

A general blog will not become an overnight success. There are exceptions for blogs owned by big corporations, or those created by successful individuals that have a pre- populated readership - but for the average blog owner, popularity will not be instantaneous.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you will need to become involved in. It can be a complicated strategy, and will be time consuming, but it will need to be an essential part of your blogging strategy, if you want your blog to appear in the top search engine results.

SEO is a big subject and something to be thoroughly researched and learnt over time. For now, the quickest way to get your blog noticed and established is by networking. This is still a form of SEO but it is simplified and can become intertwined with the previous techniques to save time.

You will already have visited other blogs, forums and Q&A sites as part of your research – now it is time to return to these sites and participate. Look for topics that are relevant to your blog and try to provide answers to questions and quality responses to posts. Most of these sites will allow you to leave a link back to your own blog, either in a signature, profile, or directly in the actual post itself. Remember to check the site rules before direct linking.

The idea is to provide quality posts that will help you to establish yourself as an industry, or topical, expert. Building up a good reputation and rapport with readers, and site owners, is the best way to encourage people to visit your own blog. In fact, if you interact positively you can approach the site owners and ask if they wish to participate in a link exchange – they link to your blog in exchange for you linking back to their site.

This networking technique is a fast strategy for getting yourself noticed and self- promoting your blog. It has the advantage of promoting directly to a targeted audience that is relevant, interested and more likely to respond. Also, popular blogs are regularly crawled by search engines and if they discover a link to your blog, they can follow the link back and index your site – quicker than simply submitting your blog directly search engine for inclusion.



These 5 tips will assist in boosting the success rate of any new blog. At the end of the day, a blog is only as good as its content - if the content is poor, the blog will fail. But in the same context, what is the point in proving superior work if nobody ever gets to read the content?

The above techniques will not only help to create content that is more relevant, useful and search engine friendly - they will provide a solution for ensuring a blog becomes focussed, noticed and established in a shorter space of time.

Keywords, Links and Content: SEO Essentials for New Websites

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can seem like an overwhelming subject for anyone that is new to website development. SEO is one of the most widely, and hotly, debated topics and there is an overload of information ready to baffle any new webmaster.

But SEO need not be that complicated. As long as a few simple techniques are employed in the initial stages of a new website – that website has every chance of becoming indexed and ranked by a search engine.

Here are the 3 main SEO principles that should be followed when planning and building a new website.

1. Keywords  

Keywords are the important words, and phrases, that define a website. These are they terms that people will type into a web browser. Anyone looking for information online will perform a search query – this will normally involve typing a specific word, or sentence, into a search box (such as Google) and then being presented with a list of relevant results.

If a website specializes in selling exotic birds, they may want to appear in the search results for the query ‘African Grey Parrot’. To achieve this, a website will need to structure their website around that particular keyword phrase and then convince a search engine that the website is the best, or one of the best, places to find quality information on that subject.

Every time anyone searches for information, the results they receive are heavily influenced by the listed websites keyword choices and how well they presented these to a search engine using SEO techniques.

2. Links  

Links are how a search engine finds its way from website to website. If there were no links, the whole foundations of search would crumble. A good link structure is essential to the success of a website.

Links can be internal and external but serve the same goal – allowing visitors and search engines to locate the site and any relevant information. Internal links act as on- site navigation and guide people and search engine crawlers around the site. Poor link architecture will lead to pages not been indexed and visitors leaving in a hurry.

The link itself is nearly always simple HTML code that will be presented as either an ordinary textual link, a graphical link, or an image-based link. When clicked, or followed, this link will then take the reader, or search engine crawler, to a specified location – in the case of an internal link, this will be some place within the actual website.

External links point to other websites but follow the same format as internal links. These can be inbound and outbound links. Inbound simply means that another website has a link which points to your website. An outbound link is a link for your site that directs visitors, and search robots, to another website.

External links are judged by various factors, such as: relevance, authority of link referrer, whether the link is reciprocal (website A points to website B, website B points to website A) or if it is a one-way link (one website points to another without the link being reciprocated), Google PageRank and a few other factors.

Links should use anchor text and this should be based around keywords. This adds to keyword relevance and helps to convince search engines that the website is relevant to a particular topic i.e. the keyword. Anchor text means having a particular word, or phrase, as the clickable text – such as ‘African Gray Parrot’.

External links are seen as votes for a website and the more of these votes that a website has, the more important it will look to a search engine – especially if these links are form reputable, topic-relevant, authoritative websites.

3. Content  

This is the information contained within an actual website itself and has become increasingly important as search engines become more advanced. Content should be relevant to the keyword selection for that website – there is no point trying to rank for the term ‘African Gray Parrot’ if the website content is all about tropical fish.

Content should be good quality and updated regularly. Search engines place greater importance now on freshly updated content – especially now that some search engines use real-time updates. Primary keywords should be used within the title and sub headings of the content and also placed within the text, preferably in the first and last paragraph and a few times in the main body.

Keywords should only make up about 5-7% of the total word count and it can be advantageous to highlight these words by bolding or italicizing.

As far as the rest of the content goes, it should contain relevant information – that includes using synonyms, secondary keywords and good anchor text links to internal pages. The more quality content a site has the better. The home page should have at least 300-500 words contained within the page.

Content that looks interesting to readers is great, but be aware of using unnecessary graphics. Images can make a page look interesting, but overusing large image files, Flash and JavaScript can slow down the load speed of a website and search engines still have some trouble reading JavaScript.

The best practice is to keep content textual and ensure it includes a spattering of keywords in the right places. Make surer that the content is informational, and useful to visitors, and that the website is regularly updated.

These 3 factors (keywords, links and content) are the pillars of good SEO. By engaging in good research, planning and preparation a new website creator can avoid making simple SEO mistakes. Optimizing a website is much harder once it has been built and indexed – in some cases the entire site may have to be scrapped.

SEO should be factored in right from the start, even in the initial stages when only the idea for a website is being considered. Building a website around sound SEO techniques will offer that website the greatest chance of search engine success. SEO does not have to be complicated to begin with, by following the 3 pillars mentioned above any new website will be off to a flying start.

Creating User Friendly Website Navigation

Navigational links are an important part of any website´s design. This article provides four suggestions for making a website´s navigation more user friendly. These suggestions include choosing the best navigation location, maintaining this location throughout your website, labeling the links in an easily understood manner, and ensuring that each link is working correctly.

An often overlooked part of website design involves the creation and placement of a website’s navigational links. If your links are badly placed, your visitors may become frustrated and leave your website before ever finding your navigation. If your links are badly labeled, your visitors may become hesitant to click leaving portions of your website unread. Luckily, there are many ways to make your website’s navigation more user friendly to your visitors. Below are four suggestions to get you started.

1. Choose the best location for your navigation.

As they say, location is everything. Be sure that your navigational links can be easily found by those who visit your website. Most visitors won’t search for hard to find navigation, so it is always best to display your links in an obvious location. This will help your visitors to better explore your website.

Common ways to display a website’s navigational links include horizontally across the top of the page or in a vertical column near the top right or top left. For websites with large scrollable web pages, a second set of links near the bottom of the page can also be helpful.

2. Use the same navigation location throughout your website.

Once you have chosen the best place to display your navigational links, it is important to maintain this position throughout the rest of your website. Frustration is a common response when visitors must seek out the changed location of a website’s navigation with each newly loaded page. Having a standard navigation location on each of your web pages will make browsing through your website much easier for both your new and returning visitors.

3. Label your navigation in an easily understood manner.

Whether you choose to use images, text, or a combination of the two within your website’s navigation, it is important to use graphics or labels that can be easily understood by your website’s visitors. There should be no confusion as to where any of the links in your navigation will lead.

Displaying poorly labeled links can be confusing for your visitors, which can ultimately lead to your visitors prematurely leaving your website. This can produce less page views per visit and even the loss of potential sales. For these reasons, webmasters should be extra cautious to avoid confusing labels when creating their website’s navigation.

4. Ensure that each link used in your navigation is working properly.

The final stage in the creation of a website’s navigation should always be testing that each link functions correctly. When clicked, do each of the links redirect to the proper page? Do the links appear correctly during each of the four link states – unvisited, hover, active, and visited? Testing that each individual link is working correctly can be a very time consuming task, but it is still an essential part of your website’s navigation creation.

Your website might contain some of the most useful and unique content on the Internet, but without properly created navigational links, your visitors may never find it. By taking the extra time to create more intuitive navigation, your visitors will enjoy a more user friendly experience while surfing through the pages of your website.