To get your website ready to be indexed by the search engines, follow these simple steps:

1. Design your site in html.
2. Use meta tags that are coded properly.
3. Use the right tags in your page. Title tags call attention to your keyword phrases. 
4. Add link back to your site from other quality sites, with content related to your website.
5. Include a sitemap to make it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages.
6. Be sure to add relevant content to your website as often as possible.

A website design that meets basic SEO standards will do well in the search engines.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

The Obama campaign has launched a search marketing campaign designed to mitigate potential negative press.
The paid campaign covers possible search phrases such as William Ayers and Barack Obama terrorist.
The ads take you to a website designed specifically to address the questions people may have regarding an issue.It does appear that McCain is trying to sway potential voters online, but not nearly as effectively as Obama is.
For more on this topic, please go here.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Some people believe that SEO is a thing of the past. Here are a couple post to illustrate this theory: Is SEO a Dying Industry?  and SEO Has No Future.

• The search engine optimization proponents rushed to respond:
  Ian Lurie talks about how SEO really does have a future. Smart SEO makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site.
• Michael Gray also says that SEO has a future. SEO is here to stay, he says, and there’s nothing that anyone can say to stop that.
• Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search engines.

So is SEO a dying industry, or an evolving industry?
Smart SEO companies will evolve.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

We are happy to announce the launch of a new website this week: http://web-designer-orlando.com, to address the needs of our Orlando customers.
We are now offering quality web design at an affordable price to the Orlando area. We also offer web hosting and search engine optimization.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Internet regulator ICANN has voted unanimously to expand the number of top level domain names. It’s in one of the biggest shake-ups in the Internet’s brief history in a vote on allowing millions of new domain names from .paris to .Pepsi.

The decision provides companies the opportunity to turn their brands into web addresses, while individuals could potentially use their names. A second proposal, that would introduce domain names written in scripts such as Asian and Arabic, was also approved.

“We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,” said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN has been working on the move for nearly six years.

The new plan is sure to inspire a rush for thousands of new top level domains based on any string of letters, providing a “business plan and technical capacity” can be demonstrated.

The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.

Broad product groups such as .bank or .car are also likely contenders.

Cities could benefit too from this liberalisation, with the German capital hoping for .berlin or New York for .nyc.

Expect the new system to come replete with contentious battles and bidding wars as companies move to secure domain names based on their intellectual property.

The new system is anticipated to come in the next year, so get ready domain name buyers!

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, now an entry in Wikipedia, (see Social media optimization), helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites are to be used in order to leverage the power of the social web.

Website owners and blog owners can use their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites.

Social optimization helps build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic.

Create genuinely interesting informative pages. Include images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they visit your site.

Add a blog. Be active in blogs within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant.

Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign.

Social News/Media Sharing Websites
• Reddit
• Digg
• Newsvine

Social Networking Sites
• MySpace
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Social Bookmarking Websites
• del.icio.us
• Stumble Upon

Social Media Optimization needs to be done properly and carefully. Offer quality!

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Well, you can ask that your SEO professional, but can your website really be at the top of the search engines rankings?  To achieve top rankings, keep in mind the following:

Play by the rules of the Search Engines.

Ranking for the right keywords (keywords used by your target audience) is important.

Know your competition.

Use Search Engine friendly design.

Your website should be compelling enough for repeat visits by search engines and potential customers.

Make sure you have search engine friendly URLs.

Select keywords that are worthy.

Write great content.

Keep adding and editing content regularly.

Use good  linking strategy.

Write relevant and original meta content. 

Acquire relevant links

Submit your website to the relevant sections in relevant directories.

Consult experts, if you need to.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics of search engine optimization, and help with your website’s rankings.

1.Title Tag

The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about.

2. Meta Description Tag

The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will be displayed in all the search engines so you have to be careful when you write it.

3. Anchor Tag or URL

The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or from site to site. This tag should have your title or the main keywords from your page title in it.

4. Backlinks

One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality links from relevant, related quality sites. The search engines, especially Google, count each link as a “vote” for your site or content.  
 

5. Indexed Pages

You should know what content the search engines have indexed from your site.  Check to see how your links are displayed  to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

6. Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved. Just type into Google Search:   cache:yourURL

7. Your Keywords

You must dominate the search engines for your chosen keywords. Make sure you have your main keywords in the Meta Keyword Tag on your page. We can help you with the best placement of your keywords in your page.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

How do you know which search terms/keywords to use in your website optimization?

You want good descriptive keywords, with the most online searches performed, and the least competitive websites.

You can use Goggle’s Free Keyword Tool here . Type in a phrase you believe your website should be found under. Once you find a great keyword/search term, go to Google and run a search on it. See how many pages you get for your matches. Checking the right hand side on top (Results 1 - 10 of about 7,900,000 for…)

Do this a few times and rate your keywords from 1 through 3, with 1 being most important.

You can also have a professional search engine marketing company  helps with this and do a full Keyword Anaysis for you. They can also help optimize your website for the search engines, using your chosen keywords, and help you come up when someone does an online search for these terms.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Index times vary depending on the search engine. Some search engines offer paid options if you wish to be indexed more quickly.

Allow 3- 4 months for your web site to be indexed.  If you aren’t showing up at all, then you need to look at keywords, content, title, description and keyword tags.

If you do, and want to rank better, then you can hire a search engine optimization company.

If your website takes a long time to load, it might time out before the spider finishes indexing. To avoid this, limit your page size.

Use reliable web hosting. If your web site is down when the search engine spider visits, it won’t get indexed. If you are indexed  and when they spider your site and it’s not responding, your site could be removed from the database.

If you use questionable techniques (i.e., excessive repetition of keywords, same color text as background) a search engine may  reject your submissions.

If your web site shares the same IP address as other Web sites, you may find your website penalized because of something someone else did. Check with your hosting company  to see if your domain name has its own unique IP assigned to it. If it does not, ask them to move it to its own IP.

Some search engines like Google and HotBot have been known to refuse to index web sites unless they can see other websites link back to them. Or, they may index you for a while, but remove you after a certain period of time because you didn’t achieve any external links to your website.

Simple is better. Fancy scripts and code on a page can hurt your search engine rankings. Dynamic pages with URLs containing special symbols are often ignored by search engines. You need to consider creating “static” versions of each page you want indexed.

When you submit your website to a directory like Yahoo, Open Directory, LookSmart, and others, humans review your website. They decide if it’s good enough to be listed. These directories can help you get indexed by other search engines. So make sure your submission is error free and that your website follows good web design rules.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com