SEO Advice and Analogy

Learn web design basics of search engine optimization for small business website promotion with a menu of seo basics. Search engine optimization, SEO, involves creating a web design for two audiences, visitors and search engines. What you feed them, how much, and how often is much like feeding your family.

Quality ingredients and fresh content are equally important in restaurants and web design. To satisfy the appetite of the major search engines, operate your small business custom web design like an expensive restaurant. Provide a menu with high quality and fresh content to have the best ingredients for success.

Do not attempt to deceive search engines. You will be caught. You will be punished.

SEO Web Design for Major Search Engines and Visitors

Web design should be developed for visitors. That’s rule #1. Provide visitors with easy navigation and an obvious theme throughout your site web design. Stale and dusty websites are those that are launched and forgotten. Add to the menu often and you are more likely to keep the search engines and your visitors happy with your website design.

Search engines may bring traffic to your website. What visitors find within the pages of your small business custom web design will determine if they stay or leave. You may want to read my 5 Second Rule for Small Business Owners advice article.

Following is my version of a menu for Search Engine Optimization comparing small business web design for SEO and a restaurant.

Popular Appetizers for SEO (not critical to web design, just nice to have)

1. DOCTYPE Statement
2. Proper HTML Code
3. META Description
4. META Key Words

The Main Menu for Search Engines (very important in web design)

1. Keywords in the Page Title
2. Keywords in the H Tags
3. The Age of Your WWW Domain
4. The Size of Your Website
5. Backlinks (inbound links to your pages)
6. Keywords in Web Design Text Links
7. High Quality, Original Content

Dessert Menu for SEO (nice web design additions)

1. XML Sitemaps for Google and TXT for Yahoo
2. A Weblog, or Blog
3. A Forum for Your Niche
4. Related Articles

Do NOT include these to your SEO menu web design.

These are just some of the web design items that may hurt visitors and Search Engine Optimization, and eventually you. Websites, like restaurants, will be out of business if they poison their visitors. Here are web design SEO elements on websites that you should avoid.

1. Do not have affiliate only advertising pages. You need a web design with original content.
2. Do not have over optimized pages. Poor web design won’t help SEO and may confuse your visitors.
3. Do not have link schemes, inbound or outbound. Deceptive web design practices will backfire.
4. Do not have identical content hosted on two separate domains (mirror site web designs).
5. Do not have plagiarized content in your web design. It is illegal, and search engines can tell.
6. Do not have foul language as in cursing, or website design content that is hateful or racist.

Follow this SEO menu for success in your small business website. You may learn more about web design and SEO by searching unfamiliar terms online, or visit my blog for small business advice. Search engine optimization details are coming in future articles and reports.