A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable asset
in your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize in knowing
how to raise your search engine positions, monitoring those
positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies
to account for undesirable results in any given month. Since
this takes a lot of time, effort, and specialized knowledge, it
can be in your best interest to go to an outside source rather
than try to maintain high search engine positions on your own.

However, like every business, there are good companies and there
are lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and the criteria
to look for will help you in choosing an affordable, effective
search engine optimization company.

When looking at different companies, begin by considering the
approach they employ to raise your search engine positions.
Steer clear of companies that use cloaked, doorway, or bridge
pages to raise your positions. These techniques violate most
search engine policy, and in the worst case scenario, will only
get your website severely penalized, if not removed entirely
from a search engine’s index.

A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible to
the regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is coded
to detect a search engine spider and divert them to this special
page, which is set-up to artificially boost your search engine
position. Doorway or bridge pages utilize the same concept, but
often reside on an entirely different server. Google, one of the
largest and most important search engine on the Internet, will
remove your website from their index if they detect you have
cloaked pages. Never, never employ any company that uses this
technique!

Another important element is to get a guarantee that the company
you hire will not work with your competitors while they are
working for you. Obviously, this would seriously compromise the
effectiveness of the search engine optimization campaign. Be
aware that some companies will use the success they achieve for
your website to sell their services to your competitors. So get
your guarantee in writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

Of course, one of the most important factors you want to check
out is the company’s track record of results. However, don’t
take the company’s word for it. They will undoubtedly be
slanting their results in order to sell their services to you.
To go beyond their simple statement of success, ask them a few
pertinent questions, and verify their answers.

Ask them which engines they have achieved the best results on.
The ones that are important are the most popular engines, and
these are the ones you want to see good results on. Since the
popularity of search engines can change with the landscape of
the overall Internet, check out the Nielsen Netratings page at
Search Engine Watch. You can access this at

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/article.php/2156451.

Next, find out what keywords and phrases they are claiming great
results with. It’s easy to get high rankings with unpopular
words. For instance, the keyword “cat leashes” will get high
popularity ranking because no one else would think of using it.
What you are looking for is good results using popular keywords.
Check out the software Wordtracker, available at
www.wordtracker.com. You can order a free trial, or a
subscription ranging from 1 day to 1 year. This software rates
the popularity of keywords and phrases based on actual search
engine use.

Next, look for good results over an entire site that the company
claims to have successfully worked for. You want to see a wide
range of positions over a number of different search engines
using different keywords or phrases for the entire site. Request
a report for any client the company claims to have done well
for. This report should show good positions on a number of the
most popular search engines for a variety of different, popular
keywords and phrases.

When you are checking out search engine optimization companies,
make sure they have actually done the work they are claiming to
have done. Some companies will use other company’s results in
order to get you to sign on with them. If you are in doubt, call
the company they are showing you results for, and ask for the
name of their search engine optimization company.

It’s important to keep in mind that a successful search engine
optimization campaign will result in maximum exposure across a
wide range of popular search engines using a variety of keywords
and phrases. This is the formula for a successful campaign, and
you should keep it always in the forefront of your marketing
strategy.

Ask the search engine optimization company you are considering
for a report that shows you rankings across a number of popular
search engines for a period of at least six months. Remember:
search engine marketing is a process that is continual, and you
need a company that not only understands this, but keeps
constant tabs on your search engine positions. That company must
also be able to adjust its strategy in the event that search
engine rankings drop.

Since search engine marketing is an on-going process, your
positions must be constantly monitored. If you want your search
engine optimization company to do this for you, request a sample
of a monthly report. It is essential that this report should
show rankings for the most popular search engines. Don’t be
impressed by a report that only shows great results for a
limited number of small search engines. These are fairly easy
results to acquire. Also confirm that the popular search engine
results they are showing you are indeed the popular search
engines currently.

Be sure the sample report the company shows you is in a format
that you can easily understand. For example, it could be in the
form of a chart that covers a period of at least six months and
presents data such as the top 50 positions broken down on a
monthly basis or the top 5 pages each month. Then, ascertain
that the company you are considering actually monitors these
positions or pages every month, and that the sample report they
show you includes findings and recommendations for the specific
site. This insures that the company will actively monitor and
make adjustments to their strategy on a continual basis rather
than simply gather statistics on your positions. You need a
company that is actively participant in your search engine
marketing campaign, not just an information gatherer.

Obviously, your finances have to figure into your choice of
company, but bear in mind that a search engine optimization
company is crucial the success of your marketing campaign. It is
not just a casual accessory. If you cannot afford a company that
will do a thorough and reliable job for your website, you might
consider waiting until you do have the finances in place.

If you have to find a company and can’t wait for your finances
to catch up, you may be able to find an affordable company that
will also be able to supply quality, reliable work, such as a
fairly new company. Just remember that there are risks involved
with using a company without a proven track record – and that
risk is your money! Don’t take that leap unless the company can
supply you with a least a few references.

References are the most reliable indicator of a good company.
Don’t use a company that won’t show your references because of
any reason, confidentiality included. Remember – even doctors
will provide references! The firm you choose should provide you
with a minimum of two references, one that is from the past, and
one that is current.

When you contact these references, be prepared to ask precise,
specific questions so that neither of your time is wasted. Ask
them what their experience was like with the company, such as
their availability to answer questions and deal with problems
and their ability to meet deadlines. Ask the reference to rate
the overall performance of the company.

Find out if the company requested that the reference make
significant changes to their web pages that affected the
visitors coming to their site. You are looking for a search
engine optimization company that can balance the needs of both
search engines and site visitors without compromising either.

The most essential question to ask is whether the work of the
search engine optimization company resulted in higher profits
for the reference. Without profits, it doesn’t matter whether
your positions are at the top of the list or not

The techniques being used by internet experts for search engine optimization are always changing and evolving. This is a necessary due to the ever-shifting considerations and guidelines used by the search engine spiders of the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. This is especially the case when it comes to Google, which is not the most sophisticated and advanced search engine. Especially with its latest algorithm purchase, which places them at the head of the indexing game by leaps and bounds.

There are two primary types of search engine optimization. These are on-page optimization, and off-page optimization. It is clear that search engine optimizing a website today has to do with a great deal more than using Meta tags, or sprinkling a few keywords throughout your website. Though this is still a factor, there is a great deal more to it if you actually want to see results.

Those techniques just mentioned, though, are what is considered to be on-page optimization techniques. Today, on-page optimization effort alone will only achieve the desired results about 20 percent of the time. However, when it comes to keywords that are even mildly competitive, your odds shoot right down through the floor.

This leaves a whopping 80 percent that depends on off-page optimizing for success. Off-page optimizing is all about:

the number of inbound links to your site. That is, the number of links to your site that are not located on your own site.
the actual linking text the anchor text of these inbound links.
the quality of the pages where the inbound links are located.

It is clear, therefore, that though onpage optimization is still important, the majority of webmasters are going to need to place a great deal more emphasis on their offpage optimization efforts if they ever intend to see any results.

This is what is called the 80/20 rule.

The reasoning behind the 80/20 rule is actually quite logical. Though the onsite search engine optimization does help search engines such as Google to index a site in detail, it is the offpage optimization that allows the search engine to gauge the site’s actual relevancy and quality. It is what allows the search engine to differentiate between spammers, and actual sites that are filled with useful information, or extremely relevant content with regards to the search word or phrase in question.

This works because onpage optimization is controlled entirely by the webmaster. Therefore, it is subject to abuse, manipulation of the indexing criteria of the search engines, and other unscrupulous (according to search engines) activities. On the other hand, offpage optimization is entirely controlled by other webmasters; not the webmaster who owns and/or maintains the actual site itself. This means that it is much harder for a given webmaster to manipulate the analysis of the search engines. It is the attempt of Google and the other large search engines to stop certain webmasters from gaining an unfair advantage over the results shown by Google searches.

True enough, a webmaster who truly wishes to make the best effort to achieve those top ranks with the search engines can do all that he or she is able to do to encourage other webmasters to add a link to their site. However, this is entirely up to those other discriminating webmasters. Therefore, the odds are that only the more relevant websites will be able to achieve the best offpage optimization results.

Because the search engines are considering not only the number of links to the site, but also how many are only inbound that is, where there is a link going to the site, but it is not reciprocated the quality of the site holding the inbound link, and the actual text used for the link, this also allows them to discourage an unfair advantage from webmasters who attempt simply to crosslink among their own many sites using keyword rich text. For one thing, a webmaster will only have so many sites that can be cross linked, and for another, this would have to be done very carefully so that the links remain inbound, and not reciprocated. The search engines aren’t as much concerned with one or two inbound links as they are with hundreds, or perhaps thousands when it comes to the number one ranking spot in their searches.

When you need serious improvement of the quality and volume of traffic to your website from any search engine, Dallas search engine optimization is what you must look for. Dallas engine search optimization doesn’t just target contextual search engines, but also local search engines and vertical search engines, which are industry-specific. The primary goal with Dallas search engine optimization is to meet the needs of visitors by matching them with the websites that offer those exact things. How do they do it? It’s easy. They fully understand the process of searching on the Internet, both search algorithms and human search. Dallas web design can also come in handy because there are times when the design of your website may be in need of improvement. Dallas web design focuses on the optimization of the site’s presentation, coding and structure. However, the changes may only involve a hierarchical structure incorporated to the site or fixing the problems that stand in the way of your website being fully spidered by a search engine program. In other words, Dallas search engine optimization may include only small changes, which are not obvious to the human visitor. But Dallas search engine optimization may also provide your website with an unique content, which will be indexed and extracted easily form the pages of your website by search engines, and, at the same time, it will appeal to human visitors.

With Dallas search engine optimization your projects will be carried out either as a part of an entire marketing campaign or as a stand-alone project. Since some changes to the source of your website may be required when such an optimization is performed, you will find it helpful if the menus, designs, shopping carts, or management systems can be easily optimized. This goes back to the very development and design of your website, so you should try Dallas web design to make sure that the design of your website is search engine friendly.

Search engines use a great variety of undisclosed factors in their algorithms. Not only are these factors very numerous, up to several hundreds, but they also change continually. Moreover, search algorithms differ substantially from one search engine to the other. The leading search engines do not disclose the algorithms used in ranking the pages. This makes it all the more difficult for search engine optimization providers to assure good rankings. Dallas search engine optimization is based on experiments and the effects of various approaches to search optimization have been gauged in order to have an insight on the algorithms used by the search engines.

Dallas search engine optimization also deals with traffic quality, which is measured by the number of times that a visitor takes a specific action after he/she has used a keyword phrase in order to find what was of interest to him/her. Whenever the visitor views or downloads a page, makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter or requests further information, a conversion action takes place, that is, the keyword phrase leads the visitor to the website he/she was looking for.

Dallas web design is concerned with all the aspects that make your website appealing to a potential visitor and assure good rankings with the search engines. Dallas web design focuses primarily on value of the content, but also on its usability, appearance and visibility.

For more resources about Dallas web design and even about Dallas search engine optimization please review http://www.adviceinteractivegroup.com

5 steps to create Successful Search Engine Optimization strategies and improve your website’s organic ranking.

Dear Reader,

You are reading this article probably because you want to learn about Search Engine Optimization techniques and tricks. Perhaps you want to promote your site and generate more leads, increase the revenue, and ultimately bring more business for your site.

Therefore, I gathered some information about search engine optimization subject which I hope you will get benefit from reading it.

Search engine marketing is using the search engines to drive traffic to your website. Consumers are using the internet and for the most part “search engines” to find what they are looking for. Therefore, it’s important for your business to have a website that has a good ranking in search engines.

There are numbers of method you can use to market your website using the search engines; however, I will only cover those that are free of charge in this article.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

This is probably the most common search engine marketing strategy for your website. There are enormous amount of information on the web about organic search engine optimization; however, which one will work for your site?

Learn from my mistake. It won’t happen over the night. You must have a good plan for your website optimization process and dedicate yourself to that plan. Therefore, it’s important to have a well-planed search engine optimization strategy to reduce your chance of failure. Today, there are so many FREE TOOLS available to you that you can use to create a successful plan for your site such as Google Webmaster Tools, GoodKeyword and many more.

I have divided the search Engine optimization planning into 5 major steps.

1. Decide which search engine you want to focus on. I would suggest start with Google, Yahoo, MSN respectively and Lean as much as you can about these search engines. For example, learn what is important to Google and use it your advantage. These information are usually published at their sites and it’s available to the public. In addition, there are thousands of methods that have been patented by USPTS and it’s available to you for FREE which you can study and learn from it.

2. This is an important part of your plan. You have to be realistic. Select your target keywords as narrow as possible. Why? Because if you choose very wide keywords you are diminishing your chance of being successful in your project. Remember, you are not the only one that is trying to optimize his or her site and those who started before you are ahead of the game. So be patient and start from the button and get to the top.

3. Identify you competitors and find out about their strategies. By doing a simple search on Google you can find your competitors and discover their strategies and secrets. Using methods like number of incoming links to the website, website’s contents, number of pages and…est. learn as much as you can about them.

4. Once you have identified all the search-terms it’s time to start the optimization process from your home page and other important pages on your site. In this step prepare the Meta tags, keywords, heading, contents, link tags… Remember, search engine optimization is divided into two major parts; inside optimization and outside optimization. Please note; do not neglect to put relative Meta tags and content for your pages. Although, search engines such as Google, and Yahoo do not put a high value on Meta tags anymore, however not-having Meta tags can reduce your ranking up to 1%. Don’t say 1% doesn’t matter, when you are competing with more than one million pages.

5. Once you have figure-out your Meta tags, Keyword, and contents, it’s time to start the real and more challenging step “outside optimization”. The best and most effective method which so fare has been proven the top strategy for search engine optimization is linking strategy. But be careful of who you are getting link from and to whom you are linking from your website. I suggest link to those sites that offer something valuable to your visitors and exchange link with websites that are in the same market as you are. Link exchanging is beneficial but it can also be harmful. Search engines such as Google puts value on all incoming links to each web page and recognizes them as a vote from one site to another site. Linking strategy is a very complicated and critical subject and I would suggest that you do some research on your own before starting this process and find the best strategy for you site. I have another article “A successful linking strategy” which you can download from my site and in that article I will go over the details of a successful linking strategy.

I hope that by now you have a better vision of how a successful optimization plan should be designed and If you need any information you can always go to my website http://www.websitedevelopmenttech.com and click on learning center, or you can subscribe to my “6 weeks FREE optimization workshop” and get all the details you need to optimized you site.

Wish you all the Best.

Shawn Davari

You might have heard about SEO Services and how web entrepreneurs are using them to market their sites.

Almost every website that provides services and has products to offer requires SEO Services. These sites need visitors to promote their products and to continuously improve their sales and profits.

Due to these reasons, almost all website owners are now applying and working with the SEO companies to achieve that precious first page ranking. Website owners are becoming more familiar with the benefits of the Search Engine Optimization Services to their clients.

Through SE optimization also known as SEO Services a website is enhanced and improved in order to achieve its full function and higher SE rankings. There are several SEO Services that a SEO company can provide to its clients.

These services includes analyzing the clients website, analyzing the competitors website, working on the improvement of the clients website, and continuous maintenance of the website to retain its ranking in the search engines.

SE Optimization Services start when they analyze your site. This is where the SEO Services providers learn every part of your site.

They study its present PR rank, competitors, inbound links and most and site’s content. They also find the flow of the audience going to your site. If and when these factors are correctly implemented they will lead to higher rankings and more traffic.

These are the reasons why SE Optimization Services are needed, to be able to generate traffic and improve revenue and bottom line. The traffic is the life of a website. Remember, the more visitors that come and visit your site, the greater chances to convert them into a sale or a membership sign up.

They can spread the information to others through social networking which can serve as a referral system.

There are several ways on how the Search Engine Optimization Services help in increase the traffic of a website. These are through the Internet marketing strategies like the pay-per-click, link building and organic search engine optimization (SEO).

The pay-per-click strategy is the process of purchasing space on the online where ads are displayed and the advertiser pays for traffic on a pay per performance. Further, the better the keywords that you use with respect to your products, the more chances that your site will be visited.

For example, if your products are pieces jewelry, with the use of SEO Services strategies, you can use keywords research and go for popular keywords like low priced diamonds, pure gold jewelry or even wedding rings and engagement rings in order for your site to be discovered first during the search.

On one hand, if your products are related to travel, you can use keywords such as group package or cheaper seasonal rates and the like. Search Engine Optimization Services providers would give you reasons why you need to use these well researched keywords that must be well written in the contents of the site.

What are all these Search Engine Optimization Services strategies mean? Primarily, the more informative your site is the more and frequent the visits that you will receive from thousands and millions of online users globally.

You’ll get all the help you need in optimizing your sites contents through valuable support of the Search Engine Optimization Services providers. What do these providers do actually? For one, to make the keywords more effective, SEO Services try to find the keywords that are related to your products.

You can also use the keywords that individuals frequently use when searching for your products through the search engines.

Another way on how to increase traffic in your website is with the use of link building strategy. Remember, Search Engine Optimization Services aim at increasing your sites traffic or visitors thus allow your site to be accessible whenever possible.

Search Engine Optimization Services determine that this strategy can either be paid link or free link. The paid links are usually associated with the membership for joining a certain directories or sites which offers linkage. The websites under these directories are usually high-ranking sites that make profit by accepting links.

They allow newer sites to be linked with them but require payment in return. These sites usually have an area within their site where links are associated interchangeably.

On the other hand, other sites actually allow free links, as long as the site owners provide an exchange links to their site or they have to share the free links with other merchants as well.

There are other sites that also offer free links but the exposure of the link is not usually that long compared with the paid sites. These sites are alternately paced with other sites that wish to be linked as well.

This interlinking strategy is one of the best Internet Marketing promotion and strategy of the Search Engine Optimization Services providers.

Finally, Search Engine Optimization Services providers have this organic search engine optimization. This is the slow but sure strategy for websites. It is slow because it involves link building which is a very time consumming task.

It is the most effective strategy among the three. This works by achieving a decent rank from the search engines and from that rank, you will slowly move upwards. The website is enhanced and improved by the Search Engine Optimization Services applied for to be able to achieve a rank in the search engine.

From its initial rank, it will slowly acquire traffic and will slowly increase in rank over time. This may take a long time compared with the previously mentioned strategies but it will last longer too.

To invite traffic, your site must be attractive and filled with information needed by your target audience. It is important to consider the information written on it because it will help in the ranking of your site in the future.

Search Engine Optimization Services needs to be continuous and used on an ongoing process in order to maintain the rank of your site.

Search Engine Optimization is a part of Internet Marketing. In present time every man wants business through the Internet, because it is very low cost way of advertising and attracting customers. At present time any person who wants any thing, he only goes to search Engine and type his query in search engine in this case who is on top in search engine will get the business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very new and interesting field at present time. Search Engine Optimization is a strategy and tactics by which we improve ranking of our website in various search engines. SEO is work of passion because it takes time. There are mainly two parts of SEO:

1. On page Search Engine Optimization
2. Off Page Search Engine Optimization

On page Search Engine Optimization:
On page Search Engine Optimization is very important part of the SEO. It contains lots of things. It is also known as Website Optimization. In on page optimization make the changes in website to make it search engine friendly. So that Spider and indexer of Search Engines crawl it easily. Most of promotion of our site depends on On-Page Optimization.
Few on page Search Engine Optimization Factors, which are very important:

1. Keywords:
 Keywords can be a single word or phrase. Keyword Research is very important part of On Page optimization. All traffic depends on it. So it should be done very carefully.

2. Metatags:
It contains three parts Title, Description and Keywords.

3. Keyword Density:
Keyword Density shows how many times your keywords are repeated in your content in natural way

4. Link Optimization:
It is important to optimize your internal & external links for search engines as  well as to give visitors a better navigation in website.

5. Navigational Links:
Generally Navigational Links are used at the top of the web page, so the user can go directly on the desired page.                 

Off Page Search Engine Optimization:
Off Page Search Engine Optimization is done to increasing the back links of our site. It’s very time consuming process but it is also very important part of SEO. There are few very common work of Off Page Search Engine Optimization.

1. Directory Submission:
2. Article Submission
3. Press Release Submission
4. Blogging
5. Blog Comments
6. Forum Discussion

Search Engine Optimization Tutorial is a platform where we can learn SEO. We can get information related to Search Engine Optimization, on page Search Engine Optimization and Off Page Search Engine Optimization.

< a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” rel=”external nofollow” target=”_blank” href=” http://searchengineoptimizationtutorial.blogspot.com/”; target=”blank”> Search Engine Optimization Tutorial </a>

< a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” rel=”external nofollow” target=”_blank” href=”http://seo-practice.blogspot.com”; target=”blank”> Search Engine Optimization </a>

The internet tool that would be wildly used is the Search Engine. There are a lot of methods to get the quality traffic with out having to pay the money.

And Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the term wildly used today, too. It is the utilizing tools and methods in making your websites to the top ten or higher ranking in the search engine result. Because almost people who use search engine will using the only top ten results on the first page.

There are a lot of subject you have to change in your websites for SEO. There are a lot of websites will provide you the articles that offer tips & tricks, roadmaps or guidelines in how to get more traffic using the free method. If you use these free methods, you will drive more traffic to your websites. You could be try and patient. Learn more about the methods and you will have the great traffic flow.

Link Exchange

This is the easy method. Now, you will see many websites have a link to other websites with the same subject. Webmasters are willing to exchange links with the other sites. Link exchanges make your chance to getting the good rank in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). The more incoming-links you have, the more traffic you get.

Write and Submit Articles

Now, there are a lot of free article directory websites. They offer free submit and posting of your articles. You only spend the time in writing your free articles. You will write the articles about the tips, information or guidelines that are theme along with the subject of your websites. And submit them to the free article directory website.

There is the “Resource box” or “About author” section at the bottom of your article that you should provide data about yourself and your websites. If you provide the interesting articles, the people will go to your website by click the link in this section. And with the good keywords in your articles, you could get the high ranking in SERP, too.

Forums and Online Communities

This method only takes your time. You can share your experience, information and discussion with the communities. You will post and reply the topic with the quality content. Show them what you are made of. You will get the free advertising from the forums that have the same subject with your websites. You should target the certain group that is the right people that you are looking for.

In many forums and online communities, you will have permit to add your links in the signature.

Newsletter

It sounds like hard work because of the newsletter’s contents. But the benefit is almost higher than the other methods. You can use the newsletters to provide the people with the interesting, news or product contents. Please keep in mind that, if there are a lot people sign up for your newsletter, you will the more quality traffic.

Link exchange

It works well especially when your website and your link exchange website feature the same subject.

In Sri Lanka alone, there is a growing number of internet users. As of 2008, and according to internet world stats, more than 21 million people reside in this country, and more than 770,000 have access to the internet. Eight years ago, less than 150,000 Srilankans were able to surf the web. Today, even Sri Lanka has recognized the potentially rewarding businesses that can be set up through the internet. And for this matter, if you want to have an edge over your business rivals, then hire a Srilankan search engine marketing service company that can handle the job excellently.

Web Design Sri Lanka web hosting service also gives you high quality and professional Srilanka web designing services to give your company and website an advantageous head start in reaching a wider market of clients. You can only imagine how much more sales you can make, if your website is designed professionally, and if you know how to handle an advertising campaign that is strong and successful.

As a Srilankan web development company, they have got what it takes to get your online business on the right track to generating income and driving the needed traffic for more sales. From Web-DesignLK, you get your needed web space to publish your site. Websites must be designed effectively and with the users and SEO in mind, and with their expertise, you can build a site that speaks well of your business and more.

This Srilanka Search Engine Optimization company can also aid your company’s e-commerce web design, so your products and services are well represented, and that they can easily be viewed by the millions of internet users around the world. In a way, with a professionally designed and flawlessly implemented website, you give your company a voice to be heard, and that you are able to reach out to more potential clients out there.

Search engine marketing involves many advertising strategies that are aimed at making more sales and providing more satisfactory service to clients. With a Srilankan search engine marketing service company such as Web-DesignLK, you can never go wrong. You can also be assured that your website will be promoted very effectively, so your links and products get the maximum exposure needed to generate more sales. Srilanka SEO/SEM services are among the best from Web-DesignLK, so surf on over to their website and find out what they can do for you today.  

After an email inquiry from a small business website owner who had considered adding a flash presentation to their website, it’s time to emphasize the search engine optimization value of flash and other multimedia website content. For a small business commercial website design, my advice is avoiding content that requires a large file size such as multimedia. Unless it is absolutely required and does NOT load automatically, visitors on dialup will leave immediately due to the intolerable load time.

Exceptions might be photographers or graphic artists showing high resolution versions of their work, or perhaps a recording studio with sample music or videos. The average small business owner does not need autoloading multimedia.

Here is a response to the email from the site owner previously mentioned who was considering flash:

“Why would you want to add a flash scene to your site? In my list of “Don’t do this” for website design, flash is at the top of the list. It has zero SEO value, and the file size is intolerable for people on dialup. With more than 50% of internet users still on dialup you cut off half your potential visitors by having flash. Unlike videos that allow visitors to make a choice of play or not, flash loads automatically and cannot be avoided. People visit commercial websites for information. Flash is “entertainment” and most people want answers to problems, so my advice is stay focused on text content that search engines can index.”

Let’s consider audio and video next. Another client wants background music to play automatically when a visitor arrives at any page of her restaurant website. This is an intrusion of the visitor’s expectations and privacy, and could actually get them in trouble. Imagine a visitor at work with their speakers turned up, and searching for an area restaurant to visit that evening. The embarrassment of being caught engaged in non-work related surfing on company time could get them fired. Giving visitors a choice with a play button would be more appropriate.

The real question for any small business owner is deciding if music or video in their commercial website design will enhance the sales of their product or service. If the value is strictly entertainment, don’t do it. Another client insisted having flash content on their site, and stated their average sale is $500,000 and they were confident their target market all use high speed internet access. That seems appropriate at first. However, a site done entirely in flash has zero content when it comes to search engines. A 100% flash website will not get traffic driven by search engines, so the owner’s success depends on direct marketing and driving visitors to the website.

Audio, whether voice or music, may be appropriate. Video certainly provides an opportunity to introduce your business, demonstrate a product, or provide advice as a tutorial. As long as these do not autoload and the visitor is given the choice of listening or viewing, multimedia may enhance the experience and sales potential. A visual or audio experience may create a more lasting impression as long as it’s not forced on the viewer. Weigh the pros and cons first.

Next, consider the marketing basics of matching target customers and their needs to what you offer, and then decide the most appropriate method of delivering your sales message. Multimedia is content that cannot be viewed or rated by search engines, so if search engine optimization and driving traffic to your site is important, be careful with multimedia choices for your small business website design.

Finally, people search the internet for information with answers to problems. Problems are perceived needs that visitors want to have solved. The goal is the same whether you call their motivation “information” or a “problem”. If your website is optimized for people first, and then considers search engines, you are more likely to convert visitors to buying customers. People looking for answers are impatient. If your competition has a small business website that uses flash or other autoloading multimedia and you do not, potential customers are more likely to find answers quickly on your website.

Understanding what visitors to commercial small business websites really want, could give you the competitive edge.

Search engine optimization is a growing industry that allows enterprising webmasters to monetize traffic from their websites through increases in traffic and the sale of advertising or products to that traffic.

One particular search engine optimization strategy that increases the success of websites is the building of quality links. Now, links of all kinds are valuable as long as they don’t come from spam or other bad neighborhood areas of the Internet, but there are certain kinds of links that are worth the very most: gov and edu links.

In particular, links from trusted universities are an excellent source of trust and page rank because Google, Yahoo and MSN trust them immensely. If you think about it, you can understand why they’re so trusted; university pages publish scholarly articles and make advances in the sciences and literary criticism that need to be syndicated across the web because they have influences on the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

As a result of this inherent trust, if you can get links on edu pages, your search engine optimization efforts are likely to yield more fruitful results. The Harvard Weblogs project is an example of a way to achieve edu links.

Harvard Law School hosts blogs online that can be run by students in Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School or Harvard College, so a fair number of people have access to exclusive edu link domains. Harvard is particularly effective for these links because the homepage of Harvard University has a page rank of 9, suggesting Google trusts the root domain to an extraordinary degree.

Weblogs are also great for search engine optimization because you can report on recent news that many people may not have heard of yet. This makes your content fresh and ensures that people will like reading it and thereby be more likely to link back to it on their own websites.

The more people that link back to your original article about breaking news, the more links Google and Yahoo will find for your website and the more they will trust it, instinctively. Really, any added content to your website that you figure out in advance that many people will like should be used to attempt to generate links for your site and increase its search engine optimization as a result.

If you have particularly great articles or information that you know other people would like and link back to, you should attempt to get your article promoted at social media sites like Delicious, Digg or StumpleUpon. You should also consider doing things like posting an amusing viral video on your website and publishing it on YouTube with a link back to your website.

Anything that allows for more and more people to see your content and link back to it, the better. Along these same lines, you should enlist the help of any friends you may have online to back you up when you submit your content to these websites, in the hope that they will help you make it to the front page and thereby gain an unbelievable amount of traffic.

Remember, for more websites, traffic plus a bit of creativity equals money, so have a plan to monetize that traffic you’re trying to build before you even build it. It’s best not to put adds up before it comes, but be ready to monetize it when you realize it’s gained enough traffic to be worth it.