Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.brdesign.org and internal links go to http://www.brdesign.org/index.html.Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.brdesign.org is your preference, then http://brdesign.org should redirect to it.Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Sheffield store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PageRank can actually outrank one with a higherPage Rank.
