Across the Universe Web Design

How will ATU ensure that my website is optimized for the web?

ATU's highest priority is ensuring that a Client's new website is accessible to search engines and is built and optimized in such a way that it helps improve the chance it will be found by people searching the web.

Following are current best business practices for building search-engine-optimized websites:

1. Think carefully about your website content and the important keywords that will need to be present to enable search engines to locate you. Content is still King.
2. Put your most important keywords in your page titles.
3. In your body text, 2 - 3 % of the text should be keywords. Regarding page text volume, at least have 125 words on a page (better twice or three times that). Sprinkle keywords through your whole page.
4. Search Engines care about the depth of your content (number of pages). However, when a site contains a deep structure, a search engine may not crawl lower pages - thinking they are not important.
5. Have outbound links to professional organizations and other respected (and appropriate) entities. If you have an authority site linking to you, that gives you credibility and will help ranking. Also, your choice of appropriate keywords in the outbound link text may be very important so be creative.
6. Your header should be h1 bold or h2 bold!
7. Geo-target in your footer. Include text that references towns and cities that are important to your business.
8. Use keywords in your domain names.
9. Regarding words that could be singular (lamp) OR plural (lamps) - be thoughtful of the words you use in your URL and in your body text. If the language of the website emphasizes 'lamp' and everyone in the world searches with 'lamps', you may never be found.
10. The number of visitors to your site effects ranking.
11. Server speed and loading time may effect ranking.
12. Recent search engine analysis demonstrates that links from social networking websites are boosting client website ranking!
13. Validate HTML pages with W3 Schools validation software.
14. Try not to use 'lists' in your web pages that are either not complete sentences and/or that don't end with a period. Search engines note this bad language structure and may not crawl them.
15. Use tables for tabular info only. It is unknown how/whether competing mobile formats will display tables.
16. Submit your new website to Yahoo, MSN, Google and BING.
17. Consider using a Sitemap to tell search engines about pages in your website.
18. Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "link farms" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
19. Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. These programs consume computing resources and violate many search engine Terms of Service.
20. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users?
21. Update your content frequently. Sites with frequently updated and new content rank higher in search engines typically. Topical writing, articles and imagery that change frequently can add variety to your website which may become a destination for potential clients.
22. Get big. This may not be possible for a small, focused business, however, according to Google Search Engine recommendations, sites with over 100 pages will attract more attention from search engines looking for sites with quality content.
23. Get involved and get your name out there. Write a newsletter or write articles for others to use in their Newsletters, participate as a Board member for a complementary organization and offer to speak at conferences and other events. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you participate in this way. Just ask that those to whom you provide your services include a link to your website with a short description of you and your services.