In the search engine realm of things I meet a lot of “pros”. I also see a lot of their handiwork when it pertains to web site optimization. But more and more I see a lot of really poorly written, (and often times stolen) bits of web page material that makes absolutely no sense.

The common thing to do among web site professionals is to try to gouge the customer for as much as they can. This includes trying to carry the project off without a hitch to show some bit of competence. I find this done with a lot of web designers who have never been certified though an SEO, (search engine optimization) program of any kind. These types will actually steal the meta data off another web site and then jam it into your pages hoping that it will work. They change a few of the keywords and pray to God that you won’t catch them.

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One thing that I have learned in over a decade developing web sites is that the 'Net is continually changing, and to keep up you need to change with it. One of the more recent developments in web design is the use of CSS and semantic markup. CSS and semantic web design has several benefits: clarity in code, browser and other web-enabled devices compatibility, separation of content and presentation, smaller burden on bandwidth, and better visibility to search engines.

Back in the day, we designed sites with tables and hacked those tables into doing things that they were never meant to do. The table tag was designed to display tabular data, not as a way to render the layout of a website. Unfortunately, a better alternative did not exist, so we used tables. This made for inefficient, slow loading sites with code that was very hard to read and maintain. defines semantic markup like this:

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Many excellent web designers know next to nothing of web marketing, and this can be a big problem. Marketing a site in search engines requires that the site be designed in a search engine compatible format. Many beautiful sites do not fare well in search engines at all simply because of the way they have been designed. Here are some things web designers should know about web marketing.

Load Times

Beautiful sites with lots of graphics may look awesome, but are often so slow to download that web visitors, particularly on dial-up connections, will simply go elsewhere before the site even finishes downloading. Some search engines also may penalize sites for being to slow.

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Congratulations! You've got a brand new site and it's doing pretty well. You check your statistics every day and the hits and page views keep climbing, your links are all in order and everything looks very good. On top of that, your guestbook is filling with great comments and you're getting a few emails now and then with praise and perhaps a question or two.

Now is a good time to sit back and examine the subject (or subjects) of your site. What is the theme? What are you trying to accomplish? Then once you've got your site visualized, start to think about it from the perspective of a new visitor. Put yourself in their shoes, and assume you know nothing. What questions would you have? Write down these questions or type them into a document as you think of them.

What you are creating is a list of frequently asked questions (commonly abbreviated as FAQ). These are questions that your visitors may have about your site, the subject or theme, or even about you. Just about any question is valid, as long as it is helpful to your visitors.

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I’ve been actively researching ways to quickly and effectively build content to websites. And while blogs tend to be near the top of the list, there are other opportunities out there.

One such opportunity is a Wiki. And while a Wiki won’t suit all sites, there are those that can use a Wiki effectively. If you think you are one of those sites, take a look at this article.

What is a Wiki?

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and links between internal pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, “open editing” has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.

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Give Your Web Site The Verbal Advantage

Have you ever sat down to create that winning ad, publicity release or newsletter and couldn't come up with the right words or phrases? You will never make your fortune until you cure this dialog dilemma. You must enlarge your powers of expression, acquire precision and persuasion. You need a powerhouse of color, flavor and tone to highlight your message. This applies to personal conversations, writing promotional material or creating a productive web site.

The Internet Is A Money Maker

In many ways the Web is the ultimate medium, but only for those who can deliver their message persuasively and convincingly. In the end it will be your site's ability to create desire and compel action that will bring real wealth. Those not possessing the necessary verbal skills will experience perpetual disappointment. They can not create the success they desire, socially or financially.

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Good analysis and research is the main criteria when it comes to sorting out your keywords. Easier said than done though in the great majority of cases. Engaging an expert is possibly one of the best moves you'll make, as they'll run rings around any amount of work you'll do on your own. The difference between the best keyword analysis software and the freebees can be colossal. The best tools will unearth some real eye openers you'll never have thought about.

One elementary yet very common mistake is to gather together a bunch of keywords and to copy them across an entire website. This will drastically reduce the effectiveness of pages. If instead you focus and carryout research upon 2 to 5 words per page the results are likely to be much better.

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As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don’t get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left?

The problem is these sites aren't optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn't matter, the fact is it works and I'm going to tell you what's involved.

Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words.

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While the basics of Search Engine Optimization or SEO are pretty much textbook, it isn't the textbooks that you're competing with, it's the competition ... who within the most competitive markets make it almost impossible to get to that search engine position of being number one. Discovering the Truth about Search Engine Optimization will require an analysis of every factor of optimization.

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