Source: isedb.com

SEO and web copywriting are often mentioned together; so often, in fact, that whenever SEO is mentioned we think about SEO copywriting first and other aspects of SEO second, as if they were the same thing.

Of course, we all know that SEO is much more than just writing optimised content. It involves technical issues, quality inbound links and other subtleties of the profession that seem to be making the rules of the game harder as time goes by. But copywriting remains the core of SEO, as has been the case since the first days of the WWW; the engines are looking for content they can deliver to their searchers, which means that to be found you need to provide content. They can forgive your unfriendly design; in most cases they will find workarounds (unless you try very hard to make your site totally unspiderable); they can give you rankings for certain terms even if your site has only a handful of incoming links; but if your site lacks content, the engines will have zero interest in it.

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By: Joe Balestrino | Source: buzzle.com

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and web design go hand in hand. One cannot function without the other. Sure, you could have a well designed website on the internet and pay for traffic and advertising. However, no one will find you while doing a search. The benefits of being found on search engines will cut the cost of paid advertising. Yet everyday there are people who spend a great deal of money to have a site designed but wouldn’t think of having it optimized. Why, you ask? Is it the cost of SEO? Would they rather have a site created and avoid optimization to save a few bucks? If that’s the case…what do they plan to do with this site when it is completed? Advertise? SEO is advertising. It is actually one of the cheapest forms of advertising.

Were they planning on a PPC campaign? Buying banners? Page impressions on some click network? You’ve got to be kidding me. Why would anyone waste their money on those subpar options before optimizing their site?

In the long run, you’ll spend more on those "other" methods and receive fewer results than if you optimized and maintained the optimization of your site. Eventually, you’ll wind up needing SEO anyway. Trust me. If you ever wanted to know anything about something, chances are you’ve searched for it first. You didn’t click on a banner or surf into it from some click through network. Now don’t get me wrong, PPC is great if you know what you’re doing. SEO paired off with PPC is a great combination. You may even do some PPC while your SEO is taking place. Any method is better than none at all.
Unfortunately, there are those who do business on the web who think that spending money on web design alone will help attract business. You can have the most interesting storefront the world has ever seen, but if you open up for business in the middle of the desert, it won’t make any difference.

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By: Ross Dunn | Source: seo-news.com

The following is checklist designed to help you gauge the search engine friendliness of your website and, if you are in the midst of planning a website this checklist will help you avoid the common pitfalls of unfriendly designs.

Technologies
First consider what technologies your website is using. There are certain technologies that require a little more hand holding than others to ensure search engine compatibility.

1. FRAMES
Lets start with this oldie. Luckily, frames are becoming a way of the past what with the use of DIV layers and the slow onset of incredibly flexible AJAX coding. The long and the short of it is that if you have Frames on your website then you are starting off at a disadvantaged position that cannot be truly search engine friendly no matter what you do. There are, however, some remedial fixes that will tie you over until you can redesign your site; yes I said redesign. The fix that I recommend is to use a noframes tag whereby you place another version of your web page inside of your framed page. This ‘backup’ page is what the search engines will view; here you can place relevant content and navigational elements so that the search engines can at least navigate portions of your site that are (hopefully) not framed.

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