Web Design

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earch engines are a primary way that many users will find your site, so ensuring that you your

pages appear as high as possible in the results is a key factor in increasing the number of site

visitors. In the early days of the Web, the first search engines were created to help users find

information in the exponentially increasing number of sites. These early search engines relied on

Webmasters to self-describe their pages in HTML by adding keywords and descriptions of the page

content. Today, search engines use a much more complex system to index sites.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization ...............

PageRank and Google

While Larry Page and Sergey Brin were graduate students at

Stanford University, they developed a new algorithm that relied

primarily on incoming links to a page. Their basic theory was

that although a Webmaster might use misleading keywords on a

page, other Webmasters would fail to perpetrate the false

connection because the other Webmaster would not provide links

to it. This system, dubbed PageRank, became the basis for the

company Google, a company Page and Brin founded in 1998.

PageRank: 6

PageRank: 5

Linked relevent topic

Linked by keyword

PageRank: 4 PageRank: 4 PageRank: 4

PageRank: 5

Consider Accessibility for Search Optimization

Because search engines read the code of the page, they approach your page

in many of the same ways as screen readers for blind users do. So, in general,

pages accessible to disabled users will get higher search engine rankings than

those that are not.

Content Is King

By far the most important key to getting good search engine

rankings is to have good, meaningful content and to be sure to

use the proper HTML elements to code that content. Search

engines read the code in your page, and give more weight to text

enclosed in heading tags than those in, say, paragraphs, the logic

being that the text in headings is what the page is “about.”

<h1>Yo

<h1>Te

<h1>

<h1>Welcome to my page!</h1>

<h1>Your search ends here!</h1>

<h1>Teach Yourself Visually</h1>

<h1>Book Reviews</h1>

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