Web Design

329

CHAPTER

Publishing Your Site and Getting Noticed 14

Do Not Rely on Search Engine Optimization Alone

Not every site is necessarily going to benefit from high search
engine rankings. Sites that are part of a larger marketing strategy
may not rely heavily on search engine results at all. Placing the
site’s address on billboards or television advertisements may be as,
if not more, effective than worrying about one’s Google PageRank.
Word of mouth can be an effective strategy, as can the use of
social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook, particularly
for blogs or small, more local sites. Search engine optimization
should fit within the site’s overall marketing strategy.

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Follow Search Engine Guidelines

Every one of the major search engines makes a set of guidelines
available to assist Webmasters in building pages that get higher
rankings. These rules are not set in stone, and, in fact, search engines
change them frequently, but they should be observed as much as
possible.

Guidelines

for higher rankings

Create WebmasterTools account/verify site

Update settings

Monitor & manage site

Add sitemap for sites inWebmaster Tools account

Keep up to date

Avoid All-Image Image
Pages

Pages made up of nothing but
images rank much lower due to
their lack of meaningful text for
the search engines to read. A
mock-up created in a program
such as Fireworks can be a useful starting point in design, but converting this mockup directly into a Web
page as a large image will rate very low on search engine results. It will also load very slowly and be
difficult to edit later. Instead, take the mock-up as a guide for the layout, and re-create it in HTML.

mockup

HTML