In the process of developing a web site, there are many professional profiles that work on it, one of these is the SEO profile (Search Engine Optimization). If you are working in a web agency, usually there’s a professional profile that works only on search engine optimization, giving you the freedom to work with image editing, (x)html and css. But if you are a freelance, then you should spare money and do this your self.

I have worked as web designer and SEO, then I realized how important is, for a web designer, have at least, a basic knowledge of SEO. How many web designers, when are working on a layout, thinks about SEO? How many web designers really know the importance of the Page Rank? How many know that the massive use of Ajax can affect, negatively, the ranking of a page?

Yes, I think that every web designer, or developer, should know SEO. Ok you don’t need to know all the “secrets” behind the search engine optimization, but have a basic knowledge of SEO can help you in your freelance (and not only) work and receive more praises from your client.

Explain SEO in just a post is impossible, so I made a list of tips, tools and suggestion for a good optimization of a web page , that every one can do although is not a SEO.

Use Google Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Central LogoThis is a must! The Google Webmaster Central is the best tools to help you improve the ranking of your websites. You can submit your sitemaps (xml), monitor your websites, keywords, ranking, and a lots of other factors that affect the ranking of a page. If you make web sites I really suggest you to register a google account and start using it.

Find the right keywords

Find the right keywords to optimize your web site ins the mainly part of the SEO workflow. Usually the suggestion comes from the customers, but in internet you can find a lots of tools that helps you to find the right keywords,one of this is the AdWords keywords tool.

This tool is used a lots from the SEO for find the right keywords, for use this tool must have a Google AdWords account (you can use your google webmaster tool account).

The tools help yu to choose the right keywords, analyze the trends, or you can also use the search-based keyword tool

Keywords or keyphrases?

The SEO world is always in changing, or better said, evolution, with the definitive die of the meta keywords’s importance, and the “evolution” of the internet user, the keyphrases are always more used and for my projects I prefer optimize for keyphrases and not for just only words. Here some further readers about this question:

Keywords and Keyphrases
Identify Your Niche and Targeted Keywords

Choose the right domain

The domain name is really important, or better is important to have at least one key in your domain name. This will increase your rank for the related key. So, try to choose the domain thinking about the key you will go to use for promote the web site. Here some further readers:

12 Rules for Choosing the Right Domain Name
Choose the Right Domain Name
The effective strategy for choosing right domain names

Google trends

Google trends is a good way to monitoring the of the search trends evolution located for country.

Title tag

The tag title is the most important tag, the keyword or keyphrase should be in the title. The title should not be more than 60 characters (some one say… ) and describe the page, the relevance of a keyword in the title is really important for all the most used search engines.

Keywords Tag

As Google confirmed, but this was already known, the meta tags keywords is not relevant for ranking, The meta tag keywords is useless.

Description Tag

The description tag is really important! Yes, I know, is not important for increase for the ranking, this is true, but is what google show in the SERP, if the page has not description tag, the bot will take the first part of text, so can’t be good.

Write a brief but good description, for each page, trying in a few words to describe the purpose of page. So is not important for your ranking, but, of course is a tag that you should consider for increase and attract more visitors.

Layout and SEO

Can a layout affect the ranking? yes, take care when you are designing a layout and remember always the first SEO rule: content is the king.

The classical two columns blog layout is a perfect layout for SEO! Gives to the content the priority , and in the source code too, and the sidebar is after the content. This is one of the lots of reason that make WordPress a really friendly search engine blog.

Write semantic and correct code

Write semantic and validated source code help the crawler to better read and interpret the page. Have a validate source code and semantic code help to increase the ranking, of course.

Div’s id and class names are important and relevant, try always to use the right and correct name for this, for example use:

<div id="header"></div>

rather than:

<div id="head"></div>

For the navigation bar use the following code:

<div id="nav"></div>

rather than:

<div id="menu"></div>

Use the alt for the images, put a brief description of the picture or the name and use the <ul> tag for menu:

<ul>
    <li><a href="#">text link</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">text link</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">text link</a></li>
</ul>

Use header, h1, h2, h3, em (emphasis) and bold for keywords. This doesn’t mean that you have to apply a bold to each words in the contents, but rather means that you have to write simply the text applying the right format to a paragraph. h1 is a title, you shouldn’t use it for a entire paragraph, or you shouldn’t use a span tag for a menu list as above.

Create a good internal links structure, linking the pages and use the anchor text in the link for keywords.

<a href="about" title="short bio about Antonio Fullone">Antonio Fullone bio</a>

The anchor text is really important, the title attribute too. Try always, when is possible, to link the pages and put the keywords in the anchor.

Take also a look at this Fast Paper with some useful HTML quick guidelines:

The speed

A quickly load help the bot in the process of indexing the page in his database, a clean source code, image compressing and external request affect the speed of the web site and the indexing from the bot.

Avoid splash page

If is not necessary avoid the splash page.

Flash and Ajax

A massive use of Flash, or Ajax can decrease the ranking, so pay attention to not abuse of this technologies.

Conclusion

This post is just an overview about SEO. A post can’t be enough to explain the multitude of this “world”, what is SEO and how apply it at your pages. but I hope after this reader that you, if you didn’t, take care about SEO when start a new project. And for finish a collection of plugins, software and tools for SEO.

Plugin and Addons.

SEO quake extension
Rank Checker
SEO Toolbar
RankQuest SEO toolbar
SEO Open
Yslow for Firebug
Niche Watch Tool 2.0
User Agent Switcher

Software

Web Ceo
Link assistant

Tools online

Google Webmasters central
Google Analytics
Seomoz tools
136 SEO tools
SEO chat tools
68 Online SEO Tools and Resources
Multi rank checker
Key word density analysis tool