As Denver web design companies vie for higher and higher ranks on results pages, the major search engines keep changing the rules. Google, in particular, works constantly to update and improve the way they select the results for a users search terms. The changes have been gradual, but with each successive alteration in the rules of the search engine optimization (SEO) game, some websites get left behind. What may have been a high ranking website yesterday could be a low ranking site today if Google has reprogrammed their spiders overnight.

Old Rules

According to the pervading wisdom, keywords placed in a large bunch over a small space should attract the attention of search engine web crawlers looking for this information. META tags with the keywords that people most often search for, whether the words have anything to do with the content of the page or not, are the way to get visitors to the site. And tons and tons of reciprocal links will show the search engines that the site is popular and well worth the trip.

These are the old rules. Denver web design teams were making websites to fit these parameters as recently as last month. But today, the rules have changed.

New Rules - Keywords

If you have placed five keywords per paragraph on every page of your website, it’s time to call your copywriter and get some new content. This kind of keyword jamming will not get you the ranking results you want anymore. Today, major search engines like Google are looking for naturally occurring keywords that signify quality content. They want users to find what they are looking for so they will come back to Google for their next search. If Google sends the customer to a site basically composed of a bunch of junky keyword articles with little or no real information, they won’t use Google for their search next time.

The same holds true for the placing of keywords in META tags, alt tags, page titles, and page descriptions. If the page or the picture does not have anything to do with dog grooming, don’t use this keyword phrase. Use only keywords that apply to the page or picture content, and don’t try to fool the web crawlers with keywords in META tags that don’t apply to that particular page on your site.

New Rules - Linking

The new rules for linking are very similar. When using the old rules for web design, Denver businesses were joining link communities that artificially create a ton of reciprocal links for their sites. This will be a red flag to the major search engine spiders today. You need to take the time to attract legitimate links with companies that are related to the type of content you provide on your site. If you are a dog groomer, link to pet stores, pet medication sales sites, and doggie sweater companies, but not to any old random site that wants to up their search engine rankings.

Overall, the new rules promote useful, natural-looking sites, which is great news for internet users everywhere.