Building a website isn’t just about creating a pretty home page with flamboyant graphics and rich flash images. There’s a lot more to think about of you want to succeed in business in the online arena during the design phase.

Here are some of the things that you need to do before going live;

a. Ensure your websites pages are efficiently and well coded in CSS and conform to W3C standards.  Web pages should load quickly – too many objects can cause slow load times which will be penalised by search engines.  Pay-Per-Click Google advertising will also detect slow load times and appoint a low Quality Score.

b. Do your keyword research, group them your pages into topics, then optimise your page content ensuring that you align your title tags with the page content. Try not to over use keywords and use natural language and synonyms. This will ensure a good balance of keywords and natural content. Try and incorporate atleast 50 words on your home page, and 30 words on your category pages even if it is an e-commerce site

c. Use H1 and H2 headers to reinforce the important topics and phrases for all your pages.  This is often forgotten about and is very easy to do correctly.  Well worth doing and your site will be well rewarded.

These free SEO tips will set you off on the right direction in making sure your site is not just a ‘pretty face’, but a web site that