Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is called, has become a very hot topic and an important area of the web. It involves a nearly endless number of things that you can do to not only help search engines to index your site, but to also hopefully improve your site's ranking during searches. This is a very complex subject and there are a lot of conflicting ideas. Unfortunately, doing the wrong things can often do more damage than not doing anything at all.
Site by Nite actually helps you with some of the most basic but also extremely important aspects of SEO, and things you can do safely. Site by Nite's website builder isn't a replacement for a professional SEO firm, but the reality is, if you are dealing with a limited budget for your website, professional SEO is out of the question. Professional SEO services will often cost you as much or more than the website you are developing.
So what does Site by Nite SEO entail?
You may have heard about these. They are special tags that aren't seen on your page, but communicate important information to search engines. The description tag allows you to create a short description that provides some information about your site, which may be used as the description you see in search results.
Site by Nite also allow you to enter information in the keywords tag. However, many search engines ignore this tag since it was often heavily abused by webmasters. But many people still want to use it just in case, and adding 5 to 10 important keywords isn't going to hurt.
You might also be aware that Google has created a special sitemap that their web crawlers can access. This sitemap file isn't anything that you will actually see on your site, but when search engines like Google access it, it provides them with all of the pages of your site and a little information about them.
The website builder can actually create the sitemap file for you and keep it updated as you make changes to your site. This is a great feature and there are sites that charge you just to create this file for you.
Keyword density is a measure of how many times words are used on your page. This is an area of SEO that has received far too much importance and weight. There are those who have developed intricate measures and rules for what the optimal keyword density should be in relation to all of the other words on the page.
Search engines are much more sophisticated and well beyond these formulas. However, the keyword density check can be useful to at least give you a general feel for your page. Just like any other kind of writing, you don't want to use the same words over and over throughout the page too much. So if you see words that are being used a little too much, you may be able to go in and replace them with similar words. In many ways, this is even better for search engines as they often look at the overall theme or topic of your website and are able to relate different words to each other.