Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites

**robobugs** · 24 June 2009, 08:28 AM

With so many questions, arguments, and concerns surrounding SEO and Xara, I would like to hear Tips and Techniques that will help Xara Websites be more Search Engine Friendly.

Please do not criticize Xara or bash their software, but instead provide useful tips to help everyone make better websites.

I will start off with a couple tips I have learned.

1. Make sure the page Title is descriptive of the content. Don't include words that aren't found on the page. Search Engines can tell if you are "spamming" or "fishing" for people to view your site.

2. Name your pages in the Web Properties box. Each page should have a descriptive name with no spaces. Use the - symbol to represent a space, this is the universal web standard character for a space. This is also true for Domain Names and can really make a difference. Use the - always.

3. Use the page description in the Web Properties box. Write a short summary of the page and try hard to leave out general terms like and, is, of, the, etc. Make sure you hit the main keywords of your page.

4. Make sure to include your keywords in the text of your page. Use them several times in meaningful context without spamming them. About 5-8 times should be good.

5. In the page Keywords box of the Web Properties for each page, incluse the main keywords on your page. A page usually doesn't need more than about a dozen keywords to cover all of it. Some search engines don't even pay attention to this section anymore because of spammers, but do it to be on the safe side.

6. Include Image Descriptions (Alt tags) for EVERY picture on your site. Graphics that have text should probably also be tagged too. This helps Search Engines see your site in a text format better. They don't look at graphics or grouped text and may miss the information is you don't do this.

7. If you want your site to be iPhone friendly (or other phones), do not use animations or Flash at all. iPhones do not display Flash or .flv files at all, but handle MouseOvers and other Java features fine. Flash is VERY intense on the visitors computer CPU, and some other browsers may not display Flash correctly either, I'm not sure though.

8. If you are worried about search engines not seeing your menus or NavBars properly, submit a sitemap to them. There is alot of information about this on the Web and most, if not all, search engines now use a standard format. There are even FREE automatic sitemap generators available for sites with less than 500 pages.

9. Use the Placeholder feature to include extra information if you want to. That's what it's there for! If you're worried about having a h1, h2, etc. code layout, just insert your paragraphs into these header tags using placeholders. More info on this is available in this forum. A quick search will find lots of help. It is worth it to note that Google may not be placing such importance on this anymore, but without their help we cannot know for sure. Spammers and fakes have ruined alot of the techniques you read about anymore. Search engines are getting smarter everyday, so take the h1 stuff with a grain of salt.

10. When updating your site, be sure to "ping" the search engines so they know to crawl your new content. A quick web search will help learn this technique. Search for "ping search engine" and you will be rolling.

I hope these tips help you use Xara more effectively. I have links to many of my favorite tools, but I don't want to upset the moderators or viewers. If you would like some good links, and it's cool with the moderators, I will post them in a followup post.

So, let's keep this thread moving forward with constructive help from the Pros, and please leave the bickering or whining out so we can make the most of this software, and our creative talents.

I look forward to seeing some more tips from more experienced designers!

**zaphodeist** · 24 June 2009, 08:49 AM

Thanks for all that, refreshingly clear to seo newbies like myself

A bit of clarification though, in point #2 you say to use "-" for a space, I thought it was the underscore "_" ?

**steve.ledger** · 24 June 2009, 09:04 AM

As far as I know, 'underscores' are ignored by Google.
Hyphens are separators.

Underscores were used in file names where spaces were not permitted (in DOS for example) But not web URLs.

**zaphodeist** · 24 June 2009, 10:11 AM

Ah right, thanks Steve

Have to do a bit of renaming.

**steve.ledger** · 24 June 2009, 10:52 AM

Don't take my word as Gospel John - after all, XWD and Xtreme use underscores for folder names which become part of the URL and written in html.

I'm no expert..