Idea Dudes is a poised to be the leader in Microsoft technical training and consulting. With over 30 years of IT experience among their staff, they look forward to helping businesses succeed. Idea Dudes does not just train but also lives and breathes the technology.

No business problem is too big or too small. We always have an Idea on how to help you lower your total cost of ownership. We back our training with over 30 years of hard knocks learning. Who would you rather train you, someone in the field or someone just learning the software? Idea Dudes is your one stop for training and consulting.

Look for our free videos and our action packed boot camps held at beautiful CoCo Key Resorts, where fun and learning go hand- in-hand. Idea Dudes also has award winning online training so you can learn in the office or at home. If you have a training idea, let us know we can design this for you. Take the Idea Dudes challenge; get a FREE technical analysis of your business.

We will show you how we can custom tailor a solution for your business. Also, visit our sister site Microsoft Certification Training for in-depth videos on the newest of technologies. For more information and just to say hello, you can contact us at info@ideadudestraining.com or 386-585-3029. When you think training and consulting, think Idea Dudes.

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10 SEO Tips

Search Engine Optimization

Here are ten tips that we found to help you get better page rankings on your website.

I. Limit Multimedia
What is old is proven and true. Web designers are constantly competing against each other to design a more hip website but is it actually a site that is functional. A lot of time I just click past the Flash screens. They take up to much time and time is money. So, get into the head of the visitor to your site. Use multimedia for training and for informative pieces. Keep away from Flash screens because Google ranking bots don't understand them.

II. Use text, not graphics
Graphics are cool but not functional. When search engine bots go to a site they are looking for content. Search engines bots cannot find the information if it is located in a graphic. If you are using graphical buttons for navigation, make sure you have textual links located somewhere on your page. The search engine will then be able to naviagate the site. if the search engine cannot navigate the site then it will not rank the page well within the searches. Keep the graphical links to a minimal. Make sure that the search engines can get to the text links. If you have a complicated page, then position the links at the top of the page.

III. Don't be too clever
Stay one step behind the current technology. The web was built for research and usability. Entertainment sites, Games etc are all great. We are in the business of selling products and services. Have you ever looked at Amazons website? Amazon is one of the leaders of selling information. They do not use fancy Flash presentations. They are using black on white text. Search engines like this type of text. It is simple to navigate and that
means more visitors will come to the site. The easier your site is to navigate and search the more visitors will come to your site and tell others about it.

IV. Be straight forward
One of the pitfalls of designing a website is being evasive or being too cute. If you can understand the information that is great but what about your audience. A major downfall is a large graphic with hotspots on it. Unless you move your mouse around the image you will not know that it is clickable. The search engine bot will not be able to do this and so you will end up failing on navigation. This will push your site lower in the rankings on the search engines which means less customers.

V. Avoid frames
Everyone wants to be cool and stylish. Red alert frames are outdated. They are from the 90's. Search engines do not like them. If search engines (momma) are not happy with it. Then avoid it. Remember not everyone is using the latest brower, so keep it simple.

VI. Make it easy to move around
When you are designing your site remember you are not the one using it. You need to design the website for navigation by the visitors. If the website is not easy to navigate then visitors will not come back. Ask yourself these questions:

• Does the website make sense from a visitor's standpoint?



• Is information easy to access?



• Do you have unavailable links? - Search engines do not like broken links and you will be penalized.

VII. Provide visitors with different routes
When visitors go on your site you want to provide multiple routes to progress around the site. By doing this you will provide more information to the search engines. Some of the different ways:

• Sitemap - A sitemap will list the different links within your website providing more ways to navigate the website. Search engines will find this appealing.

• Table of Contents or Index Page - This is another technique that you can use. This will list your links in alphabetical order.

• Navigation bars - These are very handy for navigation. Caution!!! - If using JavaScript and other dynamic programming you need to make sure you have another way of accessing the links. Search engines have a hard time negotiating script to find the information. So, the links that you have will not be indexed correctly.

• Navigation text links - Links in text will help individuals find more information on your website. If individuals can easily navigate the site then the search engine bots will also. Some SEO professionals will recommend that you put these links towards the top then at the bottom.

VIII. Use long link text The more information that you provide with your links the more information you will give to the search engines. This also easier for the visitors to navigate your websites. Try to stay away from "Click Here". This does not tell the visitor why they should click on the link. When designing your website links make sure that you include your keywords. This will help in calculating your keyword density. This is the % of keywords on the page.

XI. Stop restructuring the website
Broken links are mostly caused by restructuring of the website. When visitors bookmark your site they will be presented by 404 page not found. You can prevent this by not changing the structure of your website. Plan in the beginning and keep that structure. Only make changes that will not cause broken links. You can also create custom 404 page not found. A custom 404 page can redirect an individual to a page within your website which can keep the visitor within your environment.

X. Spell Check
Nothing annoys visitors about a site more then misspelled words. This ensures that your keywords are utilized to their maximum value. So, before you publish your site have someone proof read the site. Make sure you use the spell checking services in your web design software.