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I'm writing this article because there are many topics telling people to modify their websites to meet the search engine and directory standards. I just want to remind that you are running a website for users, not for search engine.

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There are many website promotion articles will tell you to do some search engine optimization of your website before submitting. For example, they will ask you to refine your keyword and have a good description in the meta tag, and make a good doorway pages, etc. The article will tell you the algorithm of the directories and search engines, and if submission is rejected, you shall make some change to meet the standards of them and submit again. However, personally I don't agree with them.

We shall understand that we are running a commercial website to own money, and to get profit we shall have thousands of users to visit the website, and to drive thousands of users to visit the website, there shall have useful information or service to the users in the website. That's to say, you shall have a good content before submitting to directories and search engines.

By changing your web design to meet the algorithm of the directories and search engines, and by adopting some search engine optimization tools and website promotion techniques, maybe you will be listed in the first page of the search results, and this can drive thousands of visitors to your website. But if there is no attractive information and services, what the visitors will do? They will never come back and give your website a bad fame. By SEO and promotion techniques, you can get huge web traffic in a short time, you can't do it forever. Only good content of your web can maintain traffic for long time.

So run your website for users, not for search engines.

Hence we shall go back to the start point of building a wbsite, and shall ask ourselves 3 questions: why we build this website? what information and services we can provide to users via this website? and how can we provide the information and services to users via this website?

Why we build this website?

For a commercial website, I do think everybody will answer that he wants to own profit. That's true and good start!

What information and services we can provide to users?

That's the content of your website, and the key point to attract visitors.

Currently most of the websites provide free information and services to users and own profit by advertisement, for example all the search engines like google, baidu, alltheweb, and news provider like msn, sina. Some others like B2B and C2C websites as alibaba, ebay, amazon, will own profit by selling service and advertisement. And others like hotel booking, ticket booking agents as expedia, hotels, sidestep, orbitz, etc will provide free booking service to users and own profit from the hotels. And there are still few websites will own money by registering as a member or listing into their library, for example yahoo directory, looksmart, etc. However I can't list all kinds of commercial websites here, and this is not also what I'm focusing for this article.

So to start building your website, make sure the content is attractive to users. However there millions of websites covered almost each area today, it's very difficult to find an area which is blank. You shall spend most of your time to think your information and services to users, and make sure have a good idea before starting. If there are competitors, make sure you have distinctive advantages. Just like Google, which is not the first search engine, but due to its powerful technique, it is the No. 1 of the world now. If there is no larruping, your website will be a bottom flat line, even without a peak until the end.

How can we provide information and services to users?

This is the issue of web design, and you can find many related topics from the forums and internet. I will not talk too much about it, because this article is about search engine.

Though web design is not more important than the content of the website, it's do affect the visitors impression and traffic (There are do have ugly websites with high page rank and traffic, but very few). So try to make a customer friendly interface, and I will recommend 2 points based my own view.

1. Make sure the information and function is convenient to users. For example, Sign In and Login shall exist in each page. The most popular links and buttons shall exist in the top panel or the right or left panel in the index page. One time I visited a B2B website, after signing in, it took me several minutes to find the button of posting leads and edit my profile. You can guess that I never go back to that site after signing in.

2. Don't let users wait. Don't put too much pictures in your site, because this will affect the download speed from the server. Don't run huge and complex server scripts if you server can't handle such script fast. Definitely no users will wait 2 minutes to download your page, they will leave.

Conclusion

I'm talking too much about the web content and web design, this doesn't mean that search engine optimization is not important. Actually this is the first thing you shall do after your website is done, since you need to introduce your information and service to users first. And if your information and service is accepted, you shall still do search engine optimization and website promotion periodically.

But if you have problem in submitting and need to modify your website to meet their standard, do think the users first!

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