Text vs. Graphics:

So which is better? Well it depends on how you look at things. You should always remember that you are building your web site for your readers, not for search engine spiders. With that said though, and taking into consideration the ALT command mentioned previously, look away from this article for a second and make a guess.

If you guessed text, you're right. Even with the ALT command there is, for all intents and purposes, no way that you can put enough description in an ALT command as a full article of text can on the page. The search engines give high ranking for credible, quality, up-to-date content that has to do with, in our example, bicycles.

Pictures of bikes offer some written content within the ALT command but are more complementary to the page rather than contributory. There's one other thing you should think about if you're going to go heavy on graphics and that's your users. Not everyone has a hi-speed Internet connection. As a matter of fact I believe only about 40% of North America has access to hi-speed. So if you're going to be using a lot of flash, animation, and large graphics bear in mind that most dial-up users will not wait around for your page to load. If you can get every page on your site to load in less than 15-20 seconds you're doing great. You can test page load time by using this online tool http://watson.addy.com/

Another load factor for you to consider is if you have videos, make sure that there is a download link for dial-up users. Too many videos are embedded without having that additional simple little link "download here" so that dial-up users can simply download the video and watch it off-line. It makes your site much more user friendly and expands your reach.

Reciprocal Links:

Be selective. That's about all you really need to know. Common sense should dictate that linking your bicycle site to a dog food site is not going to do you much good in way of increasing your search engine position. The reciprocal links that are important are 1. Sites that complement your site (like the American Bike Riding Association) and 2. Have a higher page rank than you do.

This tells search engines that a site of greater import than your own recognizes your contribution to the niche market you are both working in. In other words stay in the market you are in and only under the rarest of circumstances should you consider linking outside your niche.

Bigger IS Better:

On the Internet size does count. The more your site has to offer, whether that be through your own content, other people supplying you with content such as RSS feeds, links to relative sites, etc. the higher your ranking. This is why you need to keep adding new content at all times to slowly grow your site to a size that tells the search engine spider that this is no "Mom and Pop" operation even though it might be a site operated just by yourself.

Read Part 4 - Read Part 6