Now that you’ve got your brand new website, how do people find you? Search engines.

To properly and reliably get your site listed, I’ve compiled the following list of tips to get you started:

1. Stay away from the tricks
   A lot of web design firms will promise grand things and instant results.  The problem?  They usually use some sneaky tricks to get you ranked higher.  And the problem with these tricks?  Search engines eventually catch on, and could even punish your site for using the tricks.  Keep it clean, and follow the clear-cut rules for optimization.
2. Keep your content fresh
   Search engines tend to favor new content.  For this reason, I have a blog on this site.  For the most part, the information I have here doesn’t change.  I may add additional services here and there, but it rarely changes.  The easy way to keep things fresh is with a blog.  Post articles related to your industry.  You get two benefits: Search engines will begin to rank you higher, and your customers will have more reasons to check your site more often.
3. Relevant linking
   Most search engines calculate part of your website’s rank on the number of incoming and outgoing links.  For example, if a highly ranked website, such as CNN.com, linked to an article on your website, your site gains not only instant traffic increases, but a better search ranking.  The same goes for the opposite direction.  Try your best to link to relevant and highly ranked websites from your own site.
4. Optimize your URLs
   Take a sample of five websites.  Half will probably half URLs in an optimized form, while the other half will not.  An optimized URL is one that tells a search engine what to expect at that address.  For example, http://www.example.com/?page=29 doesn’t really say much about what will be on “page 29.”  On the other hand, http://www.example.com/graphic-design-samples tells quite a bit about what’s on the page.  If you don’t maintain your own site, ask your web developer if your URLs are search engine optimized.

When most people think about “the Internet,” they’re actually thinking about a single piece of software: Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is the pre-installed and default web browser on modern PCs. When you want to visit a website, odds are you first open Internet Explorer.

While Internet Explorer may dominate simply because it’s there by default and easy to use, there are many other web browsers that offer better features and more security. The list below is not exhaustive, but includes some of the more popular browsers in development today. I encourage you to download and try them all. You may find yourself to be much more productive, faster, or just more comfortable in one of the alternatives. Most of the sites linked contain comparisons, features, and any other relevant information about each choice.

• Mozilla Firefox
• Opera Browser
• Safari
• Google Chrome

I’m not a big fan of using a computer mouse. Whenever possible, I like to keep both hands on my keyboard. With that in mind, I try to use keyboard shortcuts whenever I can. Below are my most commonly used and under-appreciated shortcuts:

• Alt+Tab – On Windows PCs, holding the Alt key and pressing Tab will cycle through all the open windows on the screen. For even more productivity when you have a lot of windows open, holding Shift+Alt and pressing Tab will cycle through the open windows in the opposite order.
• Pressing Control+ESC or the Windows key (looks like a flag, usually located on the bottom left of the keyboard) will open your Start menu.
• Control+A will select all text. Depending on the application you’re in, the behavior of this one may change. For example, if you are in, for example, My Documents and looking at all your folders and files, pressing Control+A will select all the items within My Documents. If you’re in Microsoft Word, this shortcut will select all the text within the current document
• Alt+F4 will close the currently active program. This has the same basic functionality as clicking the “X” to close the window.
• Shift+Delete will delete a selected file without sending it to the Recycle Bin. Be careful with this one, as the files will be unrecoverable if you delete them using this shortcut.
• Control+F within most programs will open its “Find” window, allowing you to search.
• To disable the “Auto Run” feature of CDs and DVDs, hold the left Shift key while you insert the disc. This will prevent the disc from automatically launching any programs. You generally want to hold the Shift key until you see the disc drive’s activity light stop flashing.