Well everyone knows Google is probably the best search engine currently available (I say currently because I remember when a small company called Altavista was the clear leader) and most probably are aware that they offer email through Gmail and know of one or more of the webmaster tools available.

This article is the definitive guide to webmasters tools and resources and Google and it goes much further than just providing links to the standard webmaster tools collection. Read on and explore the suggestions you will be pleasantly surprised at the effects that it has on your productivity, SEO and search engine rankings.

This is the basic collection of web designers tools, when I describe them as basic, I am talking about the level of knowledge required to utilise them and not their power nor capability. Man of these tools and applications are extremely powerful indeed.

If you are not sure why Google is important to you as a web designer and web master then have a Read at the Google 101

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897

On the other hand if you are more seasoned web developer then remember to check back for our Advanced Google webmaster tools collection.
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A lot of questions have risen up when it comes to SEO & Content. What type of content is best seen? What are Search Engines looking for exactly?

I’ll try to briefly explain below the most met situations.

I want my website popular!

No matter what or where, competition takes place. It is why the web world resemblances with the real world.

A lot of Web Designers reached up fearing the web competition due to its natural growth, ending up focusing on popularity and less on content quality. Focus too much on popularity and the obsession will only hit you back.

So what is the right way?

There isn’t one single right way, but I do know one that always had success and always will. Quality, quality and quality and I can’t stress you enough with it.

Most Webmasters ended up believing they need a lot of content to get more and more hits through the search engines, well, that is in a somewhat manner true, but inconclusive and non-professional.

If you are opening up a blog, don’t go posting 1000km long posts, go for the quality. By that I mean, if your post was written in 1000 lines, though it can be done in 500, go with 500. The search engines love, no… they adore quality content!

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I was helping my father with his web site today and his web designer posed the question ‘how important are the meta tags these days’ and that set me to thinking. I know that I do not spend nearly as much time worrying about them, crafting them and updating them as I once did.

The truth of the matter is they are not nearly as important as they once were and therefore it is important to remember this when working out how much time and money you should allocate to this task. Once upon a time meta tags were a primary factor for search engines however the meta keywords tag and meta description tags are no longer the primary factor for the modern search engine.

Whilst they are no longer the main factor in classifying indexing, titling and describe your site they should not be left out and are still important. Well some of them in any case, whilst others thankfully are irrelevant.
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