In a never ending quest to build better web pages and faster I came across a list of Firefox extensions for web developers. I was trying to find an extension that I used to use a while ago and came across some new ones that were really amazing. While I wouldn't call all of these must have extensions for anyone, a few really do help in building better web pages. Anyone here who builds their own web pages (or uses Firefox) should take a look.

Keywords are a funny thing. Most keywords start off pretty vague, and slowly grow to something unnatural. For example my site recently came up in a search result for "list of seo & sem sites with page rank less than six in uk". Now that is truly unexpected, and just strange. I'm still not sure how I came up for this search, but I can say that watching how people find my site has really helped me discover tweaks. While I use tools like the Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool and Keyword Discovery to get an idea of what people are searching for, these tools offer ideas but not facts. I have seen these reports show huge traffic for terms that just aren't true, and no traffic for terms that I'm getting results on. That being said they are both worth taking a look at, but what's more important is...

Search engine marketing relies on good links coming in to your site. When you have a site published with original content you can often boost ranking by submitting the site to a directory. Before there were search engines there were directories. Before yahoo had search, it had a directory. A good directory ensures that your site has quality content before listing it, and it's why the link is so valuable. Here is a list of a few top directories:

When designing a site it's important to pay attention to the keywords from start to finish. You can use keywords in your domain name like seo-web-design-costa-rica.com and in your page names such as /SEO-Search-Engine-Optimization.

As much as search engines love finding new content, they hate finding the same content over and over. Using some content repeatedly, like contact information, is perfectly acceptable. The problem begins when search engines find that several of your pages just repeat the same thing again and again.

Search engines are like gardeners. They like to see things grow. Nothing makes them happy like dropping by a web site and finding more content. The more often they find new content when they drop by the more often they check out your site.

I still have some work to do, but the web site for the Jaco Costa Rica luxury vacation rental La Paloma Blanca was released over the weekend. I need to resize and upload some photos as well as get the translations back and upload those. Take a moment to check it out and feel free to place comments here.

Unparalleled growth in the real estate market of Costa Rica's central pacific coast has brought small businesses a burden with its boom. Businesses that were competing in a small town environment before are finding that they have to deal with a major market shift. None of this is new, and businesses large and small all over the world have been dealing with market shift for years. Small businesses everywhere have numerous resources at hand to compete in these rapidly growing environments, but often times these simple things are overlooked.