Search Engine Friendly Web Design Advice - by Jimsun Lui
May 30, 2010 by Web Design Cornwall
Filed under Website Design
Online marketers understand the importance of getting top search engine rankings in major search engines. Therefore, they spend time on search engine optimization (SEO). However, many of them ignore the fact that web design structure has a role in SEO. To optimize website, you must ensure you have a search engine friendly web design structure, and do not just rely on web designers because they could be good at web design but not good at SEO.
This article reveals several important web design elements you must consider during website optimization process.
1. CSS Stylesheet
It is good to use CSS stylesheet to format your web design because it can standardize the appearance of your website. For the sake of convenience, some web designers use internal CSS. It is no good! You should use external CSS stylesheet so that your HTML coding becomes consise, and mainly compose of your website content. It is an essential SEO practice.
2. Content Management Software (CMS)
If you use CMS to manage your website, make sure your CMS provides these features:
a. Allows you to define different templates for different sections/pages. It gives you flexibility in optimizing website content.
b. Allows you to define Title and Meta tags for different web pages. Again, it gives you flexibility in optimizing every web page.
c. Allows you to generate static HTML pages instead of dynamic pages. Search engines are not good at reading dynamic web page. Accoding to Google webmaster guideline, Google may not index dynamic URL with more than 2 parameters within the URL.
If your web pages cannot get indexed, you definitely get no rankings no matter how many SEO effort you make.
3. HTML Code Compliance
As a good web design practice, make sure your HTML coding is compliant to some well recognized HTML standards such as W3C standard. Some search engine optimizers reported that non-compliant web design could cause difficulties for search engines
to index and analyze your website. It hinders your website to get top search engine ranking.
4. Use of Graphics
You must optimize the file size of your images. As search engines like to read text, you should consider avoiding the use of graphics near top of your website, whenever it is possible.
5. Multiple-level Navigation Menu
Many websites use multiple-level navigation menu in Javascript. However, the coding usually leaves in the HTML body. This is no good in terms of SEO. I recommend seperate Javascrpt from HTML coding by using external Javascript file. For example, Marketshare - an Asia consumer market research firm, found that their website cannot get indexed properly by several search engines. This situation has been changed only after adopting external Javascript.
6. Bad Web Design
To make your web design search engine friendly, you must consider avoiding:
a. Use of frame. Search engines have difficulties to index all your frameset. Even though they can index some frame pages, users would only access to part of your webpages only in case they can find your website from search engines, e.g., only see a left-hand side navigation menu with a blank page on the right-hand side.
b. Re-direct techniques. For some reasons, web designers may make some re-direct pages or adopt Javascript re-direct techniques and re-direct visitors from one page to another content pages. Since search engine spammers usually use this technique, search engines could penalize your website.
7. Flash
Web designers may sell you to build a flash website or make a flash intro page as your home page. Their point is that flash makes your website more appealing and it would improve effectiveness of your website. However, it is not always the case.
Visitors want to find information fast. Flash sometimes could make your website slow and require visitors to install plugins before they can see your website. In terms of SEO, simply speaking, search engines treat flash as a graphic and cannot analyze content inside a flash file. The implication means a flash website is hard to get top search engine ranking.
Conclusion:
For small business to succeed online, you must strike a balance between SEO and fancy web design. A too fancy web design, in many cases, cannot give you any business as no one can find your website from search engines and if it annoys your visitors.
Jimsun Lui, is working in Agog Digital Marketing Strategy Limited, a company offers SEO Services for both English and Chinese search engines. Click here to learn more about how to optimize website. The company also offers Ecommerce Web Design Service
Search Engine Friendly Pages - by Tristan Jud
May 29, 2010 by Web Design Cornwall
Filed under Website DesignOk it has been awhile since I wrote on this topic. But here goes!
Please Note: These are only tips, and will not be enough to provide top positions for desired keywords. If you wish to gain better results please contact me and we can develop a campaign to suite your needs.
Meta Tags
There are many meta tags you can include in your web page. (For those that don’t know your meta tags are included in between the tags of the website).
The most important tags to include are Title, Keywords, & Description.
The all important Title tag
This is really the most important tag to include on your website. A properly optimised website would have different title tags for each individual page. If you notice most of the top search engine results have the keyword your searched for in the title of the website, Sometimes it is even duplicated.
It is important to include your desired keyword near the beginning of your Title.
Most companies would opt to have there company name as the first keyword in the Title. Although this is pleasing to the eye, it is not to the search engine algorithm’s. A title tag limit should be between 70 to 80 characters.
The Description tag
This tag is important for two reasons.
1. The search engine robot crawls the tag to get an idea of what the page is about.
2. The tag is often shown under the page title in search results.
It is important to have a keyword rich description however it must be written in a coherent phrase. The length of a description tag is somewhat of a mystery but we suggest somewhere to the maximun length of 255 characters.
Make sure your important keywords are towards the front of the description. As with the title tag a properly optimised website will have different descriptions for each page.
Last but not least! The Keyword tag.
Although it is tipped that major search engines such as google don’t use this meta tag to rank your site, there are still plenty of search engines that do.
The idea which is much the same as many of the other meta tags is to put your important keywords up the front.
The keywords section should be around 800-1000 characters. This is the estimate provided by some search engines. I personally wouldn’t work to hard on this section, but it is important depending on the search engine.
If you are using our content management system enter your page configuration administration section, and you can change the meta tags for each page there. If you are interested in our content management system the please contact me.
Hope this little guide helps. As I said if you wish to gain better results please contact me and we can develop a campaign to suite your needs.
Able Net Design, located in Perth, Western Australia, Able Net Design provides web design and development solutions for both large and small clients, from complete website design to basic site maintenance. Able Net Design - web design perth
Revolutionary Guide to Web Designs - by Marithe Milano
May 27, 2010 by Web Design Cornwall
Filed under Website DesignRevolutionary Guide to Web Designs
The Big Idea
There are a thousand of people and companies who would want to
advertise their services for web designs. The question here is, are you sure if the services that you have bought would be the one that you really like or the best deal in town? Think twice.In this article, I would like to share tips and advises to Web designs. Yes, your own creation. But before we begin, we have to make sure of 2 important things. First, analyze your goals and needs then make a plan. Second, create a site specification on what you intend to do, what trend and technology (including how much you are going to spend) and the most important, the content you’ll need . If you are able to decide on this part, then you are ready to begin. Here’s the step by step process.
First and foremost, create a site definition. This is the initial stage where in you have to define your specification and objectives for the website you are going to make. Analyze the goal you have in mind and justify the budget and things required. In this stage, you also need to define the site content, the information resources that you will need to meet your prospects needs.
Second, website architecture. Programming, database design, search
engine design and data entry is performed in this stage.Third, site design. This is the stage wherein you have to obtain its
appearance as that of the page grid and overall graphic design. You
have to visualize the content for the site that needs to be created.
Plan, research, write, organize and edit the text content is done in this stage.Fourth, website construction. This is the stage wherein all pages are completed and programming components linked. This is the time we
could possibly say that it is now ready for beta testing.Fifth, marketing of website. This is where optimization of site is done. Basically, this is the time that you need the expertise of a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Specialist to promote your site in many ways. Your website must be part of all marketing campaigns and corporate communication programs. Article submission, Link popularity, press releases, etc., is performed during this stage.
Sixth, keep track of your progress thru evaluation. By analyzing the
server logs for your website, you can develop a quantitative data
on the success of your site. There are a number of popular software
packages wherein you can track down your visitor including their
locations (state, city and country) and time, the keywords
that they have used to find your site, the referrer sites, etc..Now that you are done with it, after making all the links “live,” please do not abandon your site. It doesn’t end there. You have to maintain your site. You need constant attention and constant development changes in order to make it more and more capable. You must also need to check periodically if the links are intact and functional.
In website designing, you need not to set a budget that is too high.
You need not to get an expensive service. You just need appropriate
research and familiarity to make your own. Careful planning of an
objective and clear purpose are the main keys to success in building
websites.You can create the most unique or simplest design. What’s
important is that you have done what you have always want it to be.
By: Marithe Milano, Internet Marketing Specialist of MegaWebDesigns
MegaWebDesigns is the leading provider of website development services such as website design, web hosting services, domain name registration and client-server application development at affordable packages.MegaWebDesigns: Web Design, Hosting and Development Services
http://www.megawebdesigns.com
mail to: info@megawebdesigns.com; marketing@megawebdesigns.com
Redesigning: How Often Is Too Often? - by Tim Priebe
May 26, 2010 by Web Design Cornwall
Filed under Website DesignYou’ve all seen it on some websites. They completely overhaul the look of the website every other month. Or at least it seems that way. Then there’s the other extreme, where websites haven’t been redesigned since 1996. So how often is too often?
Change for the sake of change is pointless. Do not feel compelled to redesign your site if you are satisfied with its look. Instead, ask yourself these questions:
- Do I like the look of my site?
- Does the design appeal to my target demographic?
- >Is the design appropriate for the site’s content and subject matter?
- Does the current design make it difficult in any way to navigate the site?
- Do a lot of impartial people say that the site looks dated?
- Are there any fundamental design flaws, like inconsistency across multiple pages, that are integrated into the design?
There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to redesigning your site. Depending on how it was set up originally, converting a lot of pages to a new design may take weeks, and that’s after the new design is done and approved. People who come back to your site that haven’t visited it in awhile will be greeted by a look that is unfamiliar to them. Unless you are prominently using the same logo, they may initially be unsure if they have come to the right site.
However, a fresh new look can often help you retain website visitors. Individuals who might have just given your site a cursory look before may be more apt to stick around and look in more detail. And the longer they look around on your site, the more likely they are to buy, to come to your physical store, to submit articles, etc.
If your site design is more in align with the purpose of the site, people will be more likely to engage in that purpose, regardless of whether it is shopping online, playing online games, or just reading more about your business.
So do not redesign just because it’s been a few years. Evaluate the current look. Perhaps you can send a poll to your top 50 clients and ask them questions about your website. See what they think of it. And then, if they feel a redesign is needed and you agree with their reasoning, go ahead and redesign!
Tim is the owner and senior web designer at T&S Web Design. His company has developed and maintained website for dozens of small businesses and organizations. Tim also maintains a blog with free website advice for small business owners, GetASiteOnline.com.
Quick Tips For Your Webdesign - by Dalvin Rumsey
May 24, 2010 by Web Design Cornwall
Filed under Website DesignWhen it comes to web site design best practices, planning is the most important thing to consider. This is the only way to building an excellent website, and doing it in the least amount of time. The process of making a web site can still be made faster by using some sort of web building tool.
The first thing you have to do is making a sketch on paper of the future site. It is very useful to get a straight picture of the look and feel of your homepage, as well as the navigation or flow chart of the various pages of your entire web site. A website is basically a pyramid with the homepage only being the top of it. Your visitors will navigate from your homepage to your 2nd tier pages and from there to the 3rd tier pages. At first, you will only build your homepage and the 2nd tier pages.
There are a few techniques that can help you build a website very quickly and avoid unwanted problems that can occur when you least expect it.
The Fast Track Technique says that the only thing you must do is plan one page, meaning your homepage, and then all the other 2nd and 3rd level pages can be simply cloned. Using this perfect page as a template, you can build the other ones, though filling them with different contents.
Webdesign is not so simple a task, as it requires the fulfillment of all the needs a possible visitor may have. There are also the needs of the search engines to take care of. A website must get the visitor to the page where he can make a purchase, and this all in one single mouse click. Such a website should get the name and email address of the visitor, which is actually more important than selling a product to your visitor.
The web pages must be optimized for the search engines and the best way to do that is by using articles that you write about your business, combined with SEO webpage design principles. This will most likely attract a lot of free, targeted traffic on your website.
Another important thing to do is not only get the visitors name and email address, but also lead the visitor along a particular path to get the visitor to take a certain action, that is to make a purchase.
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