Archives : seo design
Is Your Site Design Getting in the Way of Your SEO?
If so, it’s time for a redesign! Don’t whine about the cost of a redesign, the lost opportunities without effective SEO will cost you far more in the long run. In today’s highly competitive Internet realm, it’s absolutely critical that your site is based on a search engine friendly structure; but what does this mean?
Your site should be HTML based, with limited use of Flash. Your code should be simple, W3C compliant, and should be kept as light and error free as possible. For instance, I’ve seen a site improve its design and include added functionality, yet cut its actual code length by over 70%. This was accomplished mostly by employing CSS in the design, ridding the site of Viewstate code, and moving all possible elements to external include files.
In addition to having concise HTML, the following should be adhered to:
- Absolutely avoid any type of frame, unless you’re trying to hide its content from the engines
- Your navigation should be text based, with meaningful words that are simple yet targeted to the subject of each page
- Images should be optimized (condensed) for the web and include ALT tags
- URL, Title tags, H1 headers, breadcrumbs, and hyperlinks should all be optimized around the particular subject of each page
- The content of each page should be targeted to the precise topic of that page alone
- Address, phone number, and other contact information should be in text – not image form
- Your SEO Friendly Content Management System should allow full control of all of the above elements
The typical lifespan of a website is 3-5 years before your customers will expect a fresh look and feel, with newly added technology and interactivity. As you’re looking at the investment itself, think about the amortization of a new site. Even a fairly expensive site, amortized over 5 years, is an incredibly inexpensive business tool likely to drive substantial ROI.
Keep in mind, the best design in a search friendly architecture still requires ongoing marketing. Just like your offline business needs branding, marketing, and exposure to gain customers, so does your website. Internet Marketing Services are offered in a myriad of formats, timeframes, and cost structures. Shop carefully to find the right marketing partner for your business.
New Design Trends Lend to Better Success Rates
Too often in a prospective client conversation, at the moment when a redesign is discussed, the client is thinking more about all of the information they would like to present instead of how they want to present it. Giving too much user choice as to ‘where to go next’ is a trend that’s dying. No longer are there new sites with multi-level navigation front and center, with an endless plethora of choice.
Smart designers and smart SEOs know better. It’s up to us to guide the client to best understand who’s coming to the site and what they want. Drop down navigation menus are being replaced with two or three call to action buttons, proactively guiding a user through the site…to the ultimate conversion.
Now, each page has a purpose, a placement in a highly organized or siloed structure, a call to action; information combined with a gentle (or not so subtle) push to the next step toward conversion.
Smart sites are designed with the ultimate purpose in mind – which may vary from purchasing product, filling out a lead generation form, calling direct or visiting a particular page. They work backwards internally and create the site around a specific and direct set of keywords and actions they would like to be found for and what products and services they offer.
Recent home page designs are clean and straight-forward, which guide the user to the next step and meets them at the point of their buying process (whether research or purchase driven). Since you have an average of 15 seconds to get your point across and invite a visit to click deeper into your web site, the need for simplicity is imperative.
Does your home page have a purpose? Does your site have a goal or set of goals?
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