Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips » web design

SEO and Website Design: 5 Considerations

MoeTamani — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:59:10 +0000

SEO and Website Design: 5 Considerations

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you’re serious about SEO, then your website design should reflect your concern for getting high search engine rankings and thus driving plenty of targeted traffic to your website. Here are 5 considerations to keep in mind as you’re building an SEO-friendly website.

1.Target Audience. Who exactly is your product or service for? How old are they? What are their other interests? What phrases and idioms motivate them to spend money? What problems are they trying to solve? If you can’t answer these questions, then you don’t know enough about your target audience to design an SEO-friendly website that will attract them. If you do know the answers to these questions, then your website design should reflect those answers.

2.Your Business as a Standout. Even if you’re selling the same products and services as hundreds of your competitors, you should stand out from them in some way. If you don’t, why would someone choose to do business with you rather than your competitors? One key to remember is that people are just as impacted by their experiences with buying products and services as they are by the products and services themselves. You have to be able to clearly articulate what it is that makes you stand out from everyone else. Otherwise, you’re not yet ready to design your website.

3.Driving Traffic to Your Site. You can have the most amazing website in the world, but that makes no difference at all if your target audience can’t find it. That’s why you should consider SEO from the moment you begin designing your website until the moment you put on the finishing touches and call it done. One of the keys to SEO-friendly website design is to put lots of thought and research into the keywords and keyphrases your target audience is using to find products and services like yours. If you’re not sure how to go about optimizing your site, or how to research good keywords, consider talking to an internet marketing professional or SEO expert. They can help you make sure you’re optimizing for the right keywords and thus driving your target audience directly to your website.

4.Website Effectiveness. Believe it or not, some business owners aren’t really sure why they’ve created a website in the first place. That’s why you need to know exactly what you want your visitors to do when they get to your site. Do you want them to buy a product or service? Do you want them to leave an email address? Do you want them to subscribe to your newsletter? Whatever action it is that you want your visitors to take, make sure they can do it easily, without having to put too much thought into it. You should also limit the number of actions your visitors can take when they come to your site. This way they aren’t confused or distracted.

5.Website Navigation. When visitors arrive to your site, there should be a particular flow for them to follow without having to think about it. What is that flow? Where should visitors go when they come to your site? When you know exactly how you want your visitors to navigate your website, you can determine the order and placement of navigation links, and the location of your call to action. Also consider how you will get your visitors back into the flow if they find themselves arriving at your website in the middle of the path you have setup.

A key component of SEO is website design. Be sure you keep in mind these 5 considerations as you’re creating your site. Also consider hiring an SEO expert or internet marketer to help you design and launch an SEO-friendly website. You’ll see quicker results and more profits in no time!

SEO Essentials: 15 Pages to You Should Include On Your Website

MoeTamani — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:27:32 +0000

SEO Essentials: 15 Pages to You Should Include On Your Website

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

You can use every SEO tool and trick in the book, but if your website is sloppy, difficult to navigate, poorly constructed, or devoid of pertinent information, all the SEO in the world isn’t going to make a visitor to your site stick around long enough to find out about your products and services. As you’re constructing your website, be sure to include these 15 pages:

1.Homepage. This is obvious but true. You should have a simple, clean, easy-to-navigate homepage that shows your visitors that they are dealing with a seasoned professional who can deliver what they need.

2.Products. Each product or service that you offer warrants its own page, both for clarity and for SEO purposes. Each page should begin with an overview of the product and then continue on with details. Give as much information as possible. Your visitors don’t want to wait until they can ask you questions over the phone tomorrow. If they find out they’re going to have to wait, they’ll likely go to your competitors.

3.Contact Page. This should include email, phone number, and a physical address at a minimum. Customers will be more comfortable doing business with you if they sense that you’re willing to make yourself available. This information should also be at the bottom of every page of your website.

4.Prices. When it’s possible, include prices of products and services. If you can’t be specific, at least list a price range.

5.Testimonials. Get testimonials from satisfied customers and from others in your market niche. Be sure to get permission from the person to use his or her full name. This increases credibility. Before and after pictures, if appropriate, are also a great tool.

6.FAQs. Gather up a list of all the questions you’ve been asked about your business or product and then compile them, along with their answers, on an FAQ page.

7.Response Forms. These are necessary if you’re trying to create a mailing list. People may not be comfortable providing a lot of information, so consider only asking for a name and email address.

8.About Us. This is a great way to build credibility and to help your potential customers along in their journey towards trusting you. Include a photo and a short bio, plus contact information and qualifications.

9.Guarantee. Hopefully you already offer a money-back guarantee of some sort. One of the pages on your site should outline your guarantee and provide pertinent information about what that guarantee entails. If you don’t offer a money-back guarantee, consider it seriously.

10.Search Function. Sometimes your potential customers aren’t interested in looking around your website and just want to find what they’re looking for…fast. This is where a search function comes in.

11.Site Map. This is another way to accommodate that weary customer who just wants to get in and get out as quickly as possible. Plus, it’s a great SEO tool in that it helps search engines index your site more quickly.

12.Media. This is another great way to build credibility. Include any media coverage of your business or employees, including print articles, features, photos, etc.

13.News. Another good credibility-builder. Customers want to deal with professionals who are on the cutting edge of their market niche and who are active within their chosen field. A good way to show this to potential customers is to post news about your business or industry. It gives you the appearance of involvement and authority within your industry.

14.Store. In many cases, you can provide customers the opportunity to purchase your product any time of day or night, and customers love this kind of convenience. Just make sure your store is easy to navigate and that the process of making a purchase is simple.

15.Links. This is both a great credibility builder and SEO tool. Links to other companies in your market niche often result in reciprocal links to your site, and they give the impression of being active in your niche. Both are important to the success of your business.

If you need more guidance in constructing your website, consult with an SEO professional or internet marketing expert. You’ll be glad you did!

10 Tips for Quality Web Design

Seomul Evans — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:06:28 +0000

10 Tips for Quality Web Design

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

SEO experts understand the importance not only of relevant and important content on a website, but also the design of the website itself. Websites are ranked by their importance and relevance to the topic they claim to be providing information about, but search engines also rank pages based on usefulness. How useful is your website to your visitors? How easy is it to find information on your website? The plus side to creating a useful website is that it not only helps increase your search engine ranking, but it also helps your visitors. We will discuss later issues about SEO web design meanwhile here are 10 tips for designing a useful website.

1. Professionalism. Your website should look like it was designed by a professional, even if it wasn’t. There’s nothing that will compromise a potential customer’s faith in your abilities than a website that looks like it was designed by an amateur. The style of your site should be attractive to your target audience.

2. No Room for Squares. If you really must use square corners on your site, limit the instances in which you use them. Nothing says “amateur” like a site built on boxes.

3. Forget Adsense. Adsense ads are the equivalent of yelling, “This site is low-budget!” Adsense ads running across the bottom of your site aren’t quite as bad, but the more prominent the PPC ads are on your site, the more low-quality your site appears. This doesn’t mean you have to forget using ads all together, but Adsense ads just look cheap.

4. Clean it Up. Clutter on a website makes it harder for your visitors to find what they’re looking for, and they’re likely to leave if they can’t find their way around your site quickly and easily.

5. Test Browsers. Before you launch your website, see what it looks like in different browsers with different resolutions. No one will stay on your website for very long if all they see is a jumble of text and images.

6. Find a Good Host. You’ll lose visitors quickly if your website is down because you haven’t chosen a good host.

7. Check Your Code. If visitors come to your site only to find a PHP error, they’ll not only leave, but they probably also won’t come back again in the future. In addition, it simply looks unprofessional to have a website that’s broken.

8. Avoid the Flash. Flash gets in the way of what your visitors are looking for. It can be distracting and annoying, and calls attention to the flash instead of your products and services.

9. Shut Down the Audio. If someone working in a public area finds your site, chances are he will leave as quickly as he arrived if there’s music automatically playing on your website. It’s annoying, it’s distracting, and it will send people right back to the search engine before they’ve even seen what you have to offer.

10. No Cover Pages. Even if you include a “skip intro” link, it’s still easier for visitors to click back to the search engine than it is to click on “skip intro.” Cover pages are nothing more than a barrier to your content, and you want your content as accessible as possible.

These tips don’t guarantee that a visitor will stick around at your site, but following them will at least ensure that your design doesn’t scare them away. Remember, the point is to make information about your products and services as accessible as possible. Anything that acts as a barrier to that information should be removed or corrected at once. If you still aren’t sure whether your site is well-designed or not, consult with an SEO or internet marketing expert. They will help you correct any problems and help you turn visitors into customers.

8 Keys to a Designing Great Website

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:25:22 +0000

8 Keys to a Designing Great Website

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you’re a small business owner, you probably can’t imagine running your business without a website. And if you want to be a successful business owner, you need to have a really great website. This means that before you do anything else, you need to determine your target audience, the website’s purpose, your budget, your design, your navigation, and your content. Just making all of this up as you go along will result in a mediocre website that doesn’t work effectively for you. Follow these 8 keys as you create a great website that becomes the difference between success and failure for your business.

Know Your Purpose. Before you do anything else, you must determine the purpose of your website. The purpose is the basis of everything else, including content, navigation, and design. Is the purpose of your website to educate? To generate leads? To entertain? To make sales? If you neglect to define your purpose at the very beginning, then the rest of your effort is wasted.
Know Your Budget. Be clear about exactly what you can do with the budget you have and then make the most of exactly what you can afford.
Know How to Design. Pretty pictures are wonderful, but most search engines give preferential treatment to websites that go easy on graphics and focus instead on text. Minimalism is the way to go when creating your website.
Know Your Audience. Who are you hoping to attract to your site? Take this information and design a website that will be attractive to that audience.
Know How to Create Good Navigation. If your website is difficult to navigate or is cluttered with irrelevant graphics and text, your visitors will leave as quickly as they arrived. If your website doesn’t make sense to a visitor, if there are too many or too few links, or if it’s just too hard to get around your site, you will lost visitors right and left. A great rule of thumb is that is shouldn’t take a visitor any more than three clicks to get anywhere on your website.
Know Your Content. Your website must contain a good deal of keyword-rich text in order to get high search engine rankings. But your content mustn’t give the impression that you’ve been sitting in front of your computer all day trying to figure out how to cram in just a few more keywords. It must still be relevant, clear, and well-written in order to appeal to the humans who visit your site.
Know How to Build It. Who’s going to build your website? Are you going to do it yourself or are you going to hire a professional to do it for you? Your budget will go a long way towards answering this question, but remember that you get what you pay for. Find a happy medium between what you can afford and what you really need in a website.
Know How to Market. Believe it or not, people aren’t just going to show up at your website once it’s up. In fact, your website should be just one part of your overall marketing strategy that includes print information about your company (be sure to include your web address on all of your print material), television ads, and radio spots. If you’re not sure how to go about marketing your business, call upon the expertise of an internet marketing professional who can help you figure out where to go once your website is up and running.

A well-designed, relevant website is key to a successful business, but unless you’ve put a lot of thought, energy, creativity into creating your website, you won’t see any results. Follow these 8 keys as you prepare your website and you’ll see what an enormous difference a little planning can make.

3 SEO Considerations Before Changing Your Website

admin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:32:00 +0000

3 SEO Considerations Before Changing Your Website

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

SEO experts and internet marketing professionals understand that changing and/or moving your website can result in positive outcomes regarding your search engine ranking. The most common changes that business owners make are changes to domain names, changes in web design, changes in content management systems, and changes in web hosts. All such changes can be beneficial, but they don’t come without risks. So before you make a move, consider how such a move might affect your business in particular.

1. A Change in Domain Name. Many business owners feel that a change of domain name is appropriate since a domain name relevant to website content can have a positive effect on search engine rankings. Some businesses change domain names because they’ve been acquired by other companies, and some businesses change domain name because the name of the company itself changed. So what should you do if you plan to change your domain name, for whatever reason? If you’re only changing your domain name, 301 redirects are a good start. Once those are place, contact the owners of all your top referring websites and ask them to update their links to reflect the change in your domain name.

Your primary concern in changing your domain name should be to communicate to other search engines that your change is permanent in order to retain as much “link equity” as you can.

2. A Change in Web Design and Content Management Systems. These are the two factors that can most dramatically effect your visibility. Before you undertake such a change, be sure you understand exactly how search engines will treat your website in the aftermath. When companies make a change to a website, their primary concern is making the transition smooth for potential customers who visit the site. What they often neglect to take into consideration is the effect that a change in URL syntax will have on search engines.

Create a map of old URLs to new URLs, and use 301 redirects as mentioned above. And just as you did when changing domain names, contact the owners of your top referring sites and request that they change the URLs to which they are linking.

If you have pages that can’t be mapped, use user-friendly and search engine-friendly 404 error pages. Once you’ve finished the CMS and design changeover, beware of the need to constantly monitor broken links.

3. A Change in Web Host. The only real issue with changing web hosts is timing. If this is your plan, you should start by putting your site at its new location. Then make your DNS changes so that your domain names points to the new location. Make sure your new location has been crawled by the search engines before closing down your previous location.

If you’re considering a website change, your primary concern should be making a smooth transition both for your customers and visitors, and for search engines. Many companies are so concerned about making a seamless transition for users that they forget the impact a change can have on search engine rankings. Make it easy for search engines to understand what’s going on.

If you’re uncomfortable with making a website change, or if you’re not sure how to make it easy for search engines to translate your move, consider hiring an SEO expert or internet marketing professional to help. These individuals have years of experience in helping companies transition from one web location to another. They can help you communicate a domain name change to search engines. They can help you create maps and implement 301 redirects if you change your design and/or your content management system. And they can help you correctly time your transition if you change your web host.