Posts Tagged ‘Web design’
SEO Friendly Web Design
Designs of a website can really entice people. Most web designers also think that their skills could be measured by the looks of the website they created. They think that a good looking website will be enough to attract visitors. But what if you’re in the marketing field? A good looking website will surely not be enough to attract people to visit your site.
Since people would tend to use search engines to look for what they need or want, a web designer should design the website wherein the search engine can recognize the site easily. So showing off of skills by creating a site full of graphics is a big no-no. Remember that search engines don’t have eyes like humans to see those graphics jammed in your site. Your site would not be recognized for what it is about in that way.
The job of search engines is to give relevant results for visitors as to what they’re looking for. Therefore, your site should have a theme beginning with your META tags, your page content and the H1 tag that contains the on-page title.
Web designers should avoid putting in a lot of code into your design. If the client’s field is marketing then the web designer should forget about bragging on his skills in design and focus on content instead. Excessive amounts of codes will hinder the search engines in getting to the content because as mentioned above, search engines don’t recognize graphics so no matter how beautiful the site is, it’s useless if it has a crappy content.
Again, an all image or all Flash site will not help you on your way up in search engines. Because as mentioned above, search engines give consideration into content so if there are way too many unnecessary codes then you won’t end up successful in getting your site indexed.
All in all, a good web designer is not just about having excellent artistic skills. He should know the technique of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) combined with building up a web site. If you’re looking for someone to design your site make sure that your designer knows SEO. This would be truly beneficial for those who are into marketing and would like their web site to look good and at the same time have a high page rank.
You can also tell you web designer about what you want be done specifically with your site. It is better to discuss things with your designer so that he could tell you which ones are possible and which ones are not. This way you would also be aware of the advantage and disadvantage of a certain design and what would be its effect on your web site’s ranking.
So do not settle for a web designer with good designing skills. Look for the one who can design your site nicely and give you a high page rank in search engines at the same time. If your web designer knows nothing of how SEO is incorporated in web design then look for another one.
Tips For Novice Web Designers
Web designing has improved through the years since the internet came to existence. We can notice the changes of how a website designed and created a decade ago would differ from the one designed and created today. Before, most web designs are built in pure HTML and looked simple and plain. But during these days, website design is more attractive and catchy and has clearly gone up at a much higher level. Animations can already be incorporated in web design. But sadly, sometimes, web designers tend to overdo the designing wherein too much animations are included causing a certain web site to load at a slower rate. So here are 5 things that a web designer should avoid when it comes to designing their website.
1. Don’t be obsessed with Flash
Every web designer would like to show off how much they know about Flash and brag about it to everyone with their designs and projects. But as mentioned above, the use of too much Flash animation in a web site is not good. Why? Because again, it will surely slow down the loading of a web site and that is not what the visitors would want to experience upon visiting your web site.
2. Don’t play with ads
Instead of hiding the ads, it’s better to just allot a space for ads to be posted. It’s not really cool to have slide out ads and pop up ads. It’s actually a waste of time and effort on the part of a web designer because visitors are usually annoyed with pop-up and slide out ads. They won’t even bother taking a look at the ad and just close it right away or in most cases, they already have a pop-up ad blocker so your effort for creating those kinds of ads is just not worth it. Just keep the appearance of ads simple by putting up a banner for it.
3. Don’t clutter around
A good web designer can also be judged on how good he is by how organized his web site is. Remember that visitors would always want a web site that is easy to navigate through. They don’t want to look at their monitor screens with their foreheads wrinkled and wondering where they could find what they are looking for.
4. Don’t abuse glassy, reflective effects
This was made famous by the company of Apple. But if it’s too famous and widely used by web designers then people will tend to get sick with it and you might even get negative comments about it. If you really want to use that kind of effect on your design, use it creatively and don’t scatter it all over your web site.
5. Don’t name your Web 2.0 company in a weird manner
Be smart instead of using names that either lack a vowel or have excessive use of vowels. Web designers don’t have to go with this trend and stick to using names that are as smart as their web designs.
How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly
A website should be eye catching to attract visitors. It should also be very search engine friendly. What matters aside from being user friendly is that it’s searchable on the web, otherwise, your website is useless.
How do we create an SEO friendly web design?
If you use flash on the entire website, you will have to put double the work to make it search engine firendly. Search Engine (SE’s) ignores Flash, therefore, you will also need a non-flash version of your website. If you really need to use flash, make sure that you have an alternative textual description that can be understood by SE spiders. Otherwise, you can also use web 2.0 technology to put your content first before your flash designs.
When using images, be sure to fill-in “name” and “alt” tags. The graphical image itself cannot be seen by SE spider, it is through this tags that SE spider interpret your website. Use relevant description only and do not try to deceive SE spider.
Avoid using frames, SE spiders have no way to interpret content on a frame.
Use CSS navigation and style sheets, doing so makes your navigational menu crawl-able and indexable by SE spider. Using Javascript and Flash do not have the same result – it is unseen by SE spiders. So if you have javascript or flash on your site, you also need to have simple texts of the same message you put in Javascript or flash.
Though it’s not a requirement to use CSS stylesheets, it will help your site to load faster.
Conduct a Keyword Research to use on your meta tags and contents but also avoid keyword stuffing, suggested keyword density is 3-5%. For the title tag, characters should be at lest 70 and 150 for the description. Have at least 5-8 important keywords listed in your keyword tag.
Also, use keyword researched on your anchor text, H1, H2 and H3 as much as possible. This will help you rank in Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).
Create SEO friendly URL, incorporate your keyword related to your web page. Use dashes to separate words.
Structure your site up to 3 levels deep; Google only sees three-levels deep.
Provide useful content and make sure to have at least 250 words each web page since some SE spiders requires at least 250 to analyze your site. Make it a point as well that content on your site coincide with keywords used, else, SE spider will find it of little value.
Lastly, provide a site map.
Having an optimized site works well with your SEO campaign, the second step now depends on you.
If you like this article you may want to read 10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
Important Factors of a Good Web Design
Name me a person that do not know what a website is, perhaps even the elderly knew about it. It’s actually the page you browse on the web, just like the establishment or stores you walked-in to. It’s a visual representation of a company, store or even organization. It’s an important investment for every industry and even for professional practitioners like doctors and lawyers, but not everybody has all the factors to develop loyal clientele.
Having access to the World Wide Web makes the impossible possible, just look at meeting conducted online, businesses surviving after the recession and shopping without literally leaving your home. I am probably one of the million people who could not live without an Internet connection. It makes life a little bit easier for me, I could learn without literally staying at home – FREE. But what makes a good website design, what people would actually love to see and experience in your site. Technology is changing so fast, HTML – PHP – CSS – CMS, gadget and all sort of things that could be utilize and integrated in your site. Sometime we get carried away and adapt to what we see is better but forgetting the simple goal why the website is created after all – user experience regardless of the physical design.
What are the essentials of a good web design? First and most important factor is the Cross-browser Compatibility. It simply means the website runs in whatever browser visitors used to navigate the site. The best thing webmasters should do is make the site WC3 compliant.
User-friendly Interface is the next on the list. Basically it is the navigation to the sites’ interface. Users usually want a straightforward approach to a websites’ navigation. It’s a good practice to keep in mind that some users do not have the time to study how to navigate within your site; they are just there to get what they want and not figure out how to make it work.
Another thing to consider is the loading time. Flash designs and creative images are very impressive provided that they load fast, but if visitors to your site would have to wait 3-5 minutes before it loads, I don’t think it helps attracting potential clients.
Privacy and Terms of Use should also be integrated to the site specifically if it is a corporate site. This provides a certain impression that users are protected. This is the page in the site that details how information is collected and other information with regards to user security and privacy.
Lastly, accessibility, a good website design not only caters to the general public. It’s one factor commonly disregarded but could help reach out to wider audience.
Having a website is indeed very important nowadays, aside from cutting operational cost, it reaches a wider market without spending millions. So if you’re spending on website or would like to have one, be sure to remember that the site is created NOT for YOU but for your VISITORS, NOT for SPIDERS but for USERS.