Five Elements of Proper Web Design

Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful.

Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

• SEO -Getting free traffic to your site.

• Usability -Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

• Aesthetics -Visual appeal.

• Content -Valid, up-to-date, relevant information.

• Graphics -Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site, you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don't, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

• Provide a site search tool.

A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.

• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.

This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.

• Provide logical and simple to follow content.

The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above, the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written and without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up-to- date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can't be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

Organic SEO What Does it Really Mean?

Organic SEO
What Does it Really Mean?
By Scott Buresh (c) 2006

When people refer to "organic SEO" (search engine optimization), they almost always use it as a blanket term to describe the unpaid, algorithm-driven results of any particular engine. However, a sophisticated search engine optimization company will often take the meaning of "organic" one step further. To such companies, the description of "organic SEO" is not limited to what shows up in the "natural" search engine results - it includes the methodologies used to achieve such rankings.
There's more than one way to skin a cat (although I must admit that I don't know the one way that everyone else presumably knows), and the same is true for achieving natural search engine results. A search engine optimization company usually falls into one of two camps. A "White Hat" search engine optimization company will use a largely content-based approach and will not violate the terms of service of the major search engines. A "Black Hat" search engine optimization company will use a largely technology driven approach and often ignore the terms of service. Neither approach is invalid (as I have said many times before, there is nothing illegal about violating a search engine's terms of service), and both can achieve high rankings. But a search engine optimization company that takes the word "organic" literally believes that the "Black Hat" approach is anything but "organic SEO."

Merriam Webster defines organic, in part, as "having the characteristics of an organism: developing in the manner of a living plant or animal." To a search engine optimization company, this definition accurately describes the approach taken to achieve long-lasting results in the "natural" section of search engines.

Below are just a few comparisons of the different approaches taken by the two types of SEO firms. I refer to the two approaches as "organic SEO" and "artificial SEO" for the sake of clarity.

Content vs. Technical Loopholes

There's an "old" saying in the SEO industry that "content is king." This is not necessarily true. In my experience, good content is king. Study after study has shown that when people use search engines, they are primarily seeking one thing: information. They are not seeking to be impressed by fancy flash sites. They are not looking for a virtual piece of art. A search engine optimization company that is truly practicing "organic SEO" recognizes this fact and will refuse SEO work when prospects insist that content addition is not an option. "Artificial SEO" firms, which embrace a technical loophole philosophy, will allow a company to leave its website exactly as it is, because the work that such firms do is by and large technical and is designed to trick the engine into showing content that it would not otherwise. Certainly, there are acceptable (from the engine's standpoint) technical aspects that any good search engine optimization company will use, such as relevant page titles and meta tags. But there are many more unacceptable technical methodologies than acceptable ones, including cloaking, redirects, multiple sites, keyphrase stuffing, hidden links, and numerous others. A company practicing "organic SEO" will avoid these.

Attracting Links vs. Linking Schemes

As any search engine optimization company knows, inbound links are critical to the success of an "organic SEO" campaign. But there are different ways to go about it. Firms that practice true "organic SEO" will look at the website itself and say "how can we make this site something that other sites would want to link to?" A search engine optimization company using "artificial SEO" will ask "how can I get links pointing to this site without adding anything of value to it?" The latter approach usually leads to reciprocal linking schemes, link farms, the purchase of text links, and more - anything save for making changes to the website that entice others to link to the site without the link being reciprocated, without paying the website owner, or without asking "pretty please."

There is a stark contrast between "organic SEO" and "artificial SEO." Of course, any decent search engine optimization company will make certain that a site is listed in all the popular directories, such as the Yahoo Directory, the Open Directory Project, and Business.com. A good search engine optimization company will also continually seek any industry specific directories where your site should be listed. But truly using "organic SEO" means evolving your site into something that holds actual value to your prospects. In my opinion, this is much more beneficial in the long run than the artificial methodology of trying to garner incoming links that the site does not truly deserve.

Creating a Valuable Resource vs. Algorithm Chasing

Search engines change algorithms frequently, and for two reasons. One is, of course, to improve their results based upon their most recent user studies. The other, which is obviously related, is to remove sites that are ranked artificially high. Such updates raise panic in the SEO community - particularly among "artificial SEO" practitioners who have just discovered that their most recent and cherished trick no longer works (and may have gotten their clients' sites removed from the engines altogether). It is not uncommon on the search engine forums to see the owner of such a search engine optimization company threatening to "sue Google" over a recent update. Not uncommon, but always amusing.

There is, with only a few exceptions, a common denominator in the websites that remain highly ranked throughout these algorithm shifts. They offer something of value to their visitors and are considered a resource for their industry. "Organic SEO" practitioners generally do not have to worry about going back and redoing work because of an algorithm shift. While an "artificial" search engine optimization company desperately tries to re-attain the rankings it lost for its clients (or to get the sites re-included in the search engine at all) because it was dependent on technical loopholes that have now been closed, "organic SEO" firms continue adding valuable content to a site, strengthening its value and bolstering its rankings.

A common argument from companies when advised by "organic SEO" practitioners to take this approach is "we aren't trying to provide a resource for our industry - we are trying to sell products or services." This is, in my opinion, shortsighted. Remember, you are trying to reach prospects in all stages of the buying cycle, not just the low hanging fruit ready to buy now. Let your website be their resource to learn about your industry, rather than your overpaid salesperson. Prospects are very likely to call you when they are ready to buy - after all, you've done so much for them already!

In addition, taking advantage of "organic SEO" to make your website an industry resource provides a tremendous natural boost to your rankings for your individual product or service pages. This means that with "organic SEO", you'll get the best of both worlds. You'll reach people early in the buying cycle, educate them, and steer them toward your solution by using your website instead of your salës personnel. You will also reach the low hanging fruit because your individual product or service pages, which are intended for people who are ready to buy now, will get a significant rankings boost.

Learning from Engines vs. Learning How to Exploit Them

As I have said many times before, search engines conduct very expensive and frequent studies on what their users want to see when they enter search queries. Obviously, no company has a more vested interest in serving up the type of results that their users want than the engines themselves. "Organic SEO" firms will take the "piggyback" approach. A search engine optimization company that uses "organic SEO" will try to learn what the results of these studies were by examining the sites that figure prominently in search engine results over long periods of time. In this way, the search engine optimization company is using "organic SEO" to make the website not only better for search engines, but also for the user- presumably, the engine's internal research has shown that these sites have what their users have consistently desired, study after study. "Artificial SEO" practitioners have no real interest in these studies- they are instead expending a great deal of energy finding the next technical loophole to exploit after their most recent one has failed.

The latter approach can make results erratic, but it also raises a largër issue - the goal of the campaign. If an "artificial" search engine optimization company finds a temporary loophole in an algorithm that brings your site to the top, but does not take the time to delve into the user experience once a user gets to the site, it will defeat the original purpose. You may get plenty of visitors, but a large percentage of these will be short-term visitors who do not find what they want on your site and back out without a second thought. The search engine optimization company did not "piggyback" on the engines' research to learn what type of content users wanted to see when they entered their query.

"Organic" Revisited (AKA "one step too far")

A search engine optimization company that takes a true "organic SEO" approach will actually take the Merriam Webster definition literally. A good website does have the characteristics of an organism and does develop in the manner of a living plant or animal. It builds upon itself. It learns how it should behave for its own benefit. Most importantly, it establishes its territory at the top of the search engine results. And as the organism thrives, artificial machine after machine fades into obsolescence.

SEO for Traffïc with Content vs. Ranking with Links

SEO for Traffïc with Content vs. Ranking with Links

How do you grow your search engine traffïc without adding a single new link or making any changes to your existing webpages?

It's simple. Just add content.

Simply having keyword-optimized pages of content on your site won't rank you high for competitive search engine keywords – that's a fact of life. But keyword-optimized content can really bring in the traffïc for low-competition and unique keywords. The low-competition and unique keywords are typically longer multi-word variants of the keyword. For instance, instead of "search engine ranking," "ranking for search engine traffïc niche keywords."

SEO for Traffïc with Contentvs. Ranking with LinksBy Joel Walsh How do you grow your search engine traffïc without adding a single new link or making any changes to your existing webpages?

It's simple. Just add content.

Simply having keyword-optimized pages of content on your site won't rank you high for competitive search engine keywords – that's a fact of life. But keyword-optimized content can really bring in the traffïc for low-competition and unique keywords. The low-competition and unique keywords are typically longer multi-word variants of the keyword. For instance, instead of "search engine ranking," "ranking for search engine traffïc niche keywords."

If you have lots of pages of optimized content–and you optimize well – all the search engine traffïc from these low-competition keywords will really add up. Plus, you'll usually get more repeat visitors and type-in traffïc, too.

Just picture this realistic example of traffic-building with content vs. ranking-building with links. Company A invests $5,000 for link-building in order to rank for a competitive keyword. Company B invests the same amount, only in content. Company A and Company B: each start out on equal SEO footing: equally old websites with the same amount and quality of content, same content management systems, the same PageRank and quantity, quality, and relevance of inbound links.

Company A's research reveals that $5000 is just the amount needed to get on the first page of Google for a target keyword that should deliver 100 unique visitors per day if the site ends up in the first position. They dutifully get inbound links optimized for that keyword, following all SEO best practices. Three months and $5,000 later, the site is stuck somewhere toward the bottom of the second page of Google search results for the target keyword. Six months later, they've actually sunk a bit lower in the SERPs. The good news is that the site is getting some traffïc from the links built and from the lowly search engine position, but nowhere near the 100 visitors/day they were hoping for from search results.

Company B, meanwhile, had content written around a long list of keywords with little or no competition in the search engines, using up-to-date search engine copywriting techniques. They've been enjoying a growing stream of visitors to their site almost since the first page of content was added. Three months later, the site's search engine traffïc has grown by a hundred unique visitors per day, or 3,000 per month. Moreover, Company B's repeat visitor traffïc has also jumped. Type-in traffïc has increased, presumably as visitors forward the URLs of useful pages to their friends. Page views are up, too, not only from more repeat visitors and type-in visitors, but also from first-time search visitors staying longer and browsing more pages. Six months later, the website's content has built a loyal following on the net, generating even more repeat visitors. The search engine traffïc is as good as it ever was.

What happened?

Pitfalls of Link-Building for Search Engine Ranking

Company A thought it had a fairly sure thing: build enough optimized links for the keyword, taking care not to trigger search engine penalties. Yet as they've discovered, there is no sure thing when it comes to search engine rankings:

Over-optimization penalty minefield. The search engines, particularly Google and Yahoo!, are very risk-averse when it comes to ranking sites well for competitive keywords. On the whole, they are perfectly willing to risk dropping several good sites from top rankings in order to try to keep one bad site out. They are constantly tweaking their algorithms to identify sites whose link structures are not indicative of a quality site. In the process, plenty of good sites with good SEO also get swept up. This risk of failure is the inherent risk of SEO. True, most of the time, a good site with good SEO does move to the top. But in a large minority of cases, quality goes unrewarded.

Competition and the moving target. As Site A was moving up the search engine results for its competitive target keyword, so were the other sites. There is no rest for the victorious when it comes for SEO. The top sites for highly competitive keywords are constantly building new optimized links. That's why any SEO effort has to aim to do at least ten percent better than the site currently in the position it's targeting.

Lack of keyword diversity. Too often, websites with modest SEO budgets (and $5,000 is modest when it comes to a competitive keyword) aim for just a few keywords. Given all the potential pitfalls of an SEO campaign, you need to be going after ten or more target competitive keywords, and at least another ten related but less competitive keywords. That way, failure for a few keywords won't scuttle the whole project. Meanwhile, search engines look for diversity in targeted keywords, so you get much more out of targeting a largër group of keywords. If you can't afford to do this, you're really better off not going after competitive keywords. Sure, you might get those rankings. But what happens if you've spent your budget and still have little to show for it?

Meanwhile, the fundamental advantage of pursuing low-competition keywords is that, by definition, it's much closer to being a sure thing.

Advantages of Web Content SEO

Greater certainty. Not only is a page of content extremely likely to bring in search engine traffïc — unlike the similar investmënt in links — it won't suddenly disappear. The sites linking to you might stop anytime, or do something to stop links' passing search engine value (such as adding the "nofollow" tag or switching to a search-engine-unfriendly content management system).

Cost. Traditionally, copywriting has been more expensive than link-building. But that's changed. As "nofollow" link-Scrooge-ry becomes more and more common, and as paid and reciprocal links get downgraded, the real cost of obtaining quality links increases. Meanwhile, the copywriting market has increasingly adapted to the needs of search engine marketing. To get a search engine visitor, you don't need a Pulitzer-prize winning essay or a killer salës letter. You simply need highly focused, readable, keyword-optimized, information-packed pages of around 250 words each — and more and more copywriting and SEO firms are delivering this service cost-effectively. Blogs, meanwhile, let you and your employees add content easily. Bulletin boards (modified to be search-engine-friendly) let site visitors add content, too. In fact, "natural content" from blogs and bulletin boards is now much more viable than natural link building.

In conclusion, when you look at SEO, don't forget that your number-one goal is not to rank high for a certain keyword, but to get more search engine traffïc. In some less competitive sectors, high rankings may still be a realistic and effective proposition. But increasingly, ranking high for competitive keywords is no longer the best way to get traffïc.

Blogged by Keith Bigelow, http://www.webdesignbykeith.com/seo

The Three Principles of HTML Code Optimization

The Three Principles of HTML Code Optimization
By George Peirson


Just like spring cleaning a house, the html code of your web pages should get periodic cleaning as well. Over time, as changes and updates are made to a web page, the code can become littered with unnecessary clutter, slowing down page load times and hurting the efficiency of your web page. Cluttered html can also seriously impact your search engine ranking.

This is especially true if you are using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web design package such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. These programs will speed up your web site creation, but they are not that efficient at writing clean html code.

We will be focusing this discussion on the actual html coding, ignoring other programming languages that may be used in a page such as Java-Script. In the code examples I will be using round brackets ( ) instead of correct html angle brackets < > so that the code examples will display properly in this newsletter.

Up until recently when coding a page in HTML we would be using tags such as the (font) tag and (p) paragraph tags. Between these tags would be our page content, text, images and links. Each time a formatting change was made on the page new tags were needed with complete formatting for the new section. More recently we have gained the ability to use Cascading Style Sheets, allowing us to write the formatting once and then refer to that formatting several times within a web page.

In order to speed up page load times we need to have fewer characters on the page when viewed in an html editor. Since we really do not want to remove any of our visible content we need to look to the html code. By cleaning up this code we can remove characters, thereby creating a smaller web page that will load more quickly.

Over time HTML has changed and we now have many different ways to do the same thing. An example would be the code used to show a bold type face. In HTML we have two main choices, the (strong) tag and the (b) tag. As you can see the (strong) tag uses 5 more characters than the (b) tag, and if we consider the closing tags as well we see that using the (strong)(/strong) tag pair uses 10 more characters than the cleaner (b)(/b) tag pair.

This is our First Principle of clean HTML code: Use the simplest coding method available.
HTML has the ability of nesting code within other code. For instance we could have a line with three words where the middle word was in bold. This could be accomplished by changing the formatting completely each time the visible formatting changes. Consider this code:
(font face="times")This(/font)
(font face="times")(strong)BOLD(/strong)(/font)
(font face="times")Word(/font) This takes up 90 characters.

This is very poorly written html and is what you occasionally will get when using a WYSIWYG editor. Since the (font) tags are repeating the same information we can simply nest the (strong) tags inside the (font) tags, and better yet use the (b) tag instead of the (strong) tag. This would give us this code (font face="times)This (b)BOLD(/b) Word(/font), taking up only 46 characters.

This is our Second Principle of clean HTML code: Use nested tags when possible. Be aware that WYSIWYG editors will frequently update formatting by adding layer after layer of nested code. So while you are cleaning up the code look for redundant nested code placed there by your WYSIWYG editing program.

A big problem with using HTML tags is that we need to repeat the tag coding whenever we change the formatting. The advent of CSS allows us a great advantage in clean coding by allowing us to layout the formatting once in a document, then simply refer to it over and over again.

If we had six paragraphs in a page that switch between two different types of formatting, such as headings in Blue, Bold, Ariel, size 4 and paragraph text in Black, Times, size 2, using tags we would need to list that complete formatting each time we make a change.
(font face="Ariel" color="blue" size="4")(b)Our heading(/b)(/font)
(font face="Times color="black" size="2")Our paragraph(/font)
(font face="Ariel" color="blue" size="4")(b)Our next heading(/b)(/font)
(font face="Times color="black" size="2")Our next paragraph(/font)

We would then repeat this for each heading and paragraph, lots of html code.

With CSS we could create CSS Styles for each formatting type, list the Styles once in the Header of the page, and then simply refer to the Style each time we make a change.

(head)
(style type="text/css")
(!--
.style1 {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 24px;
}
.style2 {
font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
font-size: 12px;
}
--)
(/style)
(/head)
(body)
(p class="style1")Heading(/p)
(p class="style2")Paragraph Text(/p)
(/body)

Notice that the Styles are created in the Head section of the page and then simply referenced in the Body section. As we add more formatting we would simply continue to refer to the previously created Styles.

This is our Third Principle of Clean HTML Code: Use CSS styles whenever possible. CSS has several other benefits, such as being able to place the CSS styles in an external file, thereby reducing the page size even more, and the ability to quickly update formatting site-wide by simply updating the external CSS Style file.

So with some simple cleaning of your HTML code you can easily reduce the file size and make a fast loading, lean and mean web page.

About The AuthorGeorge Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 30 multimedia based tutorial training titles covering such topics as Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. To see his training sets visit http://www.howtogurus.com. Article copyright 2005 George Peirson

Website Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, SEO, also known as Search Engine Ranking, Search Engine Positioning and Search Engine Promotion is the process of modifying a website, some changes are visible and some changes are invisible, in order to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of Search Engine searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your website.

When an Internet User types a keyword or key-phrase into a search engine query box, they receive a listing of web sites that presumably offer information, products or services related to that keyword or key-phrase. Search Engines strive to list the most qualified or related web sites at the top of the results listings.

Newer generation Search Engines employ complex mathematical algorithms in an attempt to assess website themes by reading visible and invisible text. The more focused a site theme, the higher the ranking when a Search Engine User types specific keywords. A determination of which keywords are best is an essential starting point for any website optimization campaign.

Without Top Search Engine Ranking the only other effective way to drive traffic to your website is Pay-Per-Click advertising which is a very expensive and time consuming alternative.

If you would like a Free Estimate to have your website Optimized for Top Search Engine Ranking please contact me.

Search Engine Optimization

24 hours a day, millions of people all over the world use search engines and directories to look for products, services and information. When keywords and phrases significant to your business are entered into search engines, you want your site to appear near the top of the listings.

Research has shown that if a site does not appear on page 1, 2 or 3 of the search results, it will rarely, if ever receive traffic from search engines. Search Engine Optimization, SEO, also known as Search Engine Ranking, Search Engine Positioning and Search Engine Promotion is the process of modifying a website, some changes are visible and some changes are invisible, in order to increase web visitor counts by ranking very high in the results of Search Engine searches using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your website.

If you would like a Free Estimate to have your website Optimized for Top Search Engine Ranking please contact me.