Design For Your Users, Not Google
SEO web design must target two audiences with every design decision. Here are some things to consider when developing a site that is both user friendly and search engine friendly.
1. Use as much HTML text as possible. Search engines adore plain text. They don’t view images or video files, listen to audio files or read Flash, so minimize their use in your site design. Use external style sheets and JavaScript whenever practical to pare the HTML down to almost pure text.
Another thing to consider is that some sites make users log in to view certain content or use a form to find content. Logins and forms are bad. The crawlers do not know how to log in to your site or fill out a form in order to view your content. The only content to hide behind a login and robots.txt file is very confidential content you never want indexed.
2. Make your URLs understandable. This means creating URLs like www.colewiebe.com/seo-web-design.html instead of www.colewiebe.com/articles/2007-06-14-article27.html. The first URL is “user friendly”, and it is also “search engine friendly”. The search engines will read more meaning and relevance into the first URL than the second one.
Also, when using the first URL in a blog signature or email, it is clear where the link is going, so click-throughs will increase.
3. Structure your site carefully. Make your site as ‘flat’ as possible. Strive for the magic 3 clicks to whatever content your user is looking for.
4. Design your site for your users, not the search engines . As much as possible treat search engines as if they were human beings manually scouring your site for content to index. If it is easy for humans to find what they are looking for on your site, logic dictates that the spiders will also find what they are looking for and index it.
Search engine crawlers can’t read Flash menus and often have difficulty with JavaScript pull-out menus or roll-overs. Consider basic HTML text links in your menus. Footer links can help make a poor navigation system easier to spider.
5. It has often been said that content is king. The search engines job is to index “relevant” search data. When the search engine starts producing “irrelevant” results web users will quicly move onto another engine. Therefore, poor content, poor ranking.
You’re after the triple win. When you develop amazing content the search engines win because they can provide first rate content on the first page of their search results. Other webmasters win when they become recognized as a major resource in their niche by linking to a site like yours. You win by having qualified traffic that builds your business.
[tags]seo web design[/tags]
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Why Searchers Click Where They Do
Web searchers click on page links because they expect the pages will satisfy their needs.
Navigational searchers expect to land at the right site. Informational searchers expect to find in-depth information on a specific subject. Transactional searchers expect to be one step closer to taking action.
No matter which approach they take, they will do it very quickly. Most searchers will select the first promising link on the number one page of search results. This process will take less than five seconds.
Searchers tend to favor organic (natural) search results to pay per click results, selecting them 60% of the time.
How do you increase click-through?
No matter what the style of searcher, they click search result links that contain the exact query words they are looking for in the title or description snippet.
For informational and transactional searchers, brand names, trusted information sources, reviews and comparison information will encourage a click. For transactional inquiries, the offer of low prices will enhance click-throughs.
The process
The first step is gaining top search engine rankings. This means first page for your keyword terms, preferably top-5 positioning. The second step is to tweak your site so that the titles and descriptions appearing in your organic search results get click-throughs. And thirdly, you want to analyze where your traffic is going, then tweak the site’s content and traffic flow to convert visitors into buyers.
[tags]click-through, increasing click-throughs, organic search results, natural search results[/tags]
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‘Hit and Run’ SEO vs Continual SEO
Over the past ten years, our Vancouver SEO companies have offered both one-time SEO packages and continuing SEO programs.
One time SEO packages have been a much easier sell. Over a year, the costs to the client are a bit lower than continual monthly or quarterly programs.
Improvements in search engine positions show a very rapid increase, which impresses our clients immediately. Search engine ranking positions tend to increase for the first four to five months, level off in the sixth and seventh month and then begin to fall off. We attribute this to two factors. First, the site had once again become static. After one burst of content additions and structural improvement, the site had once again been abandoned. Second, we analyzed the competitors’ sites and discovered counter measures by rival site SEOs, who responded to losses in ranking positions.
Over time we came to refer to this approach as ‘hit and run’ SEO. The client seeks out a hired gun and purchases their services for a single hit on their top-10 rivals.
Continual Ongoing SEO programs represent an ongoing investment. But isn’t that how all advertising works? You don’t place twenty-four ads in a magazine in one month and then forget about advertising for two years.
With ongoing SEO, there isn’t a huge optimization effort up front, so initial ranking changes won’t have the same ‘wow’ affect, taking a bit longer to obtain. Over a year, however, the results have significantly outshone one-time optimization. And it grows month by month.
Search engines love sites that are updated regularly and where more relevant content is added on a regular basis. SEO copywriting and article publishing provide very significant improvements in rankings.
Most one-time optimization packages tend to focus only on on-page optimization. Changes are made to the client’s site, but there is rarely any development of backlinks from other ‘on topic’ websites. With a long term SEO program, after the initial on-page optimization and code enhancement is complete, the focus shifts to obtaining vital backlinks from other sites. Search engines like Google place a great value on the ‘votes’ you obtain from other ‘on topic’ sites by way of backlinks. Off-page optimization and the development of backlinks provides the greatest long term search engine positioning benefits. We accomplish this through aggressive public relations and social networking with other webmasters. We source out related directories, recommend and purchase listings, then monitor the return on investment.
With ongoing SEO programs we build relationships with our clients; a process sadly lacking in the hired gun transaction. We learn about the client’s business and montior the results every month. Continual feedback from clients and analytics, with monthly tweaking, make it possible to fine tune the SEO processs. We are also able to integrate new strategies to counter changes made in search engine algorithms.
The risk to the client is greatly reduced. With a one-time optimization package, you pay and then you pray. With continuous SEO, you pay as you go. If you aren’t happy with the results after three months, just cancel the service. (Our company offers a 100% money-back guarantee, so there is zero risk.)
With some continual SEO plans we include pay per click advertising. Pay per click, combined with organic or natural search results, gives a one-two punch, multiplying the visible listings in search results.
In summary: One-time optimization provides a quick fix. It is great for websites where budget is the primary concern or where there is little competition for keyword terms. (While we feel ongoing SEO is a far better value and provides significantly better performance, we can provide a proposal for one-time SEO services.) Ongoing SEO is the best solution for most websites.
[tags]seo, one time seo, ongoing seo, continual seo[/tags]
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SEO is War
Top ten positions must be snatched away from your oponents. At Cole Wiebe, when we begin a search engine optimization program for a client, the first place we begin is a keyword analysis, followed by a competitive analysis. We want to know who the enemy is.
Out-positioning your current first page rivals is an act of war. We analyze their strategies and then prepare to lay siege.
SEO is not for the faint of heart. In most niches, there aren’t nearly enough top ten rankings to go around and we have to fight for every position. It’s not uncommon to receive nasty emails and blog posts from competitors and their webmasters. We employ only fair ‘white hat’ SEO practices, but that doesn’t make being toppled from top rankings any more enjoyable for the dethroned. Counter measures by rival SEOs are to be expected with subsequent skirmishes. The best SEOs are thick-skinned warriors and they’re relentless in their pursuit of your top search rankings.
Many of our prospective clients feel that they are somehow betraying their web designer when they hire an SEO. Web designers are artists/creatives and their design work is much needed in the Internet marketing process. But what you need to drive traffic to actually see their web design work is a marketer – a salesman – with a warrior mindset.
To win in Internet marketing there’s need of the poet (ad copy writer), the artist (web designer) and the warrior (marketer/SEO).
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How Much Should You Budget for SEO?
SEO professionals and Internet marketing consultants don’t always agree on SEO pricing and budgeting, but on average the SEO budget recommendation works out to 4 – 5 times the cost of the website. In other words, if a company’s annual website budget is $10,000.00, SEO and Internet marketing should be between $40,000.00 and $50,000.00.
Most website owners have it exactly in reverse. They’ll invest only a paltry 5 to 10% into SEO and Internet marketing. The results will almost certainly be disastrous. The most drop-dead-gorgeous Webby award winning website without traffic is like having boxes of Clio award winning four color glossy brochures stacked neatly in the storage closet.
Small companies often feel they can’t afford to invest in SEO. They’ll build a budget site for three thousand and then throw a few dollars after it with a $19.95 site submission package. What they should have done is invest $500.00 into the site and $2,500.00 into SEO and Internet marketing, developing the backlinks that provide a top-5 ranking on Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search. Even a butt-ugly website (while not recommended) with a steady flow of qualified traffic will always outperform the pretty site with little or no traffic.
Your Vancouver SEO expert, Cole Wiebe, offers monthly SEO plans at very reasonable rates. Even a small company can afford six to nine months of Extreme SEO to drive serious traffic to their site.
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They Can’t Buy From You If They Can’t Find You
If you’re disappointed with the return on investment from your website, you’re hardly alone. A website that costs more to build, maintain and host than it generates in new business is a liability. It’s not working for you, but against you.
As advertising tools and business investments, most websites totally bomb. Why? Because their Internet marketing strategy sucks. Search engine optimization and website promotion are public relations, sales and marketing… not design. Very few web ‘designers’ posess the social networking skills required to market a business effectively online without the assistance of an Internet marketing consultant or SEO professional on their marketing team.
Here’s the part that gets me. If a website fails to produce a return on investment, most clients are satisfied with the pathetic excuse that they are ‘building a web presence’. If it was a print ad campaign through an ad agency or publication the same business owner or executive would fire the agency or pull their ads without a thought if they failed to bring a return. Why has failure become so acceptable in Internet marketing? To be worth a damn, marketing must produce positive arbitrage — that is, it has to generate more dollars than you invest in it.
Let’s face it; the industry actually rewards failure. Most web designers and even internet marketers have no skin in the game. They get paid the same whether your site delivers a return on investment or not. Attractive design is sexy to look at, but even award-winning web design doesn’t guarantee traffic, sales and leads or cash flow (except for the design firm 
. In fact, the more expensive the design, the heavier the losses in most cases.
Botttom line: When it comes to Internet marketing, the design is only appreciated by your visitors after search results send them to your site. Who cares about feel good terms like ‘developing web presence’ or ‘mind share’. The only thing that’s going to put dollars in the bank is market share. Your website only has any value when you’re making money from resulting leads and sales.
If your internet marketing sucks, fix it! Convert your website from a liability into a powerful asset.
Cole Wiebe
Vancouver SEO
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Extended On-Page Search Engine Optimization
In 2002 I built my first affiliate marketing website after investing in several affiliate marketing ebooks. An SEO strategy advocated by various affiliate marketing experts involved building 5 or 6 HTML product pages, then building text links from the menu bar to these product pages. With the product pages built, the publisher would then publish a few new article pages every week, linking these articles to the product pages. Over time, 50 to 300 pages would link to each product page.
Hundreds of internal backlinks would greatly improve the site’s Google ranking while also providing hundreds of potential content pages, each linking to a money page.
The Affiliate Marketer’s Website Model was so incredibly effective on my affiliate sites that we began to add article pages to our SEO client’s sites to improve their rankings as well.
If you’ve been missing out on the power of internal backlinks, give the Affiliate Marketer’s Website Model a try.
Cole
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