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SEO Web Design Tips for Creating SEO Friendly Web Design!

SEO and Web Design go hand in hand. What's the point of having a Website if nobody can find it?! You can use our SEO Web Design Tips to help your Website get found on Google and other major search engines. Among the SEO Friendly Web Design topics that we'll discuss is SEO Copywriting, Link Building strategies, maximizing Social Media outlets for SEO benefits, properly structuring and optimizing Website content to be relevant and to rank highly in the search results, and anymore SEO Web Design Tips that we can think of! Professional SEO and web design teams know which design elements that can hinder SEO performance, such as Flash and code-heavy pages. They also know the elements that can enhance the SEO potential of a website. Below we outline three perspectives that define successful SEO and website design teams.
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts

Friday, October 3, 2014

How Microsites Benefit Inbound Marketing

Microsites is a website that meets a specific goal and has a narrow function, often carrying a unique address or domain. 

Microsites are a great tool for promoting an individual/niche product or service, and are a valuable resource for inbound marketers who want to create more online visibility and expose their brand to more customers.

A Microsite Offers A Focused Message to Customers

A typical corporate website often requires the input of several different products/services that your company offers, and must deliver many different messages at once. 

By creating a microsite that focuses on one specific segment of your business, it allows you to provide more in-depth information about that particular product or service that you want to highlight. It also enables you to search engine optimize with greater contextual relevancy for your product/service's niche.

For example, if your Internet marketing company provides SEO services for companies of all industries and sizes, but you find that providing SEO for surgeons is a niche that you have had great success with, it might make sense for your company to create a microsite dedicated to SEO and Internet marketing services for surgeons.

A Microsite Gives Potential Customers New Ways to Find You

Another benefit of creating a targeted microsite is having more online real estate, which increases your chances of getting your brand in front of consumers. Also, because microsites by their nature appeal to a more niche audience, you'll get more conversions from the people who find their way to your site.

A Microsite Allows You Flexibility to Take Risks

Sometimes, putting together a microsite is also a good way to experiment with messages that don't necessarily fit into your company's current public image. Microsites allow you the opportunity to create new campaigns with an entirely different personality with creative design and content that you might not want featured on a traditional corporate website.

Smaller, more targeted websites can be relatively simple to create, not difficult to launch, and cheaper to produce. As such, they offer more room for innovative types of branding, more opportunities for dialogue with customers, and more chances for conversion.

Are you using microsites as part of your inbound marketing strategy?

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

3 Ways User Interface (UI) Influences SEO

The front-end user interface (UI) of a website, which is often tied to a site's design and layout, can have a profound impact many different performance variables.

Although UI is often concerned with usability, conversion rate optimization (CRO), web design and development, UI can most definitely influence SEO.

So whether your re-designing your website or building a new one, there are a few ways in which you can ensure your site's front-end interface is SEO-friendly. Let's dive right in.

Strategic Use of Rich Media

Dull, text-heavy pages usually offer crappy UI. However, text-heavy pages are often good for SEO and properly establishing keyword relevancy.

When it comes down to SEO, integrating rich media is a strategic balancing act. It's easy to make a page look pretty with hi-res images and perhaps a video. But often times, these rich media files can slow a pages load speed (and thus hinder SEO performance.)

Conversely, rich media files can actually improve your SEO (and CRO) efforts when integrated properly. SEO advantages can be gained when you:
  • perform video and/or image optimization techniques (to better establish on-page keyword relevancy and help your pages pop in blended Google search results.)
  • optimize robust file sizes to minimize the time required for media to load on a page.
  • use rich media to leverage better calls-to-action and conversion elements.

Engagement Metrics Contribute to Site Authority

A clean and clear UI (that includes a balance of rich media) can greatly contribute to higher levels of engagement. Because Google and other search engines use website metrics like time on site and bounce rate to determine site authority, UI and SEO are practically cousins in the same family of strategies.
Like any meaningful relationship, first impressions are immensely important. Avoid cluttered page layouts, be creative with your copywriting, and use media that's unique, engaging, and purposeful (hint: stock photos usually suck.)

When crafting your optimized pages, focus on content that's educational, enlightening, and/or inspiring. Keep your visitors around longer (and convert them into leads/customers) with content that's near and dear to their interests. In essence, be empathetic and be real.

Without Conversions, Traffic is Meaningless

Perhaps you're site is inbounding loads of organic search traffic after a few months of SEO. But if that traffic is not converting in leads or sales, what's the point?

It all comes back to UI and CRO. A solid website that's geared toward conversions is the underlying foundation to a successful search marketing strategy. Below are some simple questions you might want to ask yourself, or your web marketing team.
  • are we using specific calls-to-action?
  • are our pages boring, and thus contributing to high bounce rates?
  • do we have specific conversion goals or a conversion funnel?
  • is our site's web design outdated and looks like it's from the 90's?
You can't afford to invest in SEO if your site just sucks. There are far too many affordable website resources available to make cost your excuse.

So whether you're doing SEO for a client, or SEO for your own business, be sure to respect UI and the level of value you offer your users (beyond your products or services.)

Friday, August 16, 2013

Why Having a Mobile Website is Critical for SEO

The growing trend of mobile Internet marketing has provided another wrinkle for businesses investing in search engine optimization to consider in their never-ending pursuit to reach qualified consumers.

Yet some statistics show that only 20 to 26 percent of small businesses have a mobile-friendly website. If your company is one of the majority that do not have a mobile website, you'll want to consider the following SEO Web Design Tips as reasons to get one.

 

It's Essential for Conversion Optimization

Imagine you're a consumer who is stranded on the side of the road and needs a tow truck. What do you do?

If you're one of the majority of Americans who own an iPhone, Android or other smartphone device, odds are you'll turn to your mobile Internet browser and do a Google search for a local tow truck company.

Now imagine you've pulled up the local search results and you've landed on that company's website, but the site isn't mobile friendly and there is no easy way to click to call them to come to your aid. This experience for consumers is a discouraging one that more often than not will lead them to bounce off that page back to the search results in an effort to find a more mobile-friendly business.

If your business has invested in SEO to get in front of that consumer who needed your service, but you didn't have a mobile site to aid in converting them into a customer, you've just lost money.

In many ways, having a mobile-friendly website is a conversion optimization strategy for companies investing in SEO services. Had that mobile consumer landed on your mobile-friendly website and was greeted with an easy click-to-call button, the likelihood they would have converted into a sale would have been far more likely.

 

Your ROI Depends on it

When we discuss conversion optimization as a primary reason for needing a mobile site for your SEO strategy, we're doing so with ROI in mind. As it was mentioned above, when that user landed on your website and then exited immediately, that was a revenue producing lead that didn't convert. That obviously has a negative impact on your ROI.

If you're supplementing your SEO strategy with a PPC campaign and this scenario occurred after a mobile user had clicked on one of your PPC ads and then bounced off your site, that's money right out of your pocket that also decreases the overall return you'll get for your marketing investment.

 

Mobile is Only Going to Get Bigger

Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt was quoted as saying that the influx of mobile Internet users is ramping at a rate 8x faster than the initial influx that we saw with the desktop computer.

In the coming months and years, mobile is going to play a much larger role for ecommerce websites, as security and technology evolves to make mobile online shopping more user friendly and more secure.

Forrester Research projects an increase from the $8 billion ecommerce dollars spent in 2012 on mobile devices will increase to $31 billion by 2017, an increase of 3% to 9% of all ecommerce sales.


If your company is spending valuable marketing budget in a search engine optimization campaign, these statistics can't be ignored. The significance of mobile Internet is only going to grow, and if your company wants to get the most out of its online marketing strategy, having a mobile-friendly website is a necessary step in the right direction.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Wordpress SEO Plugins: All in One vs Yoast SEO

When it comes to building an SEO friendly website, selecting the right SEO friendly CMS is essential. While it's not the only SEO friendly CMS on the market, one of the most popular CMS platforms for SEOs out there is Wordpress CMS. Despite its SEO Web Design friendliness, Wordpress requires a third party plugin in order to properly SEO your website.

Two names surface to the top of every discussion and debate on the subject of SEO plugins for Wordpress: All in One SEO Pack and Yoast SEO.

Both of these plugins have a positive reputation from webmasters of Wordpress sites. Many have concluded that it all boils down to personal preference since both plug-ins perform excellently in various areas as far as search engine optimization is concerned.

But before you decide on whether you would use All In One SEO or Yoast SEO, here is a breakdown between the two to help you make a well-informed decision.

 

 All in One SEO Pack

The old timer of all SEO plug-ins, All in One SEO has been the staple choice of Wordpress webmasters for years because of its simplicity and no-nonsense approach. Configuration and modification are all done in just one configuration page, which enables editors to tweak everything all at once. All in One SEO supports canonical URLs, quick and easy entry of meta information, and fast setup of personal default settings.

All in One SEO, simply put, is all about the basics. These include setting page and post formats, assigning no index to tags and categories, and 404 title formats among others. It does not yet have any link features that connects a website with the owner’s Alexa accounts.

While there are various features missing in All in One SEO’s string of goodies, what really makes this plug-in a hard sell is that it does not have a “breadcrumbs” feature that is highly popular among SEO strategists.

The paid version also offers the same characteristics plus the free tech support that comes with it.

 

Wordpress SEO by Yoast

Comprehensive, yet not complicated, the Yoast SEO plug-in has drawn webmasters and SEO practitioners left and right. This plug-in boasts of multiple features not found in other SEO plug-ins.

For one, Yoast SEO has a post edit widget that helps webmasters spot any optimization deficiency with their pages.  Another goodie that comes with the Yoast SEO plug-in is its “breadcrumbs” feature.

But what makes Yoast SEO a winner is its Page Analysis tool. This is a diagnostic application that provides you vital SEO data, specifically common SEO flaws in your pages. Quick and reliable, this feature is great especially when it comes to fast on-page optimization tweaks.

 

So Which Plugin is Better for Wordpress SEO?

If you are a minimalist who prefers easy and quick SEO tweaking and modifications, then you cannot go wrong with the All in One SEO Pack. Yoast SEO, on the other hand, is a perfect fit for those who prefer a rather aggressive and result-driven search engine optimization tactics and techniques with total control over the configuration of your Wordpress site.

Do you have an opinion on which Wordpress SEO plugin you prefer? Leave your comments below!

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Conversion Optimization Essential for SEO Web Design

So your company has built a website, invested in search engine optimization and you're now No. 1 - mission accomplished, right? WRONG!

In SEO marketing, just because you're website ranks No. 1 for your targeted keyword, that doesn't automatically spell maximum success for your web presence.

As the slide show below highlights, there's far more to a successful search optimization strategy than just getting searchers to your site. The goal is to CONVERT those users into sales, contacts, email lists, etc.

That's where effective SEO Web Design comes into play. Optimizing your website design to drive more conversions by utilizing strong calls to action, incentivizing users to fill out a form or to get in touch with you, or by offering discounts, freebies, etc., are just some of the ways you can increase conversion rates on your site. Because when a business invests in SEO, it's conversions that ultimately matter, no matter how high you're ranking, or how much traffic is hitting your website.

Check out this SlideShare presentation below about why being No. 1 isn't everything in SEO marketing.

SEO Marketing: Why Being No. 1 Isn't Everything from Chris J. Everett

Feel free to share some of your favorite website optimization strategies in the comments section below!

Connect with Chris J Everett on Google+

Monday, March 25, 2013

Why You Need To Think About SEO First Before a Website Redesign

When it comes to SEO and Web Design, it's important for businesses to consider BOTH before completely rebuilding their website. There are many outdated web design practices that can hinder your SEO campaign efforts if your website designer isn't building your website for optimal search engine friendliness.

In the video below, SEO specialist Chris J. Everett of Captivate Search Marketing explains some of the outdated techniques that you'll want your web designer to avoid when building your new website. He also discusses the many benefits that come from planning ahead and thinking about SEO before building out your new website.


What other Web Design mistakes can hinder your search engine optimization efforts? Feel Free to leave a comment below!

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Qualities of a Killer SEO Web Design Company

If you're looking for a top-notch SEO web design company to build and optimize your website, then this blog post is for you.

There are tons of web design companies that offer SEO to their clients. And although this is convenient for the client (in not having to deal with to vendors for both web design and SEO,) there's quite a gray area in what some web design firms think SEO is all about.

Sure, SEO does involve the basics like keyword optimizing page titles, Meta data, and page copy. However, this is only about 15% of the complete equation.

SEO has evolved significantly. That is, the old techniques that worked 1-2 years ago are now counter intuitive and can actually get your website penalized. So before you hire a SEO web design company to handle both your website's design and its SEO campaign, you'll want to make sure that you choose the right company to work with.

Characteristics of Quality SEO Web Design Companies

So what defines a quality SEO web design company? Below are some points to consider when shopping for a good provider for these services.
  • Solid SEO web design companies are strategic content marketers who understand how to leverage Google Authorship, blogging and other forms of content creation.
  • Proficient SEO web design firms staff highly-experienced website developers who know the best practices of SEO-friendly HTML coding
  • Quality SEO web design companies are well-versed in social media marketing and how social influences organic SEO
  • Trusted SEO web design firms provide ongoing support services in case of issues or website malfunctions
  • Knowledge SEO web design providers will educate their clients on what they are doing, as well as what the client can do themselves to benefit the entire campaign
Proficient SEO and web design firms are also very communicative and clear in what they provide and what you can expect as a client. If you'd like to learn more about the qualities of killer SEO web design company, visit OIC Group, Inc., a trusted firm that's been pioneering the SEO and web design professions for over ten years.

This blog post was contributed by Tyler Tafelsky, a five-year expert in organic SEO and website optimization.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

SEO Copywriting Tips: Evolving Strategies on Old Tasks

There are a lot of theories and popularized beliefs out there on search engine optimization. SEO has become more and more of a delicate balancing act in finding the most effective way to rank. Below I will briefly detail successful strategies dedicated to the ever-almighty task of ranking high on search engines.

However, before I begin, it’s wise to touch on a few factors which need to be ironed-out in order for these strategies to work properly.

Accessibility - Search engines need to be able to see your code or your page can’t be ranked.  

Experience - A well interfaced website creating no barriers or problems for users is essential to gaining a following.  

Content - Great content intrigues readers which creates shares and links. Google recognizes this and rewards you.  

Marketing - As always, without promoting your content, it’s hard to get the word out.

1. Page Title

The first thing you need to know before you get started is what keywords you’re targeting. Even if you plan to optimize later, it’s helpful to know your keywords. You can start by inserting them into the page title. From an organizational standpoint, people want to see what they searched for looking right back at them in the results.


When your keywords are in the title, people will often use them in the anchor text to link to you. This allows Google to determine that a page is about a particular subject. Generally, keeping titles under 72 characters is preferred so it can be fully visible in results.

2. Meta Descriptions

The presentation of your content to search engines is still an integral part of SEO copywriting. It’s undecided if meta descriptions influence rank at all, but it really doesn’t matter. The meta description serves as a clincher to bring the traffic to your site through that last click. A successful meta description will summarize your page and convince the searcher that your content will satisfy what they’re searching for. Meta Descriptions should be under 165 characters so their full description is visible.

3. Content

Don’t let cobwebs form on your sites. The clearest function you need to provide is compelling and regularly updated content. The content needs to be direct. Internet readers will hardly reach for anything less in this age of instant gratification. Of course, that’s not to say that content should be brief. Providing content of a substantial length (in the 300-500 word range) will have a much easier time ranking than considerably shorter content. Other strategies such as bolding your keywords and including your keywords in subheadings may or may not produce results. If you’re going to do that, do it because it makes sense to do it and not because you’re looking for another way to achieve results.

 

Keyword Frequency

As one of the main building blocks of on-page SEO, keyword frequency undoubtedly impacts ranking. In the old days, it was all about jamming keywords into the content. However, these days a delicate ratio of keyword density is vital in balancing between the fine lines of excellent repetition of keywords and falling guilty of spam-like content. According to many experts, a keyword density greater than 5.5% could cause Google to penalize you. So make sure to measure your frequency against the overall length of your content if you’re having doubts. So in short, don’t be archaic and numbingly repeat keyword phrases thinking you’ll be the bread and butter of Google, likely the opposite will occur.

 

Page Links

When optimizing a web page, it’s absolutely necessary to be connected with other pages and content. Search engines value websites that are well indexed and deemed to be valuable to a great number of other webpages. Brian Clark of Copyblogger offers a few guidelines for page linking:
  • Link to relevant content early in the body copy 
  • Link to relevant pages every 120 words of content 
  • Link to relevant interior pages of your site or other sites 
  • Link with naturally relevant anchor text 
 These are tried and true practices that will surely help optimize any web page. However, when in doubt about what to do in your specific context, don’t always revert back to general rules thinking it’s the end-all-be-all. Rules are helpful, but are meant to be bent and sometimes broken. If you focus on being the quality results people are searching for, it’s hard to get lost. After all, that’s what the search engines are trying to do.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Key Ingredients for SEO Web Design

The practice of search engine optimization is more than just crafting keyword-optimized content and meta for your web pages. Any SEO web design expert knows that website optimization must also take into account the basic fundamentals of creating a user friendly web design and developing it on a powerful, search engine friendly platform that will promote optimum SEO gains.

As SEO web design tips noted in the previous post about what to look for in a search engine friendly CMS system, proper HTML structure has a great impact on overall performance of an organic SEO strategy. We're going to take that notion one step further in this SEO web design tips blog by highlighting some of the key ingredients that go into creating an SEO friendly web design.

SEO Friendly Website Development

Proper HTML language markup when developing a web design that must rank well in the search engines is the first step in ensuring SEO web design success. This best practice of SEO friendly web development can make a significant impact on the overall performance of your SEO campaign. Companies that specialize in SEO web friendly web design and development utilize SEO-friendly CSS techniques instead of regular HTML tags when creating fonts, colors and other universal website design styles. Doing this CSS technique keeps the HTML markup on a web page clean and concise for the search engine spiders. It also keeps the ratio of keyword-optimized text higher than that of websites that do not utilize CSS to style their web pages. Another critical SEO friendly web design technique that developers use is integrating the keyword-rich copy that is crawlable by search engine spiders as high up in the HTML markup as possible to ensure maximum SEO benefits. This makes the search engine spider's job easier and can lead to higher rankings in the organic search results.

SEO Friendly Content Management Systems

It's commonplace in the website design industry to develop websites on content management system (CMS) platforms. From a best SEO web design tips standpoint, not all CMS systems were built equally for search engine optimization benefits. Search engine friendly CMS systems such as Wordpress CMS or Exponent CMS gives website developers an edge over the competition because both of these CMS platforms have key features for SEO friendly web design such as customization of Meta Titles, Descriptions and Keywords tags. Both of these content management systems structure their HTML markup in an SEO-friendly fashion with clear, concise markup and usage of CSS style sheets.

SEO-Friendly Website Graphic Design

Certain graphical aspects of a website design can be further optimized for greater organic SEO value, with optimized images and videos leading the way. This blog post gives great tips on how to properly optimize images for the search engines. Optimized images can help build keyword relevancy of a web page and help boost rankings. SEO Friendly web design also focuses on website conversion rate optimization. This practice centers on analyzing how website visitors behave on a website and optimize the website for ease of use and calls to action in order to increase the likelihood of conversions. This is a basic fundamental of website optimization and SEO friendly web design.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Simple Tips on SEO for Web Designers

Search engine optimization is the cornerstone of any successful website. In the past, web designers considered SEO to be a completely separate part of the Internet marketing strategy and as such, they would create shoddy websites without SEO in mind with poor HTML structure and use of outdated technology.

Time has disapproved this approach and web design has become integrated as an important part of optimizing your site for the search engines. If you are setting up a website or upgrading the one you have, there are a few basics on SEO web design that will come in handy. These tips on SEO for web designers are critical to ensure a client’s website is quickly indexed and ranks well in the search engines.

Page User Friendliness to Search Spiders


There is a misconception that web design is all about nice looking graphics with appealing drop down menus and Flash elements but this is not so. SEO experts know that though Flash might give you a fascinating looking page, Flash is almost completely non-SEO friendly to the search engines for indexation. Any site being optimized for search engines must use proper HTML structure with a focus on best practices for on-site SEO for easy indexing and search rankings. Some devices such as iPhone cannot view Flash pages again exacerbating the situation. One of the best SEO web design tips we can give you is to, Just say no to Flash.

JavaScript also poses the same conundrum. It is unreadable by search spiders and if it is absolutely necessary to create a section using it, ensure you have a HTML link of that page elsewhere on the site. Another inhibiting factor is the use of frames, which are popular with some web designers. Search spiders will overlook them and your page will not be indexed.

Use but Do Not Abuse Keywords


Everyone understands the importance of keywords and phrases that people are searching for and how to get more traffic, but most web designers still abuse them. SEO keywords should appear at important points such as URL, title and header tags, and throughout the web content, but must not be overused and be used only relevantly.

Page Redirects to Avoid Duplicate Content


Canonicalization is the process of ensuring that resources on your page have the same URL. 301 redirects are essential to secure link authority and improve page ranking. In addition, this helps to avoid signals of duplicate content, which would be penalized by search engines. This process applies for the home page and any consequent page with duplicate URL.

Web design isn't just about the graphics anymore. It's about proper HTML structure, usage of SEO keywords and SEO-friendly technologies that aid search engine spiders to easily access the information they need in order to rank a website high in the search results.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Why Your Web Design Company Must Respect SEO

Now more than ever, most website design companies are adding SEO to their web design packages that they offer. The problem is that many of these self-proclaimed SEO and web design firms fail to fully understand the nature of search engine optimization, and how certain SEO elements apply to a website's back-end.
It is absolutely critical that your web design company knows the basics of SEO while putting together a website. Respecting the ever-so important SEO-friendly website elements of a site is imperative during the web design process. In this post, we discuss the specific aspects that web design companies need to be aware of when building sites with SEO in mind.

Aspects of SEO to Consider for Web Design

Designing and developing a well-optimized website must take into consideration the overall architecture, content structure, and back-end code of a site, or HTML. This includes aspects of both the on-page and off-page content and how it is presented on each page of the website.
The off-page SEO aspects of a webpage are the page's title and meta description. These critical content components should be presented as early as possible in HTML code of each page. The page title defines that page (and typically always includes a keyword phrase for SEO), so early reference of these elements is very important. The on-page elements of a webpage need to focus on quality, keyword optimized content that other-wise "SEO-friendly." In essence, SEO-friendly on-page content is that which can be crawled and indexed by search engine spiders. On-page content elements of the like include:
  • text or copy on the page that can be parsed, or highlighted 
  • relevant images (including a keyword optimized "Alt" tag in each image) 
  • links (preferably keyword optimized cross-links between relevant pages of the site) 
  • quality videos (which can be labeled and keyword optimized prior to uploading) 
On-page content that hinders the SEO process is the infamous Flash media. Flash has a reputation for causing pages to load very slowly which inhibits search engine spiders from crawling and indexing a webpage in an efficient manner. Although Flash is attractive and many web design companies use it, Flash is consider very code-heavy and is SEO no-no.

Choose Your CMS Carefully

Many website design companies built their sites around a content management system (CMS). The coding structure behind each CMS' website is different, and many are much more SEO-friendly than others. Here are some SEO considerations to keep in mind for website content management systems:
  • CMS platforms that make use of code-cumbersome nestled tables can hinder SEO performance. Find a CMS that uses CSS style sheets which is much better for search engine crawling and indexing. 
  • Always choose a CMS that will allow you custom write an optimized page title and meta description for each page. 
  • Avoid content management systems that auto-generate static URLs. Pick a platform that enables you to write a dynamic, keyword friendly URL for each page. 
  • Some CMS platforms will enable you to perform internal linking (or cross-linking) with ease. This will help make the SEO process more efficient for deep sites with many pages. 
  • Only the most highly SEO-friendly CMS platforms automatically create a XML sitemap. This feature goes above and beyond and is something to look out for.

Smartly Select a Website Design Company

If you are hiring a web design company for both website design and local SEO company services, don't hesitate to ask them highly detailed, technical questions about their processes. If they fail to comply, then they are not the right firm for you. In short, there are far too many web design companies that promote search engine optimization, and yet failed perform SEO effectively. We hope this read has enlightened you and equipped your arsenal with some solid questions in selecting a SEO and website design company you can trust.

Monday, April 23, 2012

SEO Web Design Trends to look for in 2012


2011 seemed like the pinnacle year of innovations but analysts project even more creative applications in 2012. Though there are expected hitches such as internet privacy laws, regulations, among other hiccups, web design is set to grow exponentially not only in volume but also in the refinement of technology to offer even more to consumers. According to recent reviews by industry experts some of the expected innovative SEO Web Design Tips and trends for 2012 are already underway and include:

Responsive designs

User experience in the use of websites is going to take center stage. As such, there will be creation of user interfaces that are applicable across board to bridge the gaps between different platforms. Users will experience faster response when using websites and other applications. On devices such as phones, growth of tap design will mean easier and faster downloads especially with social media icons, which make interactions easier.

The rise of Free Apps

Though free downloads are the order of the day, you can expect even more of these in future. Some of these include dark photo slider, mini web UI set, sliding tags to mention a few. You will have myriad options including logos, banners, and interfaces among others.

Mobile and Device Technology Explosion

With mobile companies stuck in trenches as the war continues, there is expected explosion in growth both in numbers and technology. In terms of new devices, you can bet that more companies will jump into the tab market fray and even sleeker gadgets will be produced. Tablets, smartphones are just the vanguard but as technology advances, you can expect even smarter devices. Modifications on existing gadgets to include new apps and features such as double screens on tablets and phones are bound to arrive in 2012.

Better Value, Service, and Products not Price

The next battle ground in SEO Web Design is to be fought on quality customer service, better products and reliable technical support and not on price. Improvements in established features such as typography, better image gallery slideshows, re-invention of modal popup boxes, generated image thumbnails are just a few of the new trends that will try to incorporate value into the web design experience.

There are many other singular trends such as web fragmentation, exaggerated hyperlinks, and oversized icons just to mention a few. Other monumental frontiers in SEO Web Design for 2012 that Search Engine Friendly Website Design Companies will have to deal with include social media innovations especially as new entrants seek to wrestle the mantle from older players such as Facebook. On the other hand, established players will play a key role in innovative SEO web design trends for 2012 because they have the expertise and resources to invest in research. These are just a few observations from experts in this blossoming industry.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

3 Perspectives of a Successful SEO & Web Design Team

There are a few key variables that make for good SEO and web design synergy. In fact, there are many aspects of web design that contribute to SEO effectiveness, many of which hinge on the structure and organization of the site that is being optimized.

Good SEO begins with awareness of the web design elements that are important and risky. In essence, good SEO and web design teams know the aspects of a webpage that are fundamental to the SEO process, such as content, coding structure, navigation and usability.

Professional providers of SEO and website design also know which design elements that can hinder SEO performance, such as Flash and code-heavy pages. Below we outline three perspectives that define successful SEO and website design teams. You can use these points to help refine your own optimization efforts, or use them as an evaluation of your current SEO and web design provider.

Critical & Creative Thinking

An essential requirement for SEO and web design is being able to think creatively and critically. One sign that a SEO web design team is not seeing their services through this perspective is the uniqueness of their packages. Creative teams have custom, unique packages per client and they think critically in building each package and campaign. On the other end of the spectrum, there a many SEO and web design teams that offer cookie-cutter templates and automated packages that fail to use any creativity or critical thinking.

Understanding HTML Mark-up

Mark-up language is the heart of the web. Web pages are “marked up” with HTML and XML, which governs most data interchange on the Internet. Search engines recognize most content through mark-up language, which is why it is essential for a SEO to understand the basics of HTML. When web design and SEO clash, certain design elements are added to a page that inhibit the search engine performance of a webpage. In short, web designers may be quick to use robust coding structures, or even worse, Flash media. Many designers are unaware of the repercussions such web design elements have on SEO. When a search engine spiders attempt to crawl a page with Flash, they often choke and fail to index the page efficiently.

Know How Search Engines Work

Search engines are specifically designed to retrieve information, and there basic function is governed by precision and recall. That is, search engines are highly precise in the way in which they can retrieve information based on the user’s needs and they are able to recall information that is most relevant to the search query. These two principles form the basis from which strategies for SEO and web design can be developed.

With a good idea of the concepts of information retrieval, Atlanta Web Design and SEO teams can better organize their strategies in a cohesive logical manner. Critical thinking is also improved as service providers discover a wider source of relevant information from which conclusions can be drawn upon. Designers can structure pages to meet the content organization demands for SEO, all the while addressing aesthetic variables that help websites convert users. Formal SEO optimization education does not focus on these three foundational perspectives.

In most cases, SEO education is geared toward the methods and techniques that result in immediate results. Looking at SEO and web design from a broader perspective can often shed light on more long-term opportunities.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Guest Blog Posts

One of the SEO Web Design Tips that many companies are catching onto these days is approaching guest blogs and writing guest blog posts to promote their goods and services. This is one of the SEO Web Design Tips that provides great benefits for a company that writes a guest blog post for an industry related Website.

Writing a guest blog post offers benefits on both an SEO level, but also a branding level.

Why Would I write a Guest Blog Post?

When you write a guest blog post for another website that isn't run by you or your company, you're literally producing unique content and giving it to another site to post for a return in branding and local search engine optimization rewards. To get the most SEO benefits out of writing a guest blog post, you'll want to craft an article that discusses a topic relevant to your business, and then offer that guest blog post to an industry-relevant Website. So, if your business manufactures portable power module packages for generator sets, you'll want to write a guest blog post for a Blog focused on the power generation industry.

How do I Contribute Guest Blog Posts?

It's a pretty simple procedure if you want to contribute guest blog posts. Lots of these Websites are actually looking for people like you who want to provide these guest blog posts. Many of them feature a link on their site that straight up says “Become a Guest Blogger!”. It doesn't get much easier than that.

If they don't have an obvious link or page on their site about contributing guest blog posts, find their contact page and drop them a line. Inquire about your wish to provide them with your unique, industry-relevant content. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised by the response.

Enjoy the Perks of Writing Guest Blog Posts

Writing guest blog posts for multiple Websites can deliver many search engine optimization gains:
  • Should you start contributing guest blog posts, you're sure to get valuable backlinks for your Website from the Guest Blog. Acquiring these types of inbound links is a critical cog for increasing search engine rankings and bolstering natural SEO results.
  • Your brand sees increased visibility when you contribute guest blog posts.
  • One of the better perks of writing guest blog posts is getting in and networking with other business owners, marketing people who are running the guest blogs. You never know when or who your next great business deal or sale will come from!
Just think about it. Think about the benefits you can get from simply writing a guest blog post for another Website. Now think about what the benefits would be if you could become a guest blogger on several Websites! This SEO strategy of guest blogging is a great tactic for building up search rankings and increasing brand visibility for your company!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Tips to Create the Best SEO Web Design

There are several factors that come into play when developing a solid SEO Web Design that will be attractive, user friendly, and rank well in the search engines. Here is a list of several attributes that you'll want to include in your Website structure to help you develop the best SEO Web design for your Website.

 

Optimized Header Tags & Content Structure

Make sure to use your targeted keywords in the header tags of your Web pages. Each H1 tag should accurately describe the content of the page – which includes your targeted keywords. Search engines and users alike want to see good headlines and by including your keywords, you're letting the users AND the spider know what your content is about, thus making your Web page more relevant to the search engines.

Additionally, you'll want to make sure you properly utilize the H1, H2 and H3 tags from top to bottom as you work your way down the page. Your H1 tag is the most important, H2 is the second most important, and so on and so forth. Good content structure is paramount to having the best SEO web design. It benefits the reader and the search engines.

 

Well-Crafted, Unique Title Tags

Title tags for your Web pages should include your targeted keywords so that the search engine and search engine users know what the topic of your Web page is all about. Using your targeted keywords at the front of your title tag is a best SEO Web Design practice, and it promotes higher relevancy and higher rankings in the search results.

While Google indexes upwards to 160 characters in the search title, it only displays the first 70 characters in the search result. Having 70 characters in your title tag is also a best SEO web design practice that can bolster your local Internet marketing rankings.

 

Don't Keyword Stuff!

Keyword stuffing for the search spider makes Web content difficult and cumbersome to read for site visitors. Search engines can identify natural language, and they can also identify Web pages that overload keywords. As a best SEO Web Design practice, you should always have your SEO copywriter write compelling content that flows well and is easy to read for users.

 

Have an Internal Linking Structure

It's a good idea to have your Search Engine Friendly Web Design Company periodically provide on-text links to other pages on your Website throughout your Web page content. These on-text links are good for the search engine spider to work its way through your Website, and it can also benefit your readers so they can access other content about your products or services on your Website.

 

Provide a Site Map

It is a best SEO web design practice to include a site map on your Website. Site maps are like the index of your Website for the search engines. They are helpful for the search engine to find and cache each page of your Website and for your site visitors to help them find a specific page or topic they are looking for on your site.

 

Double check for 404 Errors

404 errors stop search engine spiders in their tracks. To ensure that your Website doesn't have broken links that lead to 404 errors, you can use the Google Webmaster Tools to track these 404 errors. You can also run a link checker spider on your Website to make sure there aren't any broken links. Check out the W3C Link Checker Tool to run the link checker on your Website.

If you follow these best practice attributes, they can help you develop the best SEO Web Design possible for your Website and can also promote higher rankings in the search results.