Search Engine Friendly Design

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Search Engine Friendly Design

A search engine friendly website design is the starting point for any SEO campaign. When considering a new site or redesign, get us involved as early as possible. Often our involvement early in a project will cover a good chunk of the SEO fee we charge by saving you from extra redesign costs and extended development time.

Domain: Your entire primary websites content should be delivered within the domain url structure. Content located anywhere else is NOT considered to be on your website, and no amount of SEO will correct this. This includes content located on off-site blogs, sub-domains of your domain, booking engines, quote engines, MLS data, and reservation systems that reside off-site. There are pros and cons to using sub-domains, and this should be discussed with your SEO company if you are considering going in this direction.

Structure: All design elements and scripts should generally be called from an external file, not inline or embedded into the web page. The exception is high volume websites that need every bit of delivery speed they can squeeze out of the page. [Read more...]

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Rich Snippets [infographic]

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Rich Snippets provide web developers and SEO companies additional data points to optimize. This helps web searchers make more informed clicking decisions when they find you in the search results. Here is a nice little infographic that helps explain the who, what, why, where, when and how of structured data formatting. [Read more...]

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Website Redesign and SEO Considerations

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Not too long ago the prospect of conducting a website redesign would get your “SEO guy” excited – and not in a good way. In the past, websites could lose a huge percentage of their traffic, search equity, backlinks, and directory placements due to a new website being launched. This can still happen, but only if you don’t have an SEO plan in place prior to pulling the trigger on that new site.

Today, it’s possible to move domains, hosts, and platforms all on the same day, and retain most of your traffic and search engine results. Its really not [Read more...]

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Questions to Ask a Potential Web Design Firm

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Search Engine Friendly Design

I recently participated in the website redesign process for a group that supports the meeting and group travel industry. The Board of Directors asked if I could put together some questions for the final selection process. I thought this would be good material to share on the blog.

Web Designers and Developers – Take Note! During the review process every person on the selection committee visited the website of the firms that delivered proposals. There were a number of comments about the “lackluster” delivery of some of the firms offerings. I understand the reality of, “The son of the shoemaker has no shoes” but you need to take this to heart if you want to grow your business and land bigger clients. A little SEO would help you be found also. But we’ll save that for another post!

Download and Print This Article: Questions to Ask Website Designer

Here is my list of questions to ask [Read more...]

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Moving or Redesigning Your Site

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Moving or Redesigning Your Site

Moving or Redesigning You Site
SEO & Linking Considerations

Your web site is going to move to a new server, or be involved in a site redesign at some point. Often this transition is simultaneous. The prospect of expanding your web presence can be exciting, and help boost your bottom line if done correctly. If done incorrectly, you can wipe out a huge portion of your past work and customer base, as well as destroying your rankings in the search engines. A failure to plan your move is a sure-fire plan for failure!

Are the URLs of your site going to change? Most likely, the answer is yes. Reasons for generating a new URL structure could be that you are moving from a static site to a dynamic site like adding a content management system, upgrading to a different server technology, like moving from .php to .asp or ColdFusion, or implementing a rewrite process to make your URLs more Search Engine Friendly.

Your web page URLs are your addresses from the internet to your site. If you change your address without notifying inbound requests, people will not see your website, but instead a blank page with the error message, “The page cannot be found.” This can be devastating if the request is made from a search engine trying to spider your site!

In addition, if you have been developing a comprehensive SEO program for your site, you will have deep links – inbound links to the interior pages of your site. You will lose a large portion of your inbound link inventory if you don’t plan your move.

Here are the steps your web design team needs to take to make the move as smooth as possible.

Migrate Meta: Migrate all of the content in your Title tags and the Meta Description fields. This will help you retain your search engine ranking positions. If you paid an SEO company this is a large portion of what you paid for.

301 Redirects: Research – pull an inventory of your natural search engine results (in Google use the site: command) and match it up to your most powerful page urls by comparing your statistics. Make sure that you implement a 301 redirect for every indexed page and point requests to the new page location. This needs to be done before moving day.

Custom 404 Page: Realize up front that there are going to be some loose ends. Design a custom 404 “not found” page that is inside the structure of your site and offers a clear menu of options for the human searcher. This will help them engage with your site. Make sure that the site has a clear text link to your sitemap so that search engine spiders can learn about the structure of your site. NEVER automatically redirect bad requests to the home page.

Sitemaps: Make sure you launch the site with a complete sitemap in place so that the search engines can spider your new structure. In addition, you will need to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google increase the speed at which your new site is indexed.

Pay Per Click: Consider increasing your PPC budget for core terms that drive your business. There is always a natural short term drop in search engine results when you make a change. Don’t forget to adjust your PPC campaign landing pages. Google Adwords will not follow your 301 redirects.

Backlink Check: Pull your inventory of incoming links. Change any links that will point to URLs that will become obsolete where possible. Use Google Webmaster Tools to detect broken backlinks. A proper 301 redirect plan should take care of most of these issues.

Outbound Links: Do you have a list of resources or links on your site, or reciprocal link agreements? If so, make sure you have a plan to reinstall them in the new site, and there is a clear way to get to them.

Robots.txt File: Move and update the robots.txt exclusions file to reflect your site structure change. If your private data, images, or testing area has changed locations, make sure to add a line in the file to account for it.

Hosting: If your move involves a hosting / server change make sure your new IP address is not black listed. Some IP ranges get recycled, and may have been previously used in an activity that got them banned. Check how many other sites will be sharing your server if not dedicated  the lower the number the better.

Timing: If you have a seasonal site or known high / low traffic periods plan your move during the slow season.

Build Links: Obtain high value back-links pointing toward your critical interior landing pages just after the site is moved. This will help get your site re-indexed quickly.

It is important to consult your SEO firm prior to making any changes in your site design. This way you can avoid turning your shining star into black hole.

Play Safe! Link-a-Billy Dave

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Two Nuns in a Knife Fight!

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Say, that is interesting!I was fortunate enough to spend some time working under the tutelage of one of the greatest sales closers on the face of the planet, Jim Callahan from Signtronix. It was fascinating to sit on the sidelines and watch Jim give a sales presentation; the potential client transfixed as if under the influence of some unseen ether. More often than not the recipient of a Callahan sales interview would become “happily involved” at the end, paying the deposit and signing the purchase agreement. I would laugh that the prospect, “just about broke his arm reaching for his wallet!”

You have to offer a great product, and a reasonable price point for sure, but those two elements are no guarantee of a sale. Jim used to say that to get to the money, “your presentation has to be more interesting than two Nuns in a knife fight!” If you hope to get to the point of purchase, you must provide an engaging presentation. This is true even if your communication vehicle is a website.

Here is a list of web elements to sharpen the blade of your website.

Video – The home page and key sections should offer easy access to video. Video should play on the page, not in a pop-up. Here is a good example – www.cabovillas.com – I also like the corner peel to grab attention.

Character Video – This is a targeted sales message that leaps off the page to greet a visitor. Ask Chris or Dave how to integrate this into your PPC landing pages, example – www.netrafic.com

Graphics, Flash, Photos – Professionally designed and descriptive graphical elements will keep your audience engaged. The Whistler / Blackcomb site is a great example – www.whistlerblackcomb.com

Great Content – Content is the cornerstone (still!) of your search engine optimization effort. In addition, people will dig in and start reading once you have their attention.

Clear Navigation – Confusing or hard to locate navigation causes visitors to abandon your website without ever finding the good stuff. The navigational element should be one of the first considerations when considering a design.

Concise Conversion and Contact Method – It is critical that your visitors can initiate contact from every page on the website. Not everyone wants to fill out a form – so alternate email methods, phone numbers, click to chat, and information downloads should all be available if applicable. Easy “click to bookmark” and “send to a friend” social elements are effective.

You don’t have to completely redesign your site to include most of these element. Its possible to add these items on the fly as budget and development allow. Unlike other web elements, these items can always be converted for use in your next website. Good luck with the fight, or as Jim would say, “Good Skills!”

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