SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design
by Chesa Keane
Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet
marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there
are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website
for successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail
store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider
having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence
in order to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed
correctly to begin with, follow-on SEO efforts will have limited results
at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about
productive SEO results:
- Create an attractive website that is complementary to your company image
and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your
company and your products and/or services.
- Design a website that has a call-to-action in the form of a purchase or
providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your
visitor.
- Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion
and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services
with the many follow-on strategies that drive traffic to your website.
- Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or
exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified
audience for your products and/or services based on a strong reputation.
- Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting
in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by
evolving as your market demands.
This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several
processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention
from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating long-term popularity
on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website
design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing
strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are
unattractive but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these
websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed
basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well
as simply pushed information out to the viewer.
These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:
- Good web design will complement and enhance the company image and
offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done
well.
- Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into
the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on
your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.
- Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and
meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide
is important for explaining what you offer.
- Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly depends on how the keywords
are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most
important keywords and their relevance to the website.
- Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the
search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to
offer.
- Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise,
to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and
offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets,
then tie each website back to the others by linking.
- Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your
viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your
website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the
search engines.
Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content. But how that
content is presented is what makes the difference.
(c)2005 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.
Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for
10 years through internet consulting, web development and search engine
optimization. She can help you stay competitive in your industry while
opening new avenues of business promotion. Go to
www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization
Checklist.
