Here is an article written for guidelines when it comes to website design and content creation. Let’s face it, search engine optimization and content management can be a difficult decision to make. Choosing which company to hire is a bigger decision to make. XTELWEB believes in using the latest tactics and only implements strategies that work with up to date search engine algorithms. Our search engine optimization plans are on a month to month basis, so we know that showing your company results is the only way that you will keep us on your SEO marketing campaign. We also provide content management as one of our online marketing strategies, so this is why we are going to show you guidelines we follow when we perform SEO for our clients.
When it comes to website design, remember:
Be easy on the graphics: Make sure that when you are creating text on your website that you leave it as text. Creating banners on your page to in lieu of actual text is bad for SEO. Search engines cannot decipher the words on a graphic file (.png , .jpg, .gif, etc..) If you are going to use graphics make sure that you are using the “ALT” tag to describe what information is contained in the graphics.
An example of an alt tag:
Lets say you have a banner you created which advertises a sale you have featuring 10% off widgets, your ALT tag would look similar to this:
[html light=”true”]<a href="http://www.widgetcompany/buy_our_widgets.html"><img src="../images/widget_ad.png" alt="10 percent off widgets"></a>[/html]
Notice the “ALT” tag located in the IMG SRC code of the hyperlink? This tells the search engine crawler that this image is displaying information about “10 percent off widgets”. Therefore, if the content on your web page is related to the sale of widgets, then the image is seen by the crawler as “relative” and it will be indexed in the search engine results page.
Try to have at least one text-based menu: If your site is using graphics to display its navigational information, such as “Home, Products, Services, About Us, Contact Us” then you should try to include at least one text-based menu on your site. A typical place to put the text based menu is at the footer of the page. Instead of using graphics to navigate your site, just use plain text.
Do not use Adobe Flash on Home page or Splash page: Do not use Adobe Flash as a splash page, unless you are not worried about search engine optimization. Also, do not use Adobe Flash as the main content for Home Page (index.html, index.htm). Google, and other search engine crawlers cannot index your Adobe Flash content. A lot of my customers, most of them not familiar with SEO have asked about a Flash Intro page or Flash based website. They get upset when I advise against it, but the fact of the matter is that Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Bing or any other search engine crawler cannot index Flash based content (as of this writing). So it’s not worth it.
Do not use Frames to build your site: With the expansion of CSS and XHTML frames are no longer being used. Frames are the old way of dividing content on your web pages and do not look good, or are harder to navigate. Also, when it comes to linking, a frame site is difficult in the sense that technically two or more HTML files are loaded at the same time. So if you want a lot of people to link to your site, then you will want to avoid frames.
CSS Layout Example:
And now on to Site Content:
Keep adding fresh content to your website: This is by far the most important factor when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Adding fresh content, that is relevant to your line of business, will greatly improve your rankings in search engines. There are several ways you can add fresh content to your website. The most popular way keeping content fresh is to install a WordPress Blog. Installing a blog to your website is an easy outlet for you to write about your website, your company, products or services you provide and more. XTELWEB offers content management services .
What is content management (aka SEO copywriting)?
A) Just so you know, we are talking about content management in terms of search engine optimization, and not in the way that other content management systems work. Content management is when you hire a company to write or spruce up your content. We write all of the content for your blog for SEO use. The articles, or content we write becomes your property and nobody will know that you didn’t write the content. Our content is accurate and we will always send a copy to you before anything is published. Our team of SEO Copywriters takes the time to learn about your company and then write relevant content to help your website improve in search engine rankings. All of the SEO copywriters at XTELWEB are proficient in the English language, and have taken, and successfully completed a College Level English Class.
Every page on your site should be focused on as narrow topic as possible: Let’s say that your company provides several different services, or sells several different products. You want to discuss those services, or products on a different web page, instead of trying to list them all on the same page. Following a template such as Product or Service Title, then Image, then Description and linking to the next products or services keeps the content more relative and easier to follow for your website visitors. Listing too much, or displaying too much information can confuse potential clients and they may not browse your site. Give each product or service its own web page, and then name the page so that it’s relative. A good example would be a page on Website Design or SEO Services, you could name them, <code>”website_design.html or seo_services.html”.</code>
Use accurate, relevant page titles: This is easily ignored, but is vital.. You want to make sure that not only each web page has its own unique content, but when you title your pages, they have relevant page titles. This is very important because most search engine crawlers look at the page title first, and the page title almost always shows up in the search engine results page. So if your company is selling Yellow Widgets, then you will want to title your page, “Yellow Widgets from ABC Widget Company”
The keywords and description tag are not important: Google’s search engine crawler does not look at these tags anyway, so there is no need to use them. According to Google, they do not use the keywords meta tag because web masters were stuffing irrelevant content into the tag and causing websites to show in the search engine results page that had nothing to do with the keyword and keyword phrases being searched for. There are some website design and SEO companies that still use the keyword and description meta tags, and this is fine, just know that it is usually a waste of time.
So these are some basic guidelines to follow when it comes to website design and content creation. XTELWEB uses these guidelines and more when it comes to maintaining a SEO strategy. Our company works very hard to make sure the websites we create are all search engine optimized and that when you hire us for search engine optimization, you will always see results. Give us a call today at 727-359-5150 to schedule a free consultation, or fill out our contact form and one of our friendly professionals will get back to you.
***Note: These are not all of the guidelines and techniques we use as that would be revealing our trade secret. This is, however, a good basic outline to follow when using your own SEO plan.
Check out our Blog Post titled: How to Write an Effective Article – Its great if you are just starting your own blog.
