Los Angeles Advertising and Design

Every kid on the block seems to know web designing these days. Actually thinking along those lines it is not difficult at all to learn how to design a web page or for that matter even a site. What with FrontPage, Dreamweaver and the gang making the job even simpler.

But one has to realize there is more to web designing then knowing how to write a few HTML codes or use one of the many commercially available programs. While teaching you how to code or code correctly for that matter is not the objective of this article, I would be giving you some tips that distinguish the real web designer from the rest of the pack.

1. I will strictly ask you to not to use lots of flash contents if you want to be at the top of the search engine. Yes, I know it looks awesome but it does nothing more than hindering your all search engine optimization strategies. You don’t need to provide your visitors an eye candy, dude just provide them some helpful content.

2. Always remember to use navigation menu at the right side of each page of your site, why? because search engines count the first few phrases appearing on the page, this way you would provide the search engines the content first.

3. Make your pages cross browser compatible. Though this is very difficult even for the most experienced among us, TRY!

4. Time your page for its loading speeds. Remember, though a graphic image looks really good on your site, its hateful if your visitors have to wait hours for it to load. You may be using a high speed connection, the whole world doesn’t. Your page has to be quick to load.

5. Too many images have exactly the opposite effect then they are meant to have. So, do everything in proportion including putting in graphics and animations.

6. Colour combinations matter. Your text has to be readable & as importantly if not more, worth reading.

7. Always work on a good navigation structure Remember if a client cant find your contact info or order link, you’d miss on a sale.

8. Make your site search engine friendly. Its no use having the best site in the world which no one can find. And for every one’s sake don’t mess around with hidden layers to get a high listing on the engines. It is JUST NOT worth the risk!

9. If you have ad banners, place them with a little thought. Too many of those little pop ups are the most annoying thing on the web and more often then not deter visitors from sticking onto your site rather than earn you some extra cash.

10. Lastly you never know everything. Over the years and after designing a dozen sites, I still learn something new from ever project that I undertake. Guys you can never be perfect when it comes to coding And if you are then there is always room to improve perfection.

Akash Kumar an seo expert and the founder of vistadivine.com – an
economical search engine
optimization firm

Tags: search engine optimization, seo, seo article, seo tips, website optimization, website promotion

New to Web Design, or wondering why your site is not generating more interest? Here are 10 misconceptions to avoid.

1. I need to put everything I can think of on my homepage because I’m so excited to share all my information and knowledge and I’m afraid you won’t click on any other pages!
Too much content leaves the homepage cluttered, unfocused and can cause frustration. Readers want quick, concise information so use the homepage as an introduction to your product or services Summarize what can be found on the rest of the site and use it to “tease” the reader about “new” products/services or special offers. Your homepage should never look like a bulging, over-stuffed closet!

2. I’m sure I spelled it rite the first thyme
Typos leave a really bad first impression. Proofread your text carefully. Even our friend, Spell Check, can let us down by not seeing typos such as “there” for “their”, “here” for “hear”, etc.

3. People will understand that I’m an amateur photographer
Bad photos placed on a website will kill first impressions and sales. Do you have an extraordinary product, amazing vacation destination or cute, cuddly puppies? Blurry, dark, poorly staged photos will hurt sales and your business image. A bad photo is worse than no photo. Technology has enabled the average consumer to purchase reasonably priced digital cameras that produce beautiful photos. Take your time, stage it properly and your efforts will pay off. If a professional photographer is needed, rest assured the cost will often be easily recouped through a professional business image and improved sales.

4. I need a really complex, cool navigation bar to make my site stand out
Having to “figure out” or learn how to move around your site is cause for quick exits. Titles on the primary navigation bar should be short and descriptive. Highlight with color or graphics for interest. Keep in mind that visitors like familiarity and navigation should be instinctual. Allow visitors to know what page they are on at all times. Make the trip around your site enjoyable through sensible navigation.

5. Once a link, always a link.
Links to quality outside sites are a great way to offer more relevant information. However, links on the internet come and go and should be checked on a regular basis. Broken links lead visitors to believe your site is not current.

6. Since I took the time to put up a website, you trust me right?
Well not exactly. Take the time to explain who you are, list your credentials and why you are an authority in your area. List your contact information in an area that is easy to find. Add testimonials from satisfied clients. Stand by your product or service with guarantees.

7. What’s the hurry?
Unless you’re a teenager, people have limited time and want information quickly. Organize your website so that information is easy to locate. Use bold text, underlines and different colors to help direct visitors to key locations. Make sure your site loads quickly. Slow sites are painful and a recipe for failure! You have between 4 and 9 seconds to make a positive first impression. Use your time wisely.

8. I feel the need to impress you with all my industry specific terminology
That might make you feel smart and sound educated, but can anyone really understand you? Speak in terms that the average consumer can understand. Remember, the website was built to educate and please others, not yourself.

9. I didn’t want to spend the time or the money so I found “stuff” on the net to use
Internet users and consumers are savvy, so that brings us right back to first impressions.
If you and many related websites are using the same graphics, what makes you stand out from the rest? Custom logos and graphics can be made using a simple graphics program or by a professional.

10. My website is finished, it feels so good to be done!
Um.. Hardly! You’ve had your site built, you’ve had it submitted to the search engines but there is still much work to be done. With millions of sites on the internet, just being listed in the search engines is not enough to bring your site satisfactory traffic. Help people find your website by using traditional methods of advertising such as handing out business cards, newspaper ads, TV ads, donations of product or services to local non-profit organizations, business/holiday fairs, etc. Spend time placing your website in online directories suited to your products or services. Advertise on websites that have like content and high traffic. Having a website is only one part of a “marketing plan”.

Websites should be constantly evolving. Fresh content is the only way to keep visitors coming back on a regular basis. Frequent visits build consumer confidence and trust which in turn will benefit your bottom line!

About the Author

Linda Chadbourne, an experienced web designer since 1998 with a specialty creating websites that are functional works of art and working with novice web design clientele. http://www.maine-lyweb.com
copyright 2006. This article may be reprinted freely as long as all links remain active.

Tags: common web design problems, improve website, web design problems, web misconceptions

From a search engine point of view, the perfect webpage has no graphics, no scripting, no tables…etc but just alot of normal, plain readable text. You can just take it that plain text is the food for search engine spiders. Therefore, the more text you have, the more you will keep the spiders happy. However, from the design point of view, such pages are very boring but the fact is that everyone is more interested in keeping the spiders rather than us happy. The argument is that if search engine spiders cannot find your site, no one will. Based on this philosophy, we witnessed the fall of flash and sites with strong graphics over the years. Many sites that utilized heavy graphics where no longer found. Web developers become happy because they have an excuse to create less impressive websites…

The question is can we make both the saerch engine spiders and us happy? The answer is definitely a “Yes” provided that web designers can follow certain rules when designing web pages. They need to step out of their comfort zone and learn abit more about new web technologies.

Domain Name and URL Naming Convention

Having a proper domain and url name is quite often neglected. Many search engines actually put some weightage in the way you name your domain or url files. You will definitely want to include some juicy words in your naming convention. For example, if you site is about website critics and your url is www.sitecritic.com, this will definitely be better than a domain like www.bluecatfish.com. The same principle goes for hyperlinks. If you have 2 words as key words, you can use an underscore “_” or dash “-” to separate them.

Title

Do not fool around when writing the title. From my experience, this is the most important part of your webpage. Many designers like to put special characters such as ” * “,” | “, ” : ” or ” [ ] ” in the title to make it look unique. If you really want to make your webpage special, I advise you to do it else where such as in the body of the HTML document. You should include your keywords in your title. Like the previous example, if your web site focuses on website reviews, make sure you have the words “Website Reviews” somewhere in the title. Noticed that “WebsiteReviews” is not the same as “Website Reviews”. Spacing is important.

When writing the title, try not to write more than 8 words. There are no hard and fast rules on that but the fact is that more does not mean good. In fact, the more you write, the more your keyword density will be diminished. If you keep repeating the same keyword in the title, search engines will see your site as spam and you will be dead in no time. For example, a title like “Sitecritic Web Reviews” is much better than “Sitecritic Web Reviews, Internet Marketing, Web Design Ideas, Internet Directories, Budget Web Hosting, Melbourne”. I will have to stress again, do not fool around with your title.

Meta-Description

After the title tag is the meta description tag. Many people argued that meta description is no longer important. Based on my experience, they are still relevant in SEO rankings especially if your website is new. The principle in writing the meta description tag is the same as the title. The only difference is that you want explain abit more about the services that you provide in a friendlier format. You will also want to include your keywords in the meta description.

Menu, Content and Links

You should not use any javascript menus that hid the urls. Many javascript menus are fancy but actually not SEO friendly. What ever technique you are using to create the menus, make sure that the “a href” tag is visible. You might also want to include a variation of the keywords in the menus, links or text. Like the previous example, if your keyword is “Web Site Reviews”, you might not want to use the same word over and over again. You can vary it by using “Professional Web Reviews, Reviews of Websites, Site Reviews…etc”. Varying the keywords makes your content more interesting and is good for SEO as well.

When writing the contents, try to put the keywords in different areas of the document. Use tags like “b” or “h2″ to make the keywords stand out. Avoid urls that say “click here” or “view”. Though often used, they are not advisable for SEO purposes.

Text links are stonger than image links. It is therefore not advisable to use images as the main navigation menu throughout the website. If you would like to incorporate images in the user navigation experience, you might want to consider separating the text from the images. This can be achieved easily using CSS or the background image option in the table or td tag.

Images

Unlike many Search Engine Experts, I strongly encourage the use of graphics because I am passion about Web Design and is sad to see so many websites that are well optimized for search engines but look crap on screen. You need to balance between the amount of graphics used and downloading speed. Like I mentioned before, if your header banner or important images contains text , you could split up the text and use the images as a separate background or floating layer. That way, you can make the image size smaller and also make the text visible to the search engines. Transparent gifs are very useful for laying over other content or images. Appropriate use of jpegs and gifs can also cut down loading time by alot.

CSS Technology

CSS helps you to cut down your tag and gives more room for the spiders to read your content. The problem with CSS is that it is not as straight forward as tables. At the moment, CSS is also inconsistent in different browsers, so before you publish your web page, you need to check the layout in different browsers. I am actually not against designers using tables especially if they find the time spend in creating a full CSS site not justifiable. The fact is that there are still cases when using CSS is not advisable. An example is when displaying tabular data; Tables still excel in displaying tabular data at the moment. Unless you are using complex nested tables, the table, tr or td tags should not pose too much of a problem for the search engine spiders.

Conclusion

Web pages should not be boring and web designers should not bow down to the Google revolution. A well designed site combines both form and function and yet, still able to be search engine friendly. I strongly believe that this can be easily achieved if website designers are able to follow very basic rules in designing their web sites.

Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net – Website Reviews and Design Ideas. With more than 5 years of commercial experience in the web industry, he leads a group of experienced web designers and developers to provide the web community insights into creating effective websites. During his free time, he enjoys reviewing websites, doing freelance SEO and PHP work.

Tags: internet articles, Web Design, web designer seo, Website reviews