Web Design: A Brief Look

Web design is an art. Like all art forms, it requires practice, skill and patience to perfect. Individuals who design websites know little tricks to create the perfect webpage for clients. But what if youve never designed a web page before. How would you design and market the information found on the site? Before you run off and design your own website, you may want to understand a few things in order to create a great, “Search-Engine Friendly” website.

What is a Search-Engine Friendly Website?

When you hear the phrase, “Search-Engine Friendly”, it refers to a search engines ability to easily locate a website using certain keywords and phrases found within the text. If a website does not use noticeable keywords in the text, a search engine will have a difficult time locating the site.

If you are experienced with HTML, you should have no problem understanding the requirements for creating a “Search-Engine Friendly” website. Those less fortunate may need to hire a company that provides SEO services to help optimize your code to build a search-engine friendly website.

What to Look For

1. Once your website is complete, you want to check your HTML code for any errors that may appear. Remember, search engines use keywords found on your web pages to locate it, if the HTML code contains inaccuracies, the search engine will think the keyword is part of the HTML code and not of the text. This can result in the omission of part of your webpage from the search engine indexes.

2. Check your title tags to ensure you are using relevant keywords. Search engines use title tags to determine what the webpage is about. If the tag states only your websites name on each individual web page, the search engine will have difficultly understanding what the page is regarding, offering low placement on its search results. Instead, you want each individual web page to include a relevant tag describing the information found on that page. For instance, a web page regarding iPod specifications, may want to include a title “iPod Weight and Height Specifications”.

3. Remove any hidden text and eliminate and duplicate content. Duplicate content causes the information to become diluted when other websites link to your page. If the information becomes diluted, the search engine places the duplicate content low on its search results. With hidden text, webmasters tend to place keywords hidden from a visitors view by changing the color of the keyword to blend in with the background. This black hat trick negatively influences the search engines results and can get your webpage ban from a search engines indexes.

How to Market Your Website

Often the hardest part of managing a website is making the website marketable to a search engine. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) companies specialize in helping create marketing ads for your website that utilize pay-per-click ads to boost traffic to your site. In order to create a marketable site, you want to ensure your webpage is using relevant keywords to describe your products, using correct meta-tags and proper keywords on pay-per-click ads. The keywords found on a search engines ads link to a landing page of your choice. The landing page design is important in providing scores for your ads that search engines give out. If you are creating ads with keywords not found on your landing page, the search engine will produce a lower score and offer lower ad placement for your webpage.

Remember, designing and marketing your website takes practice, skill and dedication. Do not expect to gain all the necessary knowledge over night. You may find yourself needing direction and help from an SME, SEO or a professional web designer to help you create the website of your dreams.

Find out more about Search Engine Marketing.