Tips to Optimize Your Website Design for SEO

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="http://www.aimltd.net/images/web-design.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.aimltd.net/images/web-design.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <br /> When it comes to SEO, you can approach it in many more ways than just placing keywords in your website content. One such way is through the design and layout of your website; search engines emulate a user, and so if you want to get ranked you have to have a website that is functional and can actually be used by the public. Here are my top 10 tips to make sure you get the most out of SEO using web design.<br /><br />Pure HTML<br />Make sure that your HTML is as clean and easy for search engines to read as possible. Use whitespace to your advantage so that things can be easily viewed; if you have different web languages mismatched all over the place you’ll find your search engine ranking lower than a similar website which has clean, clear code. <br /><br />Simple page names<br />Try to use simple page names where possible. If you had a FAQ page, call it FAQ.html, rather than something obscure that can be misinterpreted such as Freq_asks.html. Simple, clear names that utilize keywords will mean that your website is not only easier for the public to view (sometimes people like to glance at the URL rather than page title) but will rank you highly in the search engine results pages. Avoid numbering your pages as page1.html, page2.html etc. as much as possible, and avoid any symbols. If you stick to alphanumeric characters you’re on the right track. <br /><br />Keywords in Meta tags<br />The <meta> tag is neglected by some web designers, but this is a mistake which can be deadly for SEO. You want to use Meta tags to point search engines at the key words they should be looking for on your page, as well as a short description of what the page is about. While there are definitely other aspects of SEO that take precedence nowadays, Meta tags should never be completely neglected.<br /><br />Remember your W3C guidelines<br />As previously stated you want to make the job of SEO spiders as simple as possible. By using the W3C guidelines on web design you should make this job easier for them, thus improving your ranking. Always get your web code validated using the online validation pages on the W3C website – you’ll regret it if you don’t.<br /><br />Consider your navigation<br />As great as they are for the everyday user, search bars aren’t useful for search engines because they want to index your entire website, not specific pages that they search for. This means that you should have a navigation tree that is easy to use and lists every page. A good rule of thumb is to make sure that any page can be reached within three clicks of the mouse – if it takes longer, you need to look at your navigation. Making things as easy for your visitors and search engine spiders as possible is the first rule of SEO. <br /><br />Hide incomplete or duplicate pages<br />Search engines will penalize your website for having copies of the same web page, or for having pages that are broken or incomplete. Make sure that you implement blocking code on your web pages that you want to hide so that they don’t impede your ranking. Shopping websites will do this for the various checkout pages that they have; they don’t add anything to the website, and will qualify as duplicate pages which brings down rankings. <br /><br />Use headers<br />The <h1> tag is another part of HTML that you shouldn’t ignore. They point the search engine spider towards what the page is about, and show the various sections that should be crawled. Without header tags the job of indexing your website is harder, and thus your ranking may not be as high as it otherwise would be. Once again – make things simple and you’re doing SEO correctly. <br /><br />On a .html page, only list HTML<br />Most websites nowadays use CSS and JavaScript as their website coding languages, but list .html as the page extension. This is a mistake unless you are externalizing the script. If you do use CSS or JavaScript, save them in a separate document and link to them using HTML; your website will still function the same, but it will make the job of the spider a lot easier and your code will look cleaner. It also makes it easier on your part when you are editing scripts – there’s no chance that you will edit the wrong piece of code because all of your languages are isolated in separate documents.<br /><br />Have a section to reflect updates<br />Search engines like to show content on the first results page that is regularly updated. Include a section on your website that lists the last time a page was updated, or a specific part of the page where you can list new updates on the website. If you run a blog, you might want to make sure that there’s always room to add more sections and keep the site alive – stale, rarely updated websites don’t feature very highly on search engines.<br /><br />Add in ALT text on images<br />It can be easy to forget, but a good SEO tip is to make sure that the ALT text on an image tag is filled in correctly. This is because although it’s rare, sometimes images won’t load when a visitor is browsing your website and the ALT text will allow them to understand what the image should be of. For search engine spiders it points out what the image is of, regardless of whether it loads. The title tag is somewhat less important, but still useful to have filled out for users browsing your web page. <br /><br />Author’s bio:<br />The guest post is written by Sonia Jackson from <a href="http://www.cool-essays.com/" target="_blank">http://www.cool-essays.com</a>. She helps you with writing essays and research papers on different topics. <br /><br /></div>

Tips to Optimize Your Website Design for SEO

When it comes to SEO, you can approach it in many more ways than just placing keywords in your website content. One such way is through ...

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How to Create Awesome Infographics in 3 Steps

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7OH5Yq0SpBhXmZ-3hhpEmypEL6MV-WUdp6kNyKOHLfKJmRSKkoZJiL_dUaulE1ANfPK0UibDcnBS9uZHs_-RIFOadCdRIquIEie9AXb0Khg97YtWC7wMYeZGBzsd6wN2tG85_ZOrY8W0/s1600/1013059_557914917580858_1795160821_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7OH5Yq0SpBhXmZ-3hhpEmypEL6MV-WUdp6kNyKOHLfKJmRSKkoZJiL_dUaulE1ANfPK0UibDcnBS9uZHs_-RIFOadCdRIquIEie9AXb0Khg97YtWC7wMYeZGBzsd6wN2tG85_ZOrY8W0/s320/1013059_557914917580858_1795160821_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <br /> Pictures are indeed worth 1000 words, but how about pictures with words? Well Inphographics are just that, a simple, fun and exciting way of data sharing that have become all the rage. And why not? They are fun to look at, interesting, and they make you smarter in the process. It’s a win-win in my book. Moreover, since today’s youth would much rather spend two minutes watching an instructive video instead of reading a one-page text, it is understandable that Inphographics would have the popularity they do. We are, at the end of the day, trying to reach a target audience so we might as well get with the beat and provide the information in such a way that it is received. <br /> <br /> <h3 style="text-align: left;"> How to Create an Infographic</h3> <div style="text-align: left;"> There are 3 major parts in an Inphographic. The visual one- related to graphs, pictures, design and colors, the content-text, references, time frames, statistics and the knowledge you are trying to get across, in form of conclusions, facts and overall message.  So obviously, when planning to create an Infographic you first need an idea. Then try to refine the idea, research and find arguments that support it, interesting facts or curiosities, and draw the conclusions you wish your Inphographic to contain. Editing the information is also important because it needs to be efficiently transmitted, and we often end up saying more than we need to.  Make a simple flow-chart that will be your first draft. <br />Visualize Your Content <br />The next step is to visualize your content and try to picture how you would like your Infographic to look like. It is best to decide from the start whether you would like it Map-based, with a lot of statistics or numeric graphs, if there should be timelines, explanations or diagrams.  Then decide on color themes: light hues and pastels work best but make sure your Infographic is tied together by a central background color or picture even if different sets of data are represented through different colors. </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div> <h3 style="text-align: left;"> Organize the Information</h3> <div style="text-align: left;"> Now would be the time to consider your first complete draft- this means put everything together and see how it looks like, see if everything fits together, if it flows naturally and simply, does it get the message across and most importantly, can the reader automatically get the message and understand what your Infographic is about? If yes, you’re free to move on to the refine&perfect stage where you decide whether or not the information is to condensed, if the most important aspects are included, if grammar and spelling are accurate and if the illustrations and graphs are appropriate. <br />It is essential that you provide just the right amount of data in your Infographic- too much is simply unjustified and will render your work unreadable and non-promotable. Also make sure there are emotional elements included since this will make readers connect and remember more than just the data points. Provide your readers with simple yet obvious takeaways so decide what your Infographic should accomplish and achieve the goals you set by means of central placement, brighter colors or clever and creative visual data usage.  </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> <br />Last but not least, efficient promotion of the Infographic is as important as the work that was put into creating it. So use social media to get it its well-deserved attention. Share it, blog it, tweet it, pin it, whatever it takes to get the word out. <br /> </div> <h3 style="text-align: left;"> Author Bio:</h3> <div style="text-align: left;"> Anna Robeson is well aware of the importance of creating visually appealing pages. This is why she advises all of her clients to be careful what strategies they choose for their web-page and to work with the <a href="http://digitalnetagency.com/" target="_blank">DNA agency</a>.</div> </div>

How to Create Awesome Infographics in 3 Steps

Pictures are indeed worth 1000 words, but how about pictures with words? Well Inphographics are just that, a simple, fun and exciting wa...

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Why Web Designing is a must for Online Shopper

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> You might have never thought or realised it but it is true that the design of your website has a lot to do with the purchasing behaviour of your visitors; as much as that it actually persuade them to buy the products.<br /> <br /> ‘Design’ is not a simple thing to handle. It takes herculean task to create something that appeal to customers. It is not just the high resolution images, graphics, videos or crisp texts about the products that adorn a website but there are many other things such as presenting products in certain manner that highlight their characteristics and drawing attention of a visitor towards these characteristics.   <br /> <br /> Consider this example. What is the first thing, you wish to look at when you buy a phone online? It is image? Isn’t it? So, you see the 2D images of different phones and start surfing the site from start to end. You keep surfing for an hour or two but still couldn’t decide the model that meet your requirements. You get frustrated and log on to any other site. Here, you get 3D images of all the phones, which actually make your life easier as the only thing you are worried about is the ‘thickness’ of the phone, which was not possible to calculate in 2D images. When you started surfing the images, even you were not aware that ‘thickness’ of the phone is something that fascinate you the most. You discovered this only when you see the 3D images. It is quite possible that you buy a product that you had rejected on the first site. But, with the 3D image you get a better idea about its slim and sleek look.<br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6A2dSGacb_eIEBfXj2casc9N9JtKyc_Bop2jBozwgNXBdXgFcb5wNp9cEtBPVG8ptnivdttGsxIliBzmhD5VbZQJ06tyXYZgn5ofPPJWy97hmaDmfvpiIe5VUl7LivejLIx79cXHMPwU/s1600/web_design_post.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6A2dSGacb_eIEBfXj2casc9N9JtKyc_Bop2jBozwgNXBdXgFcb5wNp9cEtBPVG8ptnivdttGsxIliBzmhD5VbZQJ06tyXYZgn5ofPPJWy97hmaDmfvpiIe5VUl7LivejLIx79cXHMPwU/s400/web_design_post.png" width="400" /></a></div> <br /> Consider another example. You quote a minimum price to your visitor, but your visitor is under the impression that he can get the same products on lower rate from any other shop. Despite quoting a minimum price, your visitor switches to other products or perhaps he even switches to other online stores. There is nothing wrong with the site. All the images, navigation, payment options, color combination, products specifications, etc are absolutely up-to-date, but you still miss customer. Why? Well, the answer is very simple. You did not allow your visitor to compare the prices of the product. Had you, he would have made his decision then and there. <br /> It is quite palpable that business and marketing nitty-gritty can play a big role in the design of your site. It requires lot of efforts as you need to understand things that are the crucial and then organise products portfolios. Strong analytical skills and knowledge of consumer behavior is of great importance. <br /> In their <a href="http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/filemgr?file_id=645364" target="_blank">research paper</a> - When Web Pages Influence Choice: Effects of Visual Primes on Experts and Novices, NAOMI MANDEL and ERIC J. JOHNSON, suggests that even the background pictures and colors of a web page affect consumer’s product choice. They conducted research on both novice and experience visitors and confirmed that online atmospherics in electronic environments could have a significant influence on consumer choice.<br /> <br /> About Author: This post is shared by Mayank Kaushik, Business Manager from <a href="http://riaenjolie.com/" target="_blank">RiaEnjolie.com</a>. RiaEnjolie offers high-impact small business Websites as well as <a href="http://www.riaenjolie.com/mobile-websites.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mobile Website Design</a> to help grow your businesses. You may follow them on twitter @RiaEnjolie<br /> <br /></div>

Why Web Designing is a must for Online Shopper

You might have never thought or realised it but it is true that the design of your website has a lot to do with the purchasing behaviour of...

+ Read more »