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Interview with a New York Web Design Company
By Scott Jason (c) 2008

As a Web optimization specialist I spend a good deal of
time seeking out the best designers from around the country
and around the world. We swap industry insider tips. They
teach me about Web design and I show them how to get their
beautiful sites to the top of Google, MSN and Yahoo. It's a
match made in heaven. The most recent collaboration was a
huge success that helped both of us get just what we wanted
so we decided to publish our findings for anyone interested.
That said; here is an interview with a New York Web design
company.

What makes a New York Web design company any different from
other Web design companies? That's easy... Competition.
Just look at how many design firms there are out there and
you will see what I mean! In the city or outside, someone
seeking high quality Web design in New York faces hundreds
of choices in an area of just a few city blocks. Now that's
competition!

If you are not from the area it can be difficult to
envision. This might help... Imagine typing "New York web
design" into Google's search box and getting hundreds of
pages with thousands of links of returns. Instead of
clicking on those links however, you're walking into
hundreds of offices; each offering their own unique flavor
of Web design.

But, with the competition comes a competitive edge that is
critical in a struggling economy. Of course we all want to
look good on the Internet, but when you're competing with
your real live neighbors in addition to those online; you
have to step it up a notch.

With that said, I offer some inside advice from a
successful New York Web design firm. Let's focus our
attention on Website usability. This has the unfortunate
distinction of being both the most important yet generally
least considered aspect of design all too often and the
Website owners suffer for the oversights.

First off, most people do not really read a Web page at
first glance; they scan it to see if there is something
worth actually reading. You need to get their attention
right away and keep it. Here's how...

1.) Jump in with your most powerful content right off the
bat. Grab their attention immediately and keep it. Never
save the best for last unless you have something nearly as
good to lead the reader there.

2.) Make sure your functional areas are consistent, as much
as possible, throughout your site. This is especially true
of the navigation links (top, left, right, etc.) search
fields, logins, and anything else needing user interaction.
The more at ease your visitor feels working through the
site, the more likely he or she is to stay for a while and
go even deeper.

3.) Embed a link to your homepage within your company logo.
This is expected by just about every site visitor who has
been on the Web for any length of time. It's a safety net
many users rely and to deny it could result in major
inconvenience to your visitors.

4.) Add a search box in an easy to find, consistent
location. And be certain it searches ONLY within your
Website. Having a search feature that offers to "Search The
Web" gives your visitors an invitation to leave your site.
Why would you want that?

Secondly, keep in mind that search engines will also be
looking at your site. Making it pretty is not enough. It
needs to attract the search engine as much as live visitors
if you ever expect those live visitors to find it in the
first place. This is known as search engine optimization,
or SEO. It's more complicated today than in years past but
still quite doable. Here are three "must do" tasks for you
to complete if you want your site on top of Google.

1.) Use keywords as anchor text (the visible clickable
words) in your links throughout your page's content. This
is huge! Allow me to demonstrate how powerful this one
element can be.

Navigate to Google.com and conduct a search for the term
"Click Here" (no quotes.) Take note of two things right
away... Number one, there are more than 1.6 billion other
(competing) Web pages. Number two, the top match returned
is a link to Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Ready for a surprise? The term Click Here is not anywhere
on the page text or META tags. The page is number one, out
of 1.6 Billion pages, because thousands of Web pages
supplying a link to Acrobat "Click Here" as their anchor
text of choice. Amazing, isn't it?

This is great news for you! You can easily take advantage
of that power by linking to and from pages within your
Website. Which leads us nicely into Tip number two...

2.) If you deem that SEO is a priority for your site,
create a unique page for each of your main keywords. Just
be sure to link the anchor text from each page to the page
that has that specific keyword as its focus.

Industry Advice: If you are a blog specialist or Web
designer by trade, offering SEO as part of your services is
a natural fit that can double the value of your work, or
more. With so many good SEO products available to help you
get professional results with minimal effort, you can
usually rely on reputation as a good indicator of potential
success. For example, eBay, Motorola and Lexmark all stake
their online success on a tool you can get for $250 at
http://www.iBusinessPR0M0TER.com.

3.) Relevant anchor text should also be at the top of your
mind when you are requesting inbound links from other
sites. This is what Google uses as its strongest
measurement to gauge the quality of your pages.

This is how you can build your brand using your own words.
Getting visitors there is only half the battle, keeping
them is a whole different ballgame.

Now, similar to tip number 2, you want to request specific
keywords be used in the anchor text leading to your pages
from other sites. And be sure to request each link to the
most appropriate page. Just linking to the homepage doesn't
cut it anymore.

Warning: Avoid reciprocal link farms like the plague! They
are so easy for Google to spot it's a joke.

If you are in need of quality links but don't have time to
setup link partnerships yourself, you may want to try a
service that facilitates "3 way linking" like the one at
http://www.3WayLinker.com.

It's very simple and really pretty ingenious. Here's how it
works... Site 1 links to Site 2. Site 2" links to Site 3.
And Site 3 links to Site 1 forming an indirect chain of one
way links.

That's all for now. Good luck!
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Article based on interview with David R. by Scott Jason.
Premier New York Website Design is David Radovanovic's
passion. After 10 years of success, in 2003 he opened
WhatsTheBigIdea.com and more recently http://www.CreativeCrib.com .
Want great graphic design in New York? See Dave.
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