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If you’re in business, you’re in sales; that’s just the way it is. We are all salesmen; we all have something to sell, a product, a service, an idea, a cause, or maybe just an opinion. And if you’re in business you have a website intended to communicate the value of that which you sell.

So if you’re in the business of selling something, and your website is the vehicle you choose to communicate your sales pitch, then shouldn’t your main concern be how effectively you are communicating that message?

Communication or Analytics

Instead of concentrating on effective communication, many businesses put the emphasis on search engine statistics: how high they rank on Google, MSN, and Yahoo, with the assumption that the higher they rank, the more traffic they’ll generate, and the more traffic they generate, the more sales they’ll get. At least, that’s what we are led to believe.

Here’s the problem: almost all the rank-generating strategies are aimed at search engine spiders, not people, so you have to ask yourself, who exactly is my website communicating to, robots or human beings?

The Secret Formula Doesn’t Exist

Why are today’s business owners and executives so mesmerized by this whole search engine thing? It reminds me of the story of an infamous Hollywood movie mogul and studio head who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Instead of firing the guy immediately, he was retained for some time for the simple reason his movies made money; and the dirty little secret in Hollywood is that nobody really knows why some movies are hits and others are bombs. So you keep paying the guy you think is making you money, no matter what he does, because maybe he knows something you don’t.

What we have today is a new generation of business leaders who came of age with the Internet. These Internet technology geeks and boffins are the new Web-wizards and wunderkinds: the guys with the secret formula. But like the movie industry, nobody really has a foolproof search engine recipe for success, but since most of the technical stuff is ever-changing, and over most entrepreneurs and business executives heads, they buy into it; that is until somebody tells them the emperor has no clothes.

What’s A Web Entrepreneur To do?

You heard the old expression, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” well it has never been so true as it applies to website marketing. The simple truth about websites is that success is based on a site’s ability to communicate a marketing message that makes sense, and is understood in an easy to digest format.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Tags: Advertising, branding, communication, Marketing, sales, search engine optimization, seo, website design

You have a website, and perhaps you’re even a professional salesperson, and as such you know that the best way to sell someone something is face-to-face, but have you seen the price of gas lately?

So whether your customers are local, national, or international, the cost of getting to them is just too darn high to make any money. You could call them on the phone or email them, but with voice mail, spam filters, and all manner of gatekeepers, it is literally impossible to get to people, even when they’re waiting for your call.

It’s never been easy to sell, but in today’s jaded, cynical, frustrated business climate, the job is even harder.

Order-takers are next to useless in the field, so don’t expect the tactic to work any better on your website: you know what I mean by order-takers, the guys and gals that service fully developed territories with clients that already use your wares, and who order what they need no matter whether anybody calls on them or not.

No, what you need is a real sales presentation, one aimed at the customers you don’t have, the ones looking for new ideas and products.

Here’s seven website sales tactics to remember:

1. Use The Web’s Video and Audio Capability

Make better use out of your company’s website by adding some face-to-face ingredient through the use of audio and video. Give your audience someone they can relate to, someone who will connect on an emotional and psychological level.

2. Don’t Fall Into The SEO Trap

Unfortunately, many business owners have fallen into the SEO trap of designing their online presentations for search engine spiders not people. Sure it’s great to drive traffic to a website, but if they leave within seconds of arriving without getting your marketing message, what exactly have you achieved?

3. Technology Is Not The Solution To A People Problem

And of course, you’ve got those websites that are nothing more than a shopping cart and ordering system; a technological solution to a human problem that turns whatever is being sold into a commodity, and we all know commodity sales go to the lowest seller.

4. Be Aware of The Paradox of Choice

Some entrepreneurs think by offering everything but the kitchen sink is how to get customers; but they obviously haven’t heard of the Paradox of Choice, a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz, whose book by the same name postulates that the more choice you offer, the less likely people will make any decision at all.

5. What Is Required Is A Performer

The Web with its remote, dislocated nature requires very specific performance criteria that few people, even professional salespeople possess. You may be practiced at making presentations, maybe even immensely effective in front of a live audience or in a boardroom, but selling in person is far more forgiving than selling remotely online.

What is required is a performer, someone who looks, sounds, and acts the apart; someone who also knows how to use verbal and nonverbal techniques to deliver a message. Don’t let your ego get in the way of building your online clientele.

6. The Web Is No Place For Overheads Or Flipcharts

Selling on the Web is about building relationships the same as traditional beat-the-pavement sales, but the arsenal of techniques required is far more challenging from a psychological and performance point-of-view. An online presentation that is nothing more than a series of overhead slides, graphs, and royalty-free photos delivered with a tentative delivery will not be taken seriously from an audience that is one click away from accessing your competitors.

7. Treat Your Website Visitors Like An Audience

So what then are the criteria for creating an online presentation that sells? There are four things your online presentation must be: informative, engaging, entertaining, and memorable.

Why you ask? The thing you have to keep in mind when you want to use your website to connect to people and build a business relationship is that you can’t treat them like customers, you have to treat them like an audience, and once you make that leap of faith, you are on your way to a successful online sales presentation strategy.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

About MRPwebmedia

People ask, “What do you do?” You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience’s real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers.

Tags: Advertising, audio, branding, commercials, Marketing, presentations, sales, video, website design

Jerry Bader, Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia announced the introduction of Cache Closed an entertaining marketing resource for medium sized businesses fed-up with ineffective Web advertising schemes and the never-ending pursuit of search engine optimization rankings. See http://www.CacheClosed.com

Ontario, Canada–June 20, 2008 - MRPwebmedia, a Canadian Web marketing video and audio production firm with clients in the USA, Australia, England, and Canada announced the introduction of Cache Closed, a entertaining character who stars in a new series of videos designed to inform businesses on how to deliver their marketing messages in the most memorable manner using the full arsenal of webmedia techniques.

Jerry Bader, Senior Partner at the firm says: “Cache Closed is a digital construct, fabricated from the binary remains of lost and discarded knowledge found in the ditch beside the information highway. Cache, a combination of Max Headroom and Jim Cary’s Mask character, has absorbed theses random bits of wisdom to create a guru of marketing and branding who freely spouts his expertise and knowledge to all who will listen.”

Josh Bader, Director of Visual Design and Video Production, adds: “We already have over fifty articles on our mrpwebmedia.com website that explain how to use audio and video on the Web to deliver clients’ marketing messages in the most effective way, but we wanted to create something where the medium was the message. Cache is the perfect vehicle to explain to business owners and marketing executives feed-up with chasing search engine optimization nirvana of how to convert browsers into an audience, and an audience into customers.”

Simon Bader, Director of Audio and Sound Design continues: “Any business truly interested in maximizing their Web presence needs to understand the Web environment beyond chasing random search traffic and learn how to present material so a relevant audience remembers who you are, what you do, and why they should care. And that’s what the Cache Closed website and video series are designed to teach people: How to get noticed and be remembered.”

MRPwebmedia’s thought-provoking marketing articles have a great following and Cache is one more Web-video vehicle that extends the motivational dialog the firm has with its International clients and followers. It illustrates the cutting edge techniques and offbeat point-of-view of a Web-marketing firm that understands how to get a message across, and it showcases the full complement of services that MRPwebmedia offers.

Jerry Bader goes on to say: “People ask us, ‘What do you do?’ You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients’ marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design. What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to our clients’ audience’s real needs. We tell our clients’ stories so their brand and their message embeds in the minds of their clients. In short, we are corporate storytellers, and the Cache Closed videos and associated articles show how it’s done, and why.”

Jerry Bader, Senior Partner, MRPwebmedia
Tel: (905) 764-1246
info@mrpwebmedia.com

http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads
http://www.cacheclosed.com
http://www.sonicpersonality.com
http://www.136words.com

Tags: audio, branding, buzz, Marketing, positioning, video, viral, website design

A lot of people think summer is slow and not the time to focus on their websites.

So many people are out of town, some businesses slow down. Not to mention we all have concerns about the economy right now.

I want to propose a different perspective.

1. People are sticking closer to home because of high gas prices. You’ve all heard the term “Staycation” thrown around by the media. If you watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart you heard John Hodgeman (the PC guy from the commercials) create his own new word for the “stick closer to home because gas is way too expensive” phenomenon: “Holistays”.

No matter what you call it, people are sticking closer to home. People are shopping online even more.

It’s a great time to offer a shipping special. With the cost of shipping going up, again due to the cost of gas, a shipping special is much appreciated right now.

You can tap into this situation by playing it up. Just as The Daily Show created a segment that was funny and garnered a lot of attention; you can find a way to make the current situation work in your favor.

2. If things are a little slow, it is actually the perfect time to devote some of your time to your website.

It is suggested that you review your website and refresh it at least once a year. Just a handful of suggestions for you:

• Now is a good time to check the links and pages within your site and make sure everything is in working order. Get rid of those pesky 404 errors from broken links.
• You could also come up with a summer special.
• Jazz up the site.
• Add some testimonials.
• Look at your web stats and see if you can increase conversions.

3. Now is when you absolutely must start focusing on your upcoming holiday campaigns.

No one wants to think about the fall and then winter and the holiday season, while enjoying the sun and probably some time off. However as we all know, time passes quickly and I hate to be the one to say it, but holiday season will be upon us before we even know it.

• Start planning your campaigns
• Write your ad copy
• Design your graphics

4. Top rankings don’t happen over night. It takes time for the engines to rank your site for your top keywords. It is not too soon to start your optimization in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season.

On the flip side; if summer is your busy time, you don’t want to ignore optimization now. When the busy time settles down a bit, you want optimization in place to help bring in traffic to boost what would normally be a slower time for you in the fall.

No matter which way you look at it, and no matter when your busy time is, the truth is putting off optimization is never a good idea. If you don’t need free targeted traffic from the search engines, then this won’t apply to you. I don’t really know of any website that isn’t looking to increase traffic and get more sales though.

So take a look at getting your site optimized and prepare for the upcoming change in seasons. You aren’t going to be happy if the holiday season approaches and you aren’t positioned to benefit from it.

For those reasons and more now is actually the perfect time to focus on your website’s growth and improvement.

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Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

Tags: Ecommerce, website design

While creating a website can either be a simple or complex procedure it is always advised that you start simple and add on from there.  Once you have a basic design it is a lot easier to add in advanced functionality.Create a standard design that runs through the website, this is usually done by using base templates or include files.  The search engines will read each file once per visit.  What this does mean is that once the bot has cached the file it won’t need to reload it each time it views a page.  More importantly this will also prevent these lines of code being replicated and taking up a good percentage of unique content on each page.  Although it is now suggested that the major search engines can now recognise boilerplate content and filter it out for the most part.CSS while being valuable to human visitors as it quickly styles a page with quicker load speeds this advantage can also be carried over to the bots.  It has long been speculated that the quicker a page loads the more likely the bot is to continue indexing your website.  It would almost seem that a time limit is posed on each visit, the more pages the bot can index in that time frame, the better for the site.

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Tags: Web Design, website design

Creating a website is a fairly simple or very complex exercise depending on your needs. The best way to start is always go simple. Create a standard design that you will use to run throughout the website. The reason for creating a stock standard look and feel is so that the visitor very quickly gets used to navigation on your website and is able to find exactly what it is they are looking for. With a standard design it is also a lot easier to help drive home the branding of your service or product.

CSS, that’s Cascading Style Sheets, is a great way to keep a constant look and feel of a website consistent. Even better than including style to each page you can create individual files and simply include them in your pages. While the benefits are too many to remember at the moment, I see the greatest benefit of using CSS being the fact that you can make a single change to a single file and the changes will be global. You update one page and all your pages are updated in a single move.

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Tags: seo, website design

A landing page is the first page the web user arrives at using a specific URL, or clicking a link in an email or at another site. They are popular because they are more effective at accomplishing their purpose than standard pages. However, there are certain characteristics that effective landing pages have in common - here are seven of those characteristics.

1. The landing page should have only one objective. The objective can be for the reader to buy a product, sign up for a newsletter or to click on an active link to go to another page. The action can be anything that you want. The key is there is only one thing you are asking the reader to do. There is no confusion for the reader - they either take the action or they don’t.

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Tags: landing page, website design

A web site template is essentially a finished generic site. It is designed with all the graphics and coding to help you put your website online with as little cost — and in as little time — as possible.

Templates run anywhere from $30 to $200 — a professional design will likely cost you 10 times that. Starting with a good template can also increase the speed of the website creation process by up to a factor of 10. All you (if you have the skills) or your designer (if you don’t) need to do is customize the template to meet your needs.

However, there are even more compelling reasons for starting with a template:

First, you probably know by now that web site planning is hard work and — more than that — it’s critical work. However, did you also know that most of your project costs are committed in the first few decisions you make? Efficiency expert Joseph Romm (in “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution”) states:

“Although up-front building and design costs may represent only a fraction of the [project's] life-cycle cost, when just one percent of a project’s up-front costs are spent [on design], up to 70% of it’s life-cycle costs may already be committed.”

It’s just like the old saying known well to construction managers: when designing a building, you’re going to make all your worst and most costly mistakes that day. That’s just the way it is, and there’s no getting around that, so — the goal is always to work to minimize those costs, and templates can go a long way towards achieving that goal.

A great template can give you a leg up on your initial design challenges. Specifically, the two most critical design challenges you’ll face on that first day is 1) coming up with a visual design that will compellingly draw your customers/clients “in” and 2) coming up with a specific information architecture that will expertly organize your site’s information in such a way that your customers/clients can immediately understand and use it. A good, well-chosen template will take into account good information architecture, and it will have a compelling visual design.

If you’re not sure how to evaluate the visual design and informational organization of a template, you should consult with a knowledgeable designer who has usability experience.

Finally, if you’re looking to build an eCommerce site, in addition to the above benefits, a good eCommerce template can help you solve the sales funneling problem, i.e., solve the problem of how to get customers to move from an awareness of your product to making the decision to purchase your product.

The acronym AIDA describes the four stages that you typically need to facilitate converting customers into buyers. Specifically, there is first Awareness - they realize that a number of possible actions is available to them (to meet their needs/solve their problem); Then comes Interest - they actively self-select and show a preference for a particular course of action; Then comes Desire - their enthusiasm grows as they investigate the course of action; Then finally comes Action - they are moved to act and reap the benefits of the course of action, i.e., they purchase your product or service.

The topic of AIDA is a big - and admittedly - a complicated one. For example, there are many performance-based landing page optimization and testing companies out there that specialize in website tests with non-parametric proprietary technology. The goal? “Tuning” a website by a set of models known to increase conversion rates. For a fuller treatment of this topic, check out “Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites (VOICES)” by Andrew Chak.

Be sure you talk to a qualified web developer and/or designer before purchasing any template to help you make sure it is the right one for you.

About the Author

Christopher Sky is the owner of Brooklyn Sky Design, a small boutique web design shop in Brooklyn New York that has several years experience in both application web programming (e.g., ASP.Net, Flash-Actionscript) and in web site design. Brooklyn Sky Design understands the importance of solid usability and design principles and how to apply them so that your customer’s initial perception of your site’s value is positive. This encourages them to not only purchase your products and services, it also encourages them to become repeat customers.

Tags: templates, website design

You have the layout complete. The text is done. Let’s Build! Wait. Make sure you have all your ducks in a row first before throwing up any old website. Stand out, be different, and showcase your product in a stellar setting. Check out these tips for designing a website that will quickly convert traffic to sales! Clean code with a crisp marketing message, coupled with a search engine friendly design might just knock the socks off any search engine that comes crawling your way.

Slappin’ Ya in the Face Obvious

You’d be surprised by how many people say, “…but my phone number is right there!” …But is it, really? Is your call to action on your website so pronounced that it practically hits your potential buyer-customer square between the eyes? If not, you might want to fix that. Studies show five seconds is all you’ve got to captivate your audience with a bright call to action, or a custom graphic to make it obvious. Hook, line and sinker them with a sheer cut, eye popping call to action! Whether it’s a “Call Today”, “Book It”, or “Buy Now” - make sure the Pick ME cue is apparent and obvious to your target audience.

Get Ready to Rumble…

We’re all human. Competition runs in our blood. Everyone wants to be first or “the best”…carry this attitude over your website and you are sure to beat out your competition! Your website is your virtual store, and if you don’t possess this thinking already, you need to. Invest in your website, as its seen 24 hours a day, seven days a week by potential clients all over the world. Be prepared and get educated, as a website is a terrible thing to waste. The good old days of tweaking things here and there and wham! …top ten placements, is over. Invest your time and hire a good SEO firm to help you market your business the right way.

Find out who’s the hottest in your industry and make it a goal to beat them. With over 180 million searches on the web today, it is imperative to research keyword phrases that your competition is going after. What are their marketing tactics and are they working? Do they have an email campaign located on-site? What are their credentials? Does the website offer coupons, discounts or hot deals? It’s the internet my friend, the competition is steep and all bets are off. So, roll up your sleeves, put on your gloves, and get ready to rumble! Or, research an internet marketing firm that specializes in both search engine optimization and website design that can fight the battle for you.

Simple Simon Wins

Being a “Simpleton” ain’t all that bad these days. Just because the world turns at record breaking speeds doesn’t mean your website has to. Too much going on, whether there are words upon words, or graphics up the wazoo, can do more harm than good. Be cautious before slapping up just any old image or using too much text to get your point across. We all know that “Content is King!”, but Optimized Content reigns supreme. By strategically placing the right keywords in your Title Tags, Meta Data Tags and throughout the body of your website, your business will benefit. Clean design, concise code, and fresh marketing ideas that are clear to the end user will help you get the leads and generate the desired sales you are looking for.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

Search engine optimization…what’s all the hype about!? Internet competition is booming -open your eyes and smell the code! If you have a beautiful website, but it’s not converting…you’ve wasted your time and money. A well built website with search engine optimization in mind is a goldmine at your finger tips. What’s the first step in optimization? Researching and determining a list of keywords that will drive traffic to the site and convert into sales. Test out various keywords, find out what your competition is and let it ride. For the keywords that don’t convert, bag ‘em. Expand your focus to reach broad based keywords as well as long tail keyword phrases. The narrower the keyword is, the more likely the user will convert on your page.

Widgets are In

What is a widget? Widgets aid in the process of interacting with your target audience. When your potential customer/buyer installs your widget on their webpage, blog or social media networking profile - you have won a valuable friend! Widgets provide a great way to strengthen the bond between your existing customers and any newbie’s who are interested in your product. Get new customers and provide a widget for them to interact with you. Personalization is “key”. Almost anything can become a widget - from games to stock tickers or audio players - put your thinking caps on and give your customers the option!

Smarty Pants Always Test.

This is true. Successful websites are successful because webmasters test their work. A great way to test your website to see if your design is working is through the A/B Split method. These tests run concurrently, at least for a couple of weeks to gain true results. A/B testing provides real world, data-driven, unbiased results based on your target market. There is now even an easy to use A/B Split testing program through the Google Website Optimizer tool! Check it out and win big. Go ahead - be a smarty pants…you know you want to!

Time to Analyze

Yes, folks - it’s time to analyze. You might think the hard work is done, but it’s now time to see if all your work has paid off successfully. You’ve created this gorgeous website perfectly equipped with clear calls to action, clean code and search engine friendly site architecture - now what? Let it ride and hope for the best? NO! Test, test and analyze your findings.

Does your hosting company offer a stats program? If so, fire that baby up and analyze what is working, what can be tossed out and what needs to be amped up. Focus on unique visitors, time on site, referrals, and what keyword phrases are driving the most targeted traffic. A stat program is your friend, NOT your enemy. Embrace your website’s analytics and learn from them to tailor your website, your search engine optimization and your business model after this information. Google also has a free analytics program that involves placing a simple code before the </body> tag on pages you’d like to track. Fast, effective and proven.

If you are a “do-it-yourselfer”, I hope these tips helped you with the marketing of your business. If you are too busy and are looking for a firm to handle both the building of your website and the marketing - research a good SEO firm. Count on a professional internet marketing company to shine through and get your hard work to pay off. Good luck!

About:

Sarah Lamansky is a Search Engine Marketing Manager at Mannix Marketing, Inc. in Glens Falls, NY. Please contact us for all of your search engine marketing, website design/development and advertising needs. With a positive approach, streamlined goals, and over Ten Years in the search engine optimization industry, We Get You Found On The Web AND increase your sales. For website tips, advertising ideas or a FREE search engine optimization quote, please contact us. Got ten minutes? Let’s talk.

Tags: website design

As a web designer what should you know in order to build a search engine friendly website, what points you need to cover and what tools you need to use.

First let’s all agree that we professional web designers do write good semantic markup and not the old fashion table based designs. This is something essential, why? Because search engines are just like people, they don’t like to read a lot of unnecessary markup and get board quickly that they might leave your website before they crawl it all. They also can’t determine which part of the markup is important and which is not such as lists, menu or titles.
That’s why you should make sure that you are inserting the right markup in the right place. I’m not saying that writing the semantic markup will boost up your traffic and put you at the top of the SERPs but it will make crawling and understanding of your website much easier.

Now how do we make the search engine spider while visiting our website knows the good pieces of that site? That’s very simple and we will come to it.

Header

Let’s start our journey; what you need to do first is to add the regular Meta data at the top of your HTML header, title tag followed by keywords tag, and finally the description tag - in this order; then you can attach JavaScript’s and CSS files. Why? Because search engines will read these pieces of information the first thing, so if they are at the top you will make their life much easier.

Please note that every page has its own unique Meta data, so don’t duplicate the Meta data and use it on every page of your website.
Footer, the power

Let’s tackle something else, let’s talk about the footer. Footer where you add the copyrights and some other links is a good place for another navigational element using your keywords listed in <UL> as you did with the navigation above.

This is not spamming and we are not stuffing the page with tones of unnecessary links, for some websites this could be very good especially if your website have long pages, so when users reach the end of the page (if they did scroll) they will find another navigational assistant.

Your body, the gold mine

Now, let’s go to the next part of your exercise, it’s the body; the base of all the good information that search engines are crawling to find.

In the body of your HTML make sure to start your markup with the menu or your navigation DIV and give it an ID call it navigation or menu or whatever you want to call it, by this the first thing search engine finds when it comes to the body is the navigation where usually your most important keywords are listed there.

Put these navigational elements in a list <UL> because that’s what they are; and each one of them are titled with a description of its function. By this; search engine can crawl your whole website (Make sure that your navigation is consistent and exist in every page of your website, this is purely usability issue).
Note: If you are using flash, images, or JavaScript’s navigation then you better stop that as they are unrecognized by search engines and not accessible or usable at the same time.
Now you have built your navigation with links of your most important keywords and told the search engine that these are important items (as they are listed at the top of your body tag and are built as links, and each has its title attribute). Isn’t that’s fun and simple?

Note: adding the navigation at the top of your body tag doesn’t mean that it will appear at the top of the page, with CSS you can control that and float it to the right or left on your page.

Now we’ve covered two of the website parts, lets’ now dive in the most important part of your page. The content part where all the good stuff could be found (assuming you are building a good website that can benefit the mankind).
Since this part of the website is totally different from website to another and from webpage and the other even in the same website, so I will give general recommendations.
First start your content area with breadcrumb, breadcrumb is something very important for every website, it tells the users where they are, and it’s a good place to add your keywords to it with descriptive title attributes.
Breadcrumbs are supposed to be at the top of the content area and, they are the first thing a search engine read when crawling this area.

Second add to your content area the most important keywords as heading for that part, use <H1><H2><H3> for that. By this search engine spider will understand that you are pointing it to an important area of your website. The idea is to use the appropriate markup to present your content.

Note: it’s not recommended to stuff your page with keywords and links, so use them wise and carefully or it will turn on you. What is good for users is good for search engine spiders as well. Search engines are tools people use them to reach their goals.

As a web designer you can control the placement for each element inside that area and according to it’s impotence you can take it upper from the markup side.
Your recommendation for the layout is very important in this stage, that’s why you should have a strong understanding of the nature of every page in the website and every section.
Connectable

Try to make your pages reachable by two to three clicks and are connected to each other where I can reach the first page from the third one and vise versus. You also want to decrease the links to external pages, so avoid elements as much as you can that are pointing to other website (this is differ from website to another depending on their nature and objective).
While we are talking about links; put into your mind to limit your page links to 100 according to Google recommendations.

Always use title tag and link attributes for your images and links, this is very good place to add extra keywords (but don’t use this to spam the spiders).

File size is considerable

While building your page always remember light is good, so try to avoid 200KB websites and try to limit your self with 30 to 40 KB with higher text to code ratio.
Rich Internet Application

Try to avoid adding your content that has your most important keywords inside flash, JavaScript’s, AJAX or images. Don’t hide that valuable content from the search engine spiders. Always remember that building a website is for professional and you are that one, your recommendations should be for the client and the user benefit.

Let’s sum it up

I think by this I’ve reached the end of the story on how should you as a professional web designer build your website, what are the good elements and how to structure your layout. You should know that there are a lot of elements that control website ranking, what we’ve discussed here was the web designer part of the equation and nothing more. Always depend on the standard instead of trying to work around the system.

My aim of this article is to highlight the web designer part for designing usable and in the same time search engine optimized pages.

About the author

I’m currently employed as Creative & Media Manager at Linkonline a wholly owned subsidiary of LINKdotNET in Cairo, Egypt. Most know me as web designer, search engine optimizer, user experience consultant or any combination of the three.

Tags: web designers, website design