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SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design
By Chesa Keane
Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet
marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and
optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive
traffic to your website for successful, long-term results. You
wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall
without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice looking
website designed without expanding your web presence in order
to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed
correctly to begin with, follow-on SEO efforts will have limited
results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to
bring about productive SEO results:
- Create an attractive website that is complementary to your
company image and provides your targeted audience with
information about you, your company and your products and/or
services.
- Design a website that has a call-to-action in the form of a
purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other
commitment from your visitor.
- Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business
promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business,
products and/or services with the many follow-on strategies that
drive traffic to your website.
- Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by
meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and
attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services
based on a strong reputation.
- Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website
resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products
and/or services by evolving as your market demands.
This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of
several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2)
Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3)
Creating long-term popularity on the internet. However, it all
starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation
and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is
true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive
but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these
websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply
followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a
good image as well as simply pushed information out to the
viewer.
These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:
- Good web design will complement and enhance the company
image and offline marketing campaign products creating a
corporate branding if done well.
- Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper
into the web of information provided by the website will keep the
visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your
products or services.
- Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye
and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the
route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.
- Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly depends on how
the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the
frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to
the website.
- Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep
the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what
you intended to offer.
- Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be
concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple
themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the
different markets, then tie each website back to the others by
linking.
- Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps
your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from
treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be
ranked lower by the search engines.
Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content. But
how that content is presented is what makes the difference.
(c)2005 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for 10 years through internet consulting, web development and search engine optimization. Go to http://www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization Checklist.
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/9693.html
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| Some other articles by Chesa Keane | |
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