Ten Website Design Rules For High Search Engine Rankings

While millions of people run some sort of website, only a few - it 's estimated at only 1 to 2% - are really successful in accomplishing what they want on the Net.

The main reason for this is the lack of well defined goals and the necessary focus to achieve them. A great plan goes a long way. Part of a good plan is web design.

Successful website design lets your visitors focus on the most important part of your website: the content.
Whatever the content is, sales pages or valuable information, great website design makes your visitors feel comfortable taking notice of your content.

Because it 's your content that has to do the job, whether selling, generating leads, picking up subscribers or whatever it is that you want your visitors to do. That is your MWR, your Most Wanted Response!

Therefore, the first and most important factor of website design is to get your content indexed and listed in the search engines. No listings means no free traffic. You can still buy it, but at what cost? Better use search engine optimized website design.

So, how do you do that? Below are 10 rules for successful website design.

1. Use a search engine optimized template. Using a great template makes your life easier, as all your pages will have the same lay-out which makes adding and updating websites a breeze. Templates will save you tons of time maintaining your websites.

2. Use Meta Tags. I know, the keyword meta tag isn't that important any more. But the Title tag IS! In fact, it 's the most important meta tag and so many websites don't use it. Search engines use the title tag to see what your page is all about and list it in their result pages.
Also, they use your description tag as added information. It 's a great way to entice searches to click on your webpage when they found it.

3. Use CSS. With CSS, abreviation of Cascading Style Sheets, you can control the style and layout of multiple web pages all at once. In other words, your website layout and style design is defined in one place and one place only. Change your css file and your complete website will be updated.

4. Delete all the crap and focus on your content. Flash and (java)scripts are funny, but very often they don't serve a purpose. Instead, they fill up your visitors' computer memory and make them run slow. Dump it. Using as less code as possible is the best way to guarantee good search engine positioning.

5. Have a simple and clear navigation You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

6. Reduce the number of images on your website. Yes, I know a picture can say more than a thousand words, but many pictures don't. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. And if you have an image that says more than a thousand words, make sure you optimize it to a minimum file size and offer a larger version as an option.

7. Use a sitemap. Site maps are a great way to take the search engine robots by the hand and show them all the pages of your site, and also help them understand what each page is about which means it makes your site more search engine friendly and helps get a higher ranking.

8. Write crisp HTML that will validate.
When they arrive at your site search engine robots only see a bunch of HTML codes. No fancy images, no colored text, nothing of that kind. So to make search engines understand what your website is about and show them that it deserves to have a high ranking, you need to speak to them in their own language: crisp HTML coding that will validate!

Don't use deprecated HTML coding and make sure your website complies to web standards at w3 org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible.

9. Write one page for one keyphrase and use the keyphrase as the page name. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. Without doubt you have researched the keywords and keyphrases you want to get listed for. Now, use them as the name of these blocks and individual pages at your website. Use synonyms inside the pages, so the search engines will get a good idea what your website is all about.

10. Keep your content limited to 500 pixels.
For optimal reading convenience, a with of 500 pixels is recommended with a font size of 11 or 12 pixels. It 's the easiest way for our eyes will read the text. Use dark text on a light background.

About the Author

Case Stevens developed a hand coded, custom made website template ready for the top of the search engines and easy website maintenance. Check it out at:

http://www.websitedesignantwerpen.com

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Very Important Rules of Any Website Design

Designing a website, though quite simple to some, requires the designers and the planners to combine thoughts of what message you are trying to project. Below are a few rules that I suggest for a good quality web development plan.

1.Navigation
The single most important part of the website where more people falter is the navigation factor. The ease of navigation in your website can set you apart from your competition. The idea is simple, the easier it is for the user to browse through your website, the more pages he or she is going to end up reading and this could result in more profits for you depending upon your business model. The idea is to carefully plan your entire website before you start to actually design it. I do this with a paper and pencil. Thinking through about the various pages and the way they would be interlinked helps a lot to an easy navigational system on your website. Search engines love html(text) navigational systems; as it gives them an easier path to follow on your website.

2.Readability
You must have at some point of time encountered a website that had a, what I call eye-unfriendly color scheme. Some website owners think this will attract visitors where it does the exact opposite. Most of the times you would end up closing the eye unfriendly website without even bothering to see what the content is. So, it is again very important to make designs that don't hurt the eye. Your website represents who you and your company are. You need to choose the colors carefully keeping in mind that the entire website must have readable text and your message must be clear within each page.

3.Screen Real Estate
The golden rule is the "Content is the King" rule. If you give a good deal of your real estate to your content you are attracting more people. You should plan how you will divide the space amongst your content, advertisement, graphics and navigation menus. Compare your layout from other new websites that have attracted you. An easy layout makes it easier for your web page to be read, don"t bunch up a lot of text in one area as visitors wont even read it. Make your body paragraphs short and to the point. Your message will be read lot more in small sections rather than one big huge text block.

4.Quick Loading Web Pages
How quickly your page loads is a very key parameter for the users to like or dislike your website. We have all clicked off a website when it does not load instantly, the web is to big to wait for some websites to load, I personally think next and press the back button. I am proudly guilty of this action myself. So make sure you have limited flash and smaller images on your website. Huge flash or images will up your load time drastically. So keep it simple!

5.Compatibility
Any discussion on a good website design will not be complete without the mention of the websites compatibilities. A good designer will always test the website in multiple browsers and in multiple resolutions. It is good to plan a layout which is compatible on all the browsers and looks alright on various resolutions and nowadays also the hand held devices. Planners may however also want to consider a target group of audience and then plan the best possible layout for them and have alternatives for the others. Make sure everyone can see your website efficiently!

About the Author

Creatively yours,
Todd Herman, Senior Vice President
GlobalWebsiteCreations.comPresident
GlobalWebsiteCreating.comVisit Our Blog For More Website Development Articles.

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Some Of The Most Important Rules In Website Design

So you have decided to get your business running on the information highway known as the worldwide web or Internet. There is a lot that you need to know before you hire a web design firm, so that you can give them guidance on how you want your website built. You need to put extra focus on even the smallest details to get the best results from your site so that it will bring back a return on your investment. Here are some of the most important issues.

The first on the list of "do-not" is to never use "splash" pages. These are also known as doorway pages. If you have ever been to a site that has nothing but a very detailed high-resolution image with a message like "click here to enter" or "welcome to our site" then you know what I mean. The simple fact of the Internet is that users as a rule are in a hurry to find what they are looking for and coming to a page that wastes their time will just make them leave. You need to have a valid, content rich front page that will give them a reason to stay at your site. You will also alienate the search engines by featuring a page with little to no content.

Another big blunder I often see is the use of overly excessive banner ads which not only make your site slower to load but take people away from what you want them to see, which is your content. The experts will tell you that people tend to have banner blindness anyway so you are just wasting your website space that you allot to those ads. The better way to go is to have good content with anchor text links within the content that may prompt people to click on instead of shoving banners in their face. A few banners here and there are fine as they add variation, but don't overdo it.

Navigation is another important factor in web design and it should be clear and easy to follow. As I mentioned above most people on the web are in a hurry to find the best information they can so you want the navigation menu to be as simple as possible. This means you should avoid or minimize the fancy Flash type as well as the multiple drop down menus.

Do not use auto looping audio on your website or audio that automatically starts as soon as the page opens. If you want to offer audio on your site, give the visitor a choice to click a button to get access to it, don't force it on them. Again, you want the visitor to stay on your site as long as possible and most people will leave a site immediately that has audio they can't get rid of.

These are just a few of the things you will want to discuss with your web design team prior to the development of your website.

About the Author

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as Fairfield County web design at http://www.audinwebdesign.com

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