Web Redesigning and Principles of SEO

When redesigning a website, search engine optimization (seo) is taken into consideration since web design must be search engine friendly and user friendly.

The site with old content loses out because the Search Engines think (due to the lack of freshness in terms of content) and that the site is considered dormant or dead. These website could receive great traffic and a potentially lucrative increase in business, but without consideration of SEO. That's why content update is still considered as one factor since search engine is finding Fresh content on previously crawled pages to keep their search indexes always fresh.

So here are some factors when redesigning website:

Flash - Although there have been some significant advancement in Search Engine technology and they are beginning to read some flash, a site that's all flash is likely to be harmful to Search Engines. They look great, but the search engines usually won't rank them highly because the content is essentially unreadable. That's why seo are doing some alternative when they have flash site.

Frames - Frames in website make it difficult for search engines to index its pages. What's more, human visitors really struggle with frames, because difficult to read and it's really hard to get an impression of the site. We know that frames are not search engine friendly so why use frames. That's why CSS coding is alternative for framed sites.

Slow Loading - Slow loading page are both annoying to human visitors and search engine crawlers. Human visitors may not have the patience to wait for the pages to load and search engines almost always rank the faster loading pages above the slower ones. If your site has slow loading pages, they need replaced to faster loading pages.


Outdated Contents - Search Engines will simply ignore this site as if it no longer exists. It may have been ok in the past to leave content for months without updating it, but these days, it will soon slip off the radar without regularly updated content. What's more, nothing puts off a human visitor more than out of date content. Search Engines are always crawling sites that are updated in its contents.

The Power of Anchor Text

First of all what is Anchor Text? Anchor text is a visible hyperlinked text on the page.

For example:

OutsourcingTo.uS is an Australian outsourcing company with a full time onshore/offshore staff of 150 ready to maximize your online investment. Our own network of sites receives over 10,000,000 visitors yearly so we know how to maximize your online activities.

The word within the hyperlink “staff” is called the anchor text.

In a normally built site, anchor text is used to indicate the page that it links to. For example, the text "affordable web design" indicates to visitors that they can expect to see content about the site pertaining to affordable web design if they visit the link. This pattern of usage has been applied in search engine algorithms to improve the relevance of the "target" or the "landing page" URL for the keywords appearing within the anchor text.

The Anchor Text Enhances the Relevance of the Target Page

Note that the keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page pertaining to the keywords used. While the relevance of the page containing the anchor text is also enhanced to some degree (because of relevant keywords appearing on that page), the real gainer is the target page URL. Use this knowledge to build the relevance of each page of your site, through optimized anchor text containing important keywords, relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages of your site.

Search Engine Algorithms like Anchor Text

The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of site pages. All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on site's pages. In fact Google even has a special operator: allinanchor:keyword, which picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages. This really implies that Google's algorithm is configured to index anchor text as separate queryable data, thereby, making it evident, that Google considers it as one important pointer to page relevance. It has also been studied that anchor text, whether from external or internal pages, is important. It should therefore be ensured that significant attention is given to the inclusion of important keywords in anchor text.

SEO Shades

As I browse the web I encounter this old article which I got curious, these where types of hats of SEO. If you where SEO which of the following type are you?

This are the shades of SEO according to Tim Converse (the "spam fighter" at Yahoo):

1. Dark Inky Black Hat SEO: Very evil he’s a typosquatter installing spyware. Plain illegal, too.
2. Charcoal Hat SEO: Optimizing unrelated pages for all kinds of queries, but within the bounds of legality.
3. Dark Gray Hat SEO: This SEO is a splogger stealing content from other sites.
   
4. Slate Gray Hat SEO: An SEO creating link farms and such.
5. Gray Hat SEO: SEO who actually reads the search engine’s webmaster guidelines, but then tries as much “evil” as he can get away with.
6. Light Gray Hat SEO: This SEO creates original content (lots of it), but the content is still only aimed at search engines.
7. Off-White Hat SEO: This guy not only ensures the site is indexable – he’ll also make sure to get lots of backlinks from friends.
8. White Hat SEO: This person puts up the content that people are actually searching for, and prepares the site to make it very accessible. White Hat SEOs only optimize those of their pages they deem worthy to be ranking top in search engines.
9. Luminescent Pearly White Hat SEO: Not only does this SEO do everything the White Hat SEO does, the LPW Hat SEO also makes sure pages will not show up for irrelevant queries.

Via Search Engine Watch

Free Seo Tools : Collection of Helpful SEO Tools

Free SEO tools to use. Helpful to minimize time and effort. In my seo experience during my past 2 years I've been using this reliable tools for seo.

SEOpen - Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using.

* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/570

Informenter - InFormEnter adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted - no typing required.

* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/673

SEO for Firefox - SEO for Firefox is a cool free Firefox extension that pulls SEO market research data into Google's and Yahoo!'s search results.

* http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

SEO tools from SEOBOOK - http://tools.seobook.com/extensions/


Backlink Checker - http://backlinkwatch.com/

Live PR Checker - SEO tools that check what is the real PR of the site. Also to know whether it PR is fake or real.

* http://livepr.ezer.com/
* http://seopen.com/seopen-tools/pagerank.php

Keyword Suggestion Tool - This seo tool is capable of checking what keywords are popular and how many searches it generates. Good for keyword analysis when starting seo.

* http://www.wordpot.com/Default.aspx
* http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
* https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
* http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/


SEOMOZ Free Seo Tools - http://www.seomoz.org/tools

Bad Neighborhood Link Checker - This tool is intended as a guide to assist webmasters in locating potential problem areas with their linking strategies, it is not intended to dictate who you do or do not link out to.

* http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm


More seo tools to come...:D

Step-by-Step Web Designing Strategy

Even a site is already established, there are a number of basic steps that are needed to be questioned to ensure you are heading right to your main goal. The answers to these questions will form the basis for your web design strategy.

1) Firstly, what is the purpose of your site? Is it a marketing tool, a shopping cart to enable online sales, or both? What are your main objectives?
2) Secondly, what are your strengths and weaknesses? If you were in your visitor's "shoes", would you buy from the site and what would make you return?
3) Thirdly, how is your income going to be generated? Will it be from advertising, from site membership fees, from affiliate programs, or from selling your own product? What are your capabilities and how will you use them to maintain a competitive advantage over your rivals?

1) THE PURPOSE OF YOUR SITE

What is the purpose of your site? Why does it site exist? Supporting documents can explain the goals in more detail, but for your web design strategy keep it strategic and high-level.

Your main objectives must therefore must be:

1) Clear focused and specific
2) Measurable
3) Feasible and suitable for the niche you are focusing on.

2) IN YOUR VISITOR'S SHOES

Always put yourself in your website visitor's "shoes". If you were the website visitor, what would keep you on the site? What makes your site sticky? By doing this you can easily identify your strengths and weaknesses! The more focused your site it, the more likely you are to satisfy your visitors’ requirements, and the more likely they are to return and use your site in future. The layout and navigation of your web pages are going to affect the usability of your site. It is very important to get this right and to know which web technologies to use. Your website layout and navigation can make or break your site. Even more important is your Content strategy because you need to provide content that is likely to be targeted at your visitors. Are you providing the content your visitors are looking for?

3) TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE

If you are like most organizations then you are no stranger to the need to know who your site is for. Think about the profile of who comes to your site today and who you want to attract in the future. You can get valuable insights into your audience when you examine the data of your Web analytics tool to see where most visitors go, and what they are searching for.

4) HOW YOUR INCOME IS GENERATED

Informational sites usually generate their revenue from advertising, commissions, membership fees, from affiliate programs and making sales to their members or subscribers using off-the-web marketing, for example through a newsletter or direct mail. Selling is the secondary objective. The main objective of an e-commerce site is to promote an effective marketing message and to make the buying process as easy as possible. Creating a marketing base is the secondary objective. They usually have two types of customers, transactional and relational. The purchase decisions of transactional customers are influenced by short-term reasons such as price, convenience, and/or availability. Relational customers have built up a relationship with the business usually through previous contact. Their purchase decisions are based more on the customer relationship that has been built up, quality of support, and knowledge of the product or service or brand. You need to identify where your market is and what your capabilities are. You need to identify what gives you a competitive advantage over your rivals. Once you have done that you will be able to generate qualified traffic, turn the traffic into qualified leads, and turn the leads into customers. Your website strategy is therefore critical to the success of your site. It must be focused, to ensure your site is visible and attracts qualified leads, and your web pages must be usable to ensure you can convert your traffic.

The benefits of a web design strategy are many. It provides a historical reference point for the project. It seeds much better internal communications for your team. Ideally, the Design Strategy document is treated like a living document and ideas for your team’s workload and budget are measured against it. There may be reasons to shift strategy and move in different directions. When that happens your challenge will be to step back and re-tool the design strategy to meet the changing conditions.

SEO Guide for Web Designers

This is SEO guide for web designers who wants to learn about making it easier for websites or blogs to be found by search engines.

Why Should Web Designers Learn About SEO?

• SEO isn’t only for online marketers. As a web designer or front-end developer, most on-site SEO is their main responsibility.
• If the website is not search engine friendly, it might be losing a lot of traffic that designers not even aware of. Remember, besides visitors typing in “www.yourwebsite.com" and backlink referrals; search engines are the only way people can find the website.
• SEO is also a value-added service. As a web designer/developer you can sell your SEO skills as an extended service.

Each search engine has its own algorithm in ranking web pages. Understanding the general factors that influence the algorithm can affect your search result position, and this is what SEO experts are hired for. An SEO’s job has two aspects: On-Site (onpage optimization) and Off-Site (offpage optimization).

On-Site SEO: are the things that web designers can do on website, such as: HTML markups, target keywords, internal linking, site structure, etc.

Off-Site SEO: are the things that you have much less control of, such as: how many backlinks you get and how people link to your site.

This is a guide for web designing and development. The main concern is the on-site aspects. If you do your job right and design a beautiful site and produce useful and informative contents. Also you’ll get off-site backlinks and social bookmarks without even lifting a finger.

If you want to learn more on the basics of SEO. You can check this link:

Beginners Guide for SEO

Effective Web Design Useful Tips

Fast Loading Website designs

The very number 1 tip that every web designer should always follow. Designing a web site that will look fantastic but few people are going to view it if it takes a long time to load. Web Designs should be optimized for the web and should not take more than 15 seconds to load.

Browser Compatibility

Make sure your site is browser compatible. Your web site should look good in both browsers: Firefox and as well as in Internet Explorer. Don't stop designing your site as soon as you find that it looks great on IE and also in Firefox.

Minimize the use of images

By keeping your site simple but neat will keep visitors returning for more. Don't clutter your page with big, bulky images that take much time to load. Instead use tables creatively and design eye - catching icons that will draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site. Note: Visitors are usually more interested in content than in design.

Readable and neat looking fonts

Don't use Comic Sans and other fancy fonts that may not be available on most computers. If the font you use is not available in a visitors computer the web site will use the default font of your computer which will make your content much worse. So try to keep to common and professional web fonts. The fonts that I always use are Arial and Verdana.

Check for broken links

Always check for broken links within a site before uploading it to your web server. Some softwares like Dreamweaver, it can check for broken links by right clicking on any file in the Site Files Window and then clicking on Check links - Entire Site.

Web Designing Tips: What To Do and What Not to do

Make sure each page of the site has something valuable to offer.

This doesn't really relate to website design but it's actually more important than design, which is why it's the very first tip. Fundamentally a web page exists to provide something that's useful or interesting to visitors.

Avoid using some distracting images, sounds, etc.

Animation and sounds are very distracting. How can anyone concentrate on reading what's on your site when there are things blinking or playing around the page? Also, visitors who have slow connections may resent that you wasted their time by forcing them to load animations and sound files against their will. Don't distract your visitors with blinking or scrolling text, animated GIFs, or auto-loading sound.

Never annoy your visitors with pop-up windows.

Nobody likes pop ups. The only reason a site would have pop ups is because the site owner is thinking of his/her own interests rather than the readers. We all know that when we're browsing we hate pop ups, but suddenly when we switch hats and become the site owner, we lose our ability to see through the users' eyes.

More Web Designing Tips at Website Helpers