Basic WEB Design 101

WHO? First let's consider who should design your web site. Almost everyone knows that they now teach basic web design in High School! Today's teenagers are computer and network savvy. And with the addition of learning how to use graphic design software like Microsoft's FrontPage and Macromedia's Dreamweaver in high school, any teenager can design a web site. We have had several customers come to us with web sites designed by a neighbor's son or a teenager one of their children was dating, or some other teen they knew. Many of them build graphically pleasing and functional web sites. If you are building a personal web site, that's great. You don't need to be found by search engines and you are not marketing or selling. If you are marketing or selling, avoid the amateur trap. It may look good to you, but probably not to a search engine. Get a professional web company.

Professional? So how do I pick a professional? There are an abundance of ways including querying the Internet Search Engines including your area or town in the query. But once you have found one, You have to determine what you have. Do I have a "graphics designer", a web designer, a marketing company, or some mixture? And what really are the differences?

Graphic Designer - The layout is terrific. It has lots of graphics and is very pleasing to the eye. It really looks like we are a million dollar company and we are sure it will represent our company in the best possible image. But unfortunately, what you see that pleases you so much and looks so good to your eyes, looks terrible to the search engines. Meta tags, alt text on all images, anchor text and content are all lacking. Search engines will hate it and your web site, although graphically pleasing and functional, will never get any real ranking in a search engine. This designer could be anybody from your next door neighbor's son to a professional "web designer".

 

Marketing Company - They really have a flair for words and catch phrases, they incorporated messages in flash into your web site. You would be proud to send this web site to anyone. It looks good and works well. You like the look so much you want to convert it to glossy flyers and use it as a mailer. It is brief, to the point, but yet still gets the concept of your marketing plan across to whoever you send the flyer or brochure to.

 

That's great, if it were a mailer, brochure, or flyer, but it's not. It is an Internet web site. Search engines search for content for their users and their popularity among users is dependent on the relevance, quality, and quantity of the content they provide based on the search phrase they type in. If your designer has treated your home page as a marketing brochure and has limited its content, you will not do well in search engines.

 

Web Designer - A true web designer will be able to take your marketing message and incorporate it into a pleasing graphic design, and provide the programming behind your web site to give it high visibility in a search engine. If your home page barely meets the 200 word minimum limit, you have a non-internet marketing company. If it looks great, but lacks the meta tags and other structure required to be search engine friendly, you have a graphic designer. You need someone who can do all three and knows where to compromise for search engines without losing your audience when they get a viewer to your site.

 

In 1994, if you wanted to do a web site, you created it, went to "Yahoo!" (the only search engine) and registered it, and you most certainly ranked well as their weren't too many other web sites in the same category. But this is 12 years later and many things have changed There are anywhere from 100's of thousands of web sites to millions of web sites competing for a placement in search engines with the same keyword phrases as your web site. You have to follow all the rules, cross the t's and dot the i's. Or you will be relegated to somewhere in the abyss of those other 4 million web sites that are in the search engine but not in the top 50 sites.

Lets discuss web site size! Click here

Now you may also want to see our paper on the "Art Of Search Engine Registration"

Do you want some history on search engines and who was the first!