Web Design And SEO
When it comes time to launch a website or re-launch an existing site, often SEO or search engine optimization is an afterthought. SEO must be taken into consideration at all times if you want your website to rank highly in the SERP’s. Get Found Now utilizes a unique and proprietary approach to website design.
SEO and Website Usability
Website design is based upon usability. How will visitors use the site? How will they find what they are looking for? How do you get your products or services in front of your users? These along with basic usability practices are usually in the forefront of web design project meetings. If they aren’t, then you need a new website design company!
Along with those important questions and answers, search engine optimization must be in the mix or your site will get nowhere fast. Of course if your business model is based upon pay per click traffic, then you can ignore this article. If you aren’t made of money, than this outline will help you create a solid design plan that will take into consideration the most important factors in creating an Internet Presence for your company in the 21st century.
A Website Designed In Layers
The way Get Found Now designs and implements websites is through a layer system. We look at a project as having 2 distinct layers:
- The Usability Layer – this layer of a website is all about users. We make usability the primary focus and give site visitors all the tools they need to find what they are looking for and get the products or information they require quickly, preferably within 2 clicks.
- The SEO Layer - built for search engines, the SEO Layer is where keyword discovery, URL creation and other search engine optimization tactics are put to use. While deep link navigation is often thought about as a usability function Get Found Now uses it to create tiers of pages that serve as the foundation of the website and the way search engine’s crawl and index the site.
Get Found Now designs two separate websites, one for users, and one for search engines. These two layers are then connected with Web 2.0 applications. Using social network marketing techniques we combine the layers into one cohesive website that will appeal to both visitors and search engines.
This article is the first in a multi-part series that will look at Web Design and SEO. To learn more about Get Found Now and Internet Presence Management, call 727-856-4695 and speak to Victoria or Michael Stankard.
Textlinkbrokers.com Hiring – $5000 Referral Fee
Do you know anyone that is qualified to run Text Link Brokers’ Strategic Linking department? If so you could qualify for a $5,000 referral fee. I have been working with TextLinkBrokers.com for many years and would apply for the job myself if I didn’t have to move to Arizona. The position is aimed at an experienced link builder with skills in SEO and project management. Of course the right candidate would have to have serious experience with link building. Click Here For Job Details.
As far as the referral fee goes, anyone who refers the winning candidate will get $5,000 after they have been with the company for 90 days. If you don’t know about Text link Brokers, they have been around for a few years and offer link building, sponsored reviews and other advanced SEO services. I have used several of their programs to much success with several clients. The fact that they are expanding is a good sign for the paid linking industry.
If you or someone you know has the skills to direct Text Link Brokers Strategic Link Building Department you can send a resume to:
Troy Ireland, Troy –at– Textlinkbrokers.com
or Jarrod Hunt, Jarrod –at– Textlinkbrokers.com
Technorati Tags A No Go
A lot of webmasters, especially bloggers, use Technorati Tags as a means of site promotion. I have been testing them on several site for a few months now and have found that they are worthless. While the tags might have some use from a usability standpoint, that is only the case if Technorati actually serves your pages on their site when one of YOUR visitors clicks on the tag. They have had many technical issues including inbound link tracking and now they are having issues serving up relevant results from tag clicks.
I ran seven tests on seven sites last month and more than half the time Technorati failed to show results from any of the sites. In fact they show an error message that states there are no pages from the blog about “search engine optimization”. It would almost be funny if you didn’t take into consideration the time wasted with Technorati widgets and plugins.
From an SEO standpoint I have seen 0 inbound links credited from Technorati in either Google or Yahoo. This is from seven sites that each have over a thousand inbound links from other sources. There were no other tangible benefits from Technorati tags from SEO or traffic. As far as the authority, the highest number I was able to achieve was 75 on a site that is in the top 125,000 in Alexa and has a 7 PR. The site gets over 1500 unique visitors a day and not 1 came from Technorati last month.
I have removed the simple tags plugin as well as the tags code from all the sites. The next test will be using the full features of WordPress tagging. I will keep you all informed on how that goes.
For now the conclusion is Technorati is a no go from all 3 standpoints:
- SEO – no benefits in search engine placement from Technorati Tags
- Usability – there is no benefit from having visitors leave your site and go to Technorati.
- Linking – I have seen no inbound link credit from Technorati in either Google or Yahoo.
My recommendation is to loose the Technorati widgets and not waste any time with specific plugins for their tags. I will still ping their system when my blogs are updated, but will no longer go out of my way to incorporate their stuff into my sites.
ASK Added To Rank Tracker
Good news for those of us that use Rank Tracker to monitor their search engine placement. They have added ASK to the engines that they track along with AltaVista and Alexa. As ASK gets more relevant, having an easy option to track your placement is a must. If you don’t know how to submit your site to ASK, check out my post ASK XML Sitemap Submission for the inside scoop.
If you haven’t used ASK in a while you should give it a try. I have been relying on ASK more and more for research. Their main search engine is still the Teoma algorithm and even though they changed the name to ExpertRank, it is still one of the best. One thing that I have found about ASK is they give little credence to ad heavy sites. Content is king at ASK and it is a tough nut to crack from an SEO standpoint. They are ahead of the game in many ways and have long embraced social network marketing sites that are relevant.
Rank Tracker is my tool of choice for keeping track of my site’s placement. WebPosition is overkill and I just don’t like Digital Point. It is extremely fast and doesn’t take up a lot of bandwidth or computer power to run.