Archive for February, 2010

Why Don’t Web Design Templates Work?

Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Web design templates

Warning: Web design templates CROWD the top of your web site!

Web design templates don’t work because they crowd the top of your web site with images, forcing the navigation structure and text to be low on the page, so that users continually have to scroll down on the page to see important information.

The images may be fantastic (and that’s what they tempt you with, the lovely designs), but these designs come at a BIG price because all you see on each page is the lovely graphics and not the navigation structure: you can’t see the navigation structure, because it is  too low on the page. Or perhaps the navigation structure is higher, but you can’t add links to it, making the design useless to you in the long run (never assume you will not need more links at some point in the future).

Many design templates also severely limit how you can edit the title and description metatags, making search engine optimization difficult, if not impossible.

Before you decide on that web design template that you think will be perfect for you, think again: you may be paying too high I price (and I don’t mean in money) for that template if you can’t edit it freely, and if your site is not user-friendly.

Posted in General Web Design Tips, Starting Out | No Comments »

Limit the Length of Your Title and Description Tags

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

caution2Here’s something that you can do on your own to optimize your web site — and you won’t have to pay any money  to a website optimization service in order to do it:

Limit your title tag to 12 words, or between 60-90 characters; and limit your description tag to 25 words, or approximately 125 characters.

The days of being able to jam the title and description metatags with as many keywords as possible are long gone. The algorithms set up by the search engines can detect this ploy, and will penalize you for it.

In your source code, simply find the information between the title tags, which look like this:

<title>text here</title>

and the information within the description metatag, which looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”text here.”>

and fill these tags with keyword-rich text that does not go beyond the limits I just described.

Be sure to insert unique title and description tags on each separate page of your website as well.

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Posted in Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

Slow and Steady Wins the Race — with SEO

Friday, February 12th, 2010

the-little-engine-that-coulSearch Engine Optimization is an ongoing process, and not a one-time deal (that is, if you want lasting results).

Like The Little Engine That Could (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!), a small website that regularly posts new (and valuable) updates will outlast the fly-by-night websites built by start-up companies that assemble a site, launch it,  and never touch it again. Warning: If you are in the if-I-build-it-they-will-come mindset — think again.

Search engines give preference to web sites that are regularly updated with valuable information. The biggest mistake people make in marketing their web site is to fail to make regular updates. Imagine yourself in Google’s place: you’d give preference to web sites that are ALIVE AND CHANGING rather than web sites that have been launched and then never amended.

It’s a common misconception to think that one can launch a web site, and then the visitors will come. Unless you are a celebrity (or suddenly infamous), simply launching a web site will not bring in clients.  Sure, your rankings may jump temporarily after you have launched the site (because the search engines know that you are new), but what’s new quickly (very quickly) becomes old on the worldwide web.

If you are unable to update your web site yourself, consider starting a blog (one that resides on your server, along with your web site files) as a way to continuously provide new and valuable information that will attract the search engines, and new clients as well.

Posted in Marketing Your Website | No Comments »