Posts Tagged ‘website design’

The importance of internal linking

Monday, February 28th, 2011

One of the elements of site development and SEO that often gets overlooked is internal linking. When done right, you can kill two birds with one stone, and improve both search rankings and usability. You may be familiar with the fact that when sites link to other sites, search engines pass value for the terms/phrases used in the link anchor text. (Anchor text is the highlighted text in the link.)

When working on improving rankings for a site, people usually try to target links from other sites (external links) that have the desired anchor text related to terms they want to rank for. However, contextual internal links can also be effective in helping to improve a site’s rankings for targeted keyphrases.

Your website’s text content is filled with opportunities to potentially pass link juice to other pages of your site and to help users find their end destination.

To start improving your internal linking strategy, go through your site section by section, page by page, and see where it would make sense (from a user’s point of view), and insert some contextual links to other pages that you want to rank better.

Be sure to use the keywords/phrases (in the anchor text) that you would like the destination pages to rank for. In your links to these pages throughout the site, vary it up and don’t use the exact same phrases in anchor text, or it will look artificial to both search engines and users.

Local SEO Tactics: Seven Tips for Effective Web Page Design

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Practicing local SEO is not going to be effective if your customers aren’t led to a web site worth reading through or buying from. If you want your local business web site to reach the maximum amount of potential customers then you need strong, effective web design. You must be sure that your business web site is developing successfully. In this article I will give you seven simple tips for effective business web page design.

1.     Don’t use welcome pages

Welcome pages are pages that you sometimes see when you try to view a web site. They are usually bright and have a big picture and an invitation to visit the site such as: “Welcome” or “Enter” on them. Avoid such pages. In reality they often annoy users and so you can loose some potential clients. The users should see the content of your web site from the first sight. Remember, welcome pages are never used in effective web design.

2.     Don’t use annoying ads

Too many glaring ads can clutter up a website and really disrupt your visual appeal. Take a look at this screenshot example:


Most of the users ignore such advertisements on web sites. Try to use quality materials with some advertisement inside instead of annoying banners. As a result users will click on the links more often. Only professionally designed ads don’t annoy and are successful at the same time.

3.     Navigation must be easy and understandable

You must create such navigation that even a child could easily orientate on your web site. Avoid dropdown menus based on scripts or flash. If the users won’t immediately understand, how to orientate on your web site, they would leave. Remember, that an easy and convenient navigation is one of the first signs of good web design.

4.     A user should always understand in what part of your site she is in now.

Firstly, your navigation should be seen from each page of your web site. When the user makes a few clicks on your site, he should still understand in what part of your site he is now and how he can get to any other par he wants. This will make the search of information on your web site easier and a good web design is always convenient for users.

5. Text must be easy to read

Separate your text into small paragraphs. If there is a lot of text on the page, divide it into small blocks. Remember, good web design is always user-friendly.

6. Don’t use sounds on your site

If the user is going to stay on your web site to read some interesting material, don’t use sounds or music because it can annoy some users. If you still want to use sound effects, use them so that the viewers of your site could control the volume or turn them off.

7. Be sure your web site corresponds to modern web standards

While creating your web site you should pay attention that it must correspond to web standards and be correctly displayed in all main browsers. If your site looks great in Internet Explorer, but can’t be viewed or is displayed incorrectly in Firefox or Opera you will loose a lot of clients. Your site should work in all browsers.

It really does pay to have an attractive, quality website first and foremost. When you have a solid and effective website it makes local SEO tactics that much more rewarding and successful.