Site Goals
Many web site designers attempt to create visually appealing pages, which will impress the surfer with designers talents or knowledge in knowing the latest available options and fads. Often, one of the biggest mistakes made is to create web sites and pages that simply appear as a brochure. They fail to take into consideration what the Internet is used for, as a resource for information. Often, marketing techniques that work in hard copy brochure or other media such as television or radio, will not work on the Internet. Text copy taken verbatim from brochures or similar marketing materials simply pasted into a document beside some scanned images, and expected to attract potential clients in the same manner as traditional marketing methods is folly.
A good web designer will take into consideration not only the material that a business presently has, but also issues that will attract and provide Internet browswers with enough information to provide credibility as well as giving some service. Internet marketing has for to many web designers, been seen as some way to sell retail quickly and make a quick buck. Long term goals are forgotten as is the potential of simply providing a means of public relations and exposure while showing credibility in the products or services offered.
Site Design
In designing sites, with the above in mind, many designers really do not have the best interests of the client in mind. They often fail to take into consideration how their client will be found in search engines and promotion of the site is then left up to the business without any guidance, or guidance that is very poor in quality. Recently, as a result of our Search Engine Submission Service, we submitted a URL for a client who had their site designed by a well regarded designer. After the submission took place, the client was upset that their site did not appear in any of the search engines under the key words they needed to be found in if their site was to be succesful. We looked at the site for the client and discovered that there was literally no text on the site for any search engines to index! The whole page was done in graphics with clickable links, therefore there was nothing that could be indexed.
The page did look quite sharp, but it was an excercise in futility to have such a great looking page, yet not have the necessary criterion to be indexed to a search engine database.
Page Creation
Because of the great popularity of the Internet, many businesses know the need to provide information about their products or services in order to compete. Many people have attempted to take advantage of this and offer web design services, or in some cases, in order to save a small amount of money, companies have purchased HTML editors that promise to help them create professional looking web pages. Many of the so called professional web designers have very little knowledge of HTML language and rely solely on the editors. In many cases, this can lead to great problems, as pages are put together that are compliant only with one or two of the latest versions of a particular browser, and sometimes, with only one browser. It is pointless to have your site stuffed with the latest HTML tags when the majority of Internet surfers are still using browsers that do not recognize these tags. Many designers have no idea of cross platform compatibility issues, and often what may have visual appeal in Internet Explorer will look dreadful in Netscape 3.1.
One of the problems with HTML editors is that often, they create pages without meeting the standards of WWW3 HTML. If the HEAD area of your document is not done correctly, it can adversely affect how a search engine indexes and rates your page. Often, even with the most popular HTML editors, it is impossible to fix this problem and the only way to correct it is to know HTML and the proper order for the items that go into the HEAD of an HTML document.
Often in attempts to increase their clients standings in search engines, designers will use techniques to stuff a document with keywords. Often, this is done in the Meta Tag area, and in the past, search engines did use this as a means to score relevancy. However, this has now become considered as spamming, and what has happened is that many many unscrupulous designers have tried stuffing totally irrelevant keywords in order to have the page as high as possible in many categories, even those categories or key word searches that had nothing to do with what the site was about.
In continuing to use this method, many designers run the risk of having a site completely banned from a search engine! Do you want to run that risk? There are acceptable methods for various search engines to score higher relavancy on particular key words, but caution must be used. Does your web designer have this knowledge or information?
Some design techniques such as the use of frames can also impact negatively, if not done correctly and extra steps taken, on how a search engine locates and indexes your page. A great looking site with navigable frames will be of little use to you if no one visits.
For some tips on ensuring your site is well designed and indexable, please continue on to PART 2.
