SEO Friendly Design: Part 3 – Navigation

November 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Continuing our discussion of search engine friendly design considerations I offer you part 3 of a 6 part series on SEO friendly design and the important design aspects of website construction and how these practices relate to the subject of SEO.

Use text and css for navigation whenever possible.

Search engines love clear, keyword rich, text links. There is nothing more certain in the universe.

The second most certain thing is that designers like to create visually rich navigation schemes out of images. This is a mistake if you do it the wrong way. Your site navigation is a very important part of how search engines and users get around the site so you should make it extremely easy for them. Read more


Posted by chris.auman | Filed Under Blog 

SEO friendly design: Part 2 – Organization and research

November 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Continuing our discussion of search engine friendly design considerations I offer you part 2 of a 6 part series on SEO friendly design:

Take the time to organize

In addition to a solid system of organization for your SEO campaign, a good “best practice” is to spend a lot of time organizing your content and categories before starting your design so your information architecture is sound. How your content is labeled, grouped and worded is very important. Keyword research is an important–and necessary–part of this (as we all know) and probably deserves a line item of it’s own but we’ll include it here. (More on this later)

As a designer myself I tend to dive directly into the creative process and mold things into a workable solution. I’m definitely not a planner and sometimes have to take a step back and put pencil to paper and think through things a bit. Actually, for large sites it might be necessary to spend just as much time in the planning and organization stage as you do with the creative phase.

You must take the time to think through how you’re going to get people (and the search engines) to your content and plan for changes and growth. A properly planned site will be much more user friendly and far more crawlable by the engines. Read more


Posted by chris.auman | Filed Under Blog 

Ten ways to use LinkedIn.com

November 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment

What it is:

linkedin-logoLinkedin.com, the professional’s version of social media networking can be an effective way to grow your business. There are a number of ways that you can use this valuable, free tool in the goal of growing your network, staying in touch with current contacts, marketing, education and ultimately having a business “presence” outside of your website to keep you top-of-mind with past and present colleagues. In the world of business, networking, generating leads and marketing is always important, but only if your efforts pan out. Usually this means consistent contact with your network and clients. LinkedIn is an excellent tool to help you stay in touch with your network and clients and vice-versa. Read more


Posted by chris.auman | Filed Under Blog