We’d like to invite you to review this four part introduction about why we think Wordpress is a great solution for managing the content of your website. It’s only 20 minutes total. It’s a great overview if you are considering Wordpress for your website and it serves as a good, educational overview for those that need a basic introduction on how to use the software.

Part 1 – Introduction, history and the basics

Part 2 – Pages and Formatting

Part 3 – Posts, Categories and Publishing

Part 4 – Additional information and features

BONUS – Wordpress Tips and Hints

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. Affordable content management systems
2. How to create a two column page of content in Wordpress
3. Pay-per-click management services

8 Elements of an effective E-Commerce website

As you may know, e-commerce is a big deal these days. According to comScore, $29.1bn was spent online in November and December, 4% more than the 2008 holiday season. The fastest growing e-commerce categories were jewelery and watches, and consumer electronics. According to a Motorola study 51% of shoppers overall and 64% from the 18 to 34 age group used their mobile phones for in-store shopping-related activities during the holiday season. This included comparing prices, finding user reviews, and making a purchase via mobile devices.

So now you’ve decided that it makes sense to take your own business online? That’s great. Here’s a few things we always consider when designing an effective e-commerce website.

1. Make It Clear Why People Should Purchase from You

When customers come to your website for the first time, make sure it’s clear what you sell and make sure you have an effective up-front value proposition. An up-front value proposition is the core value that is woven into the design and organization of the entire website. Let the user know why they should buy from you. Is it because you have the lowest prices available on the web? Or do you offer the highest quality products where price is less of a concern? Maybe you have one-of-a-kind items that you can’t find anywhere else? Maybe you have the widest selection of products and they’re never out of stock. Think about this and what will separate you from the online crowd.

2. Provide Many Ways to Find Products but keep it simple

Customers shop in different ways. If you sell watches, a customer might know exactly what they want and type in the name or even model number. A search box is ideal for this. They might admire a certain manufacturer. A search box or pre-sorted list by manufacturer might work best. Some customers might just be shopping for a watch for a gift. Sorting all watches by male and female is another option. Maybe your watches could be sorted by style? Think through different ways to find your products so they’re easy to find based on how the customer might search.

3. Keep It Convenient

Everyone has been to an e-commerce store that is flat out confusing and not user-friendly. Our goal is always to keep everything simple and convenient for the customer. Make it quick and easy for them to get to your products. Keep clicks to a minimum. Studies have shown that customers prefer product images over large blocks of text. Get them to the product images as fast as possible and keep the text short. Give customers easy ways to find out what’s new, show them pricing at a glance and provide ways to help them move from selection to a finalized order with ease.

4. Provide ways to help customers like you were there with them

Get into the mind of your customers. What would you do if you could offer help to every customer that comes to the website like they were walking into your brink-and-mortar store? You would provide recommendations like top selling items. After they found what they wanted you would give them some other options. Maybe these options would be similar items, high quality items, more expensive or less expensive items. You would allow them to compare and make good decisions. After they found what they wanted you would try to up-sell them. If they were purchasing a suit, you would take them over to the tie racks or possibly over to your dress shirts. You might sell them a complimentary belt or a pair of shoes. You can do all of this online.

5. Privacy, Security and Trustworthiness

Once the customer has found you and found what they want, you need to assure them that you’re a reputable place to make a purchase. People are weary of online security and fraud so do everything in your power to make them feel at ease. Provide a phone number prominently throughout your site. Offer a privacy policy that ensures they’re personal information will be kept safe and not shared. Provide clear ways to ensure that their credit card information is secure and encrypted. Also provide ways to show that you are a reputable store. Provide information about your history, testimonials, customer reviews and anything you can think about to let the customer know that you’re not a fly-by-night vendor.

6. Checkout should be simple and straightforward

After a customer has made their selections, make sure that you make it easy to add multiple items to a shopping cart and then find those items later when they’re ready to finalize their order. Selecting your items should be made easy by providing clear pricing and comparisons. Early in the checkout process, disclose your return policies, provide contact information for confidence, and above all, minimize the steps in the checkout process. Your overall goal should be to get them to finalize their purchase. Have you ever seen Amazon One-Click Ordering? Enough said.

7. Order tracking

After the order, ensure that the customer has confidence in you by giving them a way to track their order. This will also minimize additional phone calls and emails that will take valuable time away from your staff. Everyone loves to know exactly where their order is and when it will arrive.

8. Marketing

Lastly, when building an effective e-commerce website, integrate ways to generate more sales and market your business online. Building an effective e-commerce website is more than just a pretty face. We always consider how the site is built to maximize your listings in the search engines. To do this, the way the site is designed and programmed (things you’ll never see) are given great attention. A beautiful website is no good if it can’t be found in the search engines. Also integrate email marketing. Provide easy ways to subscribe for sales, coupons and special offers. Prove the sign-up prompts throughout your website and especially at the end of the checkout process for customers that are actually making a purchase. You’ve spent time and money getting them to this point so why not integrate a way to stay in touch with them in the future and to stay top-of-mind the next time they’re ready to make a similar purchase.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. Custom e-commerce for Rino’s Woodworking
2. Custom e-commerce website for Warehouse Direct Lighting
3. Nearly half of small businesses do not have a web site yet

1) The law of leadership – it’s better to be first than it is to be better – marketing is the battle of perception, not products.

2) The law of the category – Promote the category. If you can’t be first in a category just create your own new category. (Examples: multimedia computer, magazine for mature women, Clothes for tall people, etc.)

3) The law of the mind – Modifies the law of leadership. Being first in the mind is most important when possible. Apple got off the ground with very little money. They had a simple, easy to remember name and a focused, creative ad plan.

4) The law of perception – It’s not a battle of products. Do not focus on the facts, “the truth” and the features. This is all good, but marketers need to sell the product around what people want and perceive. Your name, slogan, image, message, etc. all need to factor into this.

5) The law of focus – Own a word in the mind of your prospect. Simpler words or concepts are the best. If you’re not first or a current leader, you need to reduce the scope of your operations and focus. Protect your word and continue to brand and focus on the law of the mind. Focus on a single, powerful word if possible.

6) The law of exclusivity – It’s hard for two competing companies to own the same word in the mind of the consumer. Safe, fast, affordable, etc.

7) The law of the ladder - Trying to get into the mind first is best but there are strategies to use to play off your competitors if you’re behind. “They’re big and we’re small and better”, “They’re more successful in the market but we try harder”, Sometimes it’s better to be 3rd on a big ladder than first on a small ladder.

The law of duality – Gradually over time the battle becomes a two rung affair.

9) The law of the opposite – Wherever the leader is strong, there is an opportunity. Turn the strength into the weakness. Don’t try to be better, be different. There are people that want to buy from the leader and there are people that absolutely don’t want to buy from the leader. You are the alternative. A second rung company must go for these people. (Example: Broiled, not fried, etc.)

10) The law of division – The market is an ever dividing sea of categories. The automobile industry is a perfect example. Find or create a new category and stick with it. Do not try to get into other categories after having success – history has shown this is a mistake.

11) The law of perspective – Most of time what works in the short term usually doesn’t work in the long term. Line extension is a major concern. Instant results might give you trouble years down the road. Focus on your core goals.

12) The law of line extension – Do not spread yourself too thin and try to be everything for everybody. Development, marketing budget, support, staff, perception, are all affected. Be strong somewhere instead of weak everywhere. Less is more. Narrow your focus.

13) The law of sacrifice – Rule 1 – Minimize product line (don’t be a dept. store without focus), Rule 2 – Limit your target market, Rule 3 – Be consistent. Have a brilliant narrow position and stick with it. DO NOT become all things to all people.

14) The law of attributes – Do not emulate the leader. Play off against the leader and offer something similar but opposite to differentiate. It doesn’t even have to be different, just a needed niche.

15) The law of candor – Consider being honest and admit a negative but twist it into a positive. With a name like Smucker’s it has to be good, We’re smaller and younger but more focused on you, Listerine tastes bad but something so strong has to kill a lot of germs.

16) The law of singularity – Focus on several good marketing avenues. Don’t dabble a little in everything. Trying harder does not get you to success. Make a single bold stroke that is least expected by the competition. Find out where the competitor is vulnerable.

17) The law of unpredictability – Do not assume the future. Get a handle on trends not fads. If something can go bad, it will always go bad so prepare for it. Try to build an enormous amount of flexibility into your organization so when things change in your industry you’re ready to deal with it – and deal with it quickly. Always keep innovating.

18) The law of success – Lose your ego and be more objective. DO NOT substitute your own judgement for what the market truly wants. Do not blind yourself by success, focus. Always think like a prospect thinks and try to base that on trends and real data. Don’t try to read your prospects mind. Do not oppose your view of the world on the customer. Never lose touch with the front lines.

19) The law of failure – Do not try to fix things. Recognize a failure early and change fast. The ready, fire, aim approach – try new ideas but nobody succeeds every time. Reward new ideas and the resulting success. Do not be afraid to take risks.

20) The law of hype – When your company needs “the hype” it usually means you’re in trouble or your plan is not strong or failing. New products that are going to “revolutionize the industry” are popular candidates for hype. Real revolutions don’t come down main street with a marching band – they sneak up on your in the middle of the night.

21) The law of acceleration – Do not focus on fads. Focus on trends.

22) The law of resources – Even the best idea in the world will not go far without proper funding. Ideas without money are worthless.

Many of these laws fly in the face of corporate culture. Benchmarking and beating the competition on price, service and features is a traditional focus and it’s deeply ingrained.

If you violate the immutable laws you run the risk of failure.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. Starting and marketing a new business online
2. Internet Marketing
3. 8 things that should improve your email marketing this year

Design your page with your goals in mind.

Part of SEO is allowing for easy feed subscription, encouraging links to your content, easy newsletter sign-up, clear membership information, ease of product navigation and easy access to contact information. Many people might wonder what this has to do with search engine optimization and I’m here to tell you that it’s all very important.

Your job when designing your website is to encourage links back to the content. You do this by providing ways for people to bookmark the site, subscribe via RSS and signup for a newsletter. This will keep your site “top-of-mind” with people that are interested in your content and ideally they’ll be reminded to read and continue to link.

One of the most popular and simple ways to encourage linking is to include an RSS feed and to provide a clear way to subscribe to your feed. If you use Wordpress like I do, the feed is generated automatically. Services like Feedburner and Technorati can help you easily distribute your feed and allow easy subscription too.

There are many other ways to encourage linking and to stay top-of-mind and I won’t go into them here. But my point should ring true. When designing your page, make sure you provide ways to encourage linking and repeated visits to your content. Our goal is to encourage linking from high quality sites.

Be consistent and present a sense of legitimacy.

Your design should have a cohesive feel, an appealing and appropriate “vibe” and a high quality, well thought out presentation throughout. This will also provide a strong sense of legitimacy that people need to return, subscribe and link. Obviously with a cohesive, well thought-out, consistent system, the search engines will be able to easily spider every page of your site too – which is our ultimate goal.

As designers, our goal is to present our content in a way that’s easy and enjoyable to read. But an underlying goal is to present the content in a format that looks like someone actual cares about how the content is presented. A cohesive, well thought-out navigation scheme, a consistent identity and appropriate color scheme go a long way to encourage repeat visits. After all, as much as people think that content is king, there is a large majority of readers out there that need an enjoyable experience while they’re reading. I personally subscribed to a online networking site the other day over several others because the image of the site was more hip and enjoyable. I knew if I was going to spend any amount of time on the site that I would have to enjoy my time there. I did subscribe to another networking site and I haven’t been back since because it just didn’t present a feeling of quality and fun.

That experience includes color choice, font size, font type, intuitive navigation, simple subscription tools and many others. In a nutshell, a sense of legitimacy and care for your presentation with the goal of appealing to your target audience. It’s the same reason that people choose one book over another based on the cover and why some people prefer large, hard cover books over smaller, cheaper paperbacks. It’s the same reason why I enjoy reading the PRINT version of “The Week” over a traditional newspaper. (Yes, I do subscribe to some traditional media) It has a very consistent layout and presentation, the type is clearly spaced and readable and it’s presented in a way that allows me to easily scan and get the information that I need each week.

The same is not true for other publications (which I will not mention here) which present their information as large chunks of content that appear differently each week/month. A newspaper is an example of a publication format that I hate. If the same information was presented in a consistent, high quality way I might enjoy going back to it. Reading a newspaper has always been work for me. It’s a clunky format, it feels cheap and low quality, the sections are always laid out differently, articles are broken up within different sections, the photos are low quality and the text is usually smaller and harder to read. I would read the same content and enjoy it much more on a website or in a nice glossy magazine because I enjoy the experience more.

Consider this when you’re building your website and content. An enjoyable experience will encourage repeat visits, links, word-of-mouth exposure, and prestigious awards if it’s done very well. All of this will surely help your SEO campaign and overall rankings in time.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. SEO Friendly Design: Part 4 – Text design and Page Elements
2. SEO Friendly Design: Part 1 – Crawlability and Cross linking
3. SEO Friendly Design

I’ve heard some discussion about duplicate content lately and I wanted to set the record straight here about what Google thinks about a writer distributing content to other sites. The issue here is this: Google does NOT want their users to do a search and get links to the same content in the results. They want a varied list of options so the user can choose and get as many links as possible to multiple sources. This makes so much sense in my mind that I’m surprised that I had to even research it.

What’s important to know is that Google does NOT penalize your site for having duplicate content. Google understands the reasons for duplicate content and services like newspapers and magazines have done this for a very long time. They also realize that duplicate content can sometimes be out of your control. I used to work for one of the largest newspaper publishers in the country and they would always repub articles on their site and in the newspaper as the Associated Press. In fact, the New York Times articles were duplicated across the entire network of newspaper sites. Below is a summary of Google’s thoughts on this issue:

• Google wants to serve up unique results and does a great job of picking a version of your content to show if your sites includes duplication. If you don’t want to worry about sorting through duplication on your site, you can let us worry about it instead.
• Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be penalized. If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers.
• Duplicate content doesn’t cause your site to be placed in the supplemental index. Duplication may indirectly influence this however, if links to your pages are split among the various versions, causing lower per-page PageRank.

The last item on the list is a concern though. Obviously our goal here is to get people to read our content but we must be concerned as well with the issue of links to our content. I’m sure there are many opinions on this issue. But in my opinion, I really don’t care which article receives the most links and ranks higher. In a perfect world I’d hope that Google decides to rank the article on my main site. Obviously it’s a concern if my article doesn’t rank well but the issue remains that my content is probably ranking high somewhere and I have a clear link in that content back to my main site.

Ideally what we should do is post our content on one site and not distribute to other sites. But we all live in the real world and there can be real value in distributing your content with a link back to your site. More content + more locations = larger distribution = more links and traffic back to your main site. Since Google does not penalize you for this practice I would say “go for it” if your goal is to drive traffic.

What to do in a perfect world?

Ideally the solution is pretty simple but it depends on your goals. The way I see it there are usually 5 reasons for creating content: Contributing to the knowledge of the greater good, trying to get rankings for your content, trying to get links back to your site, trying to add value to your own website and driving traffic. In a perfect world the goal should be to accomplish all 5!

If you have a great piece of content and your goal is to add value to your web niche of knowledge then publish it ONCE on your site or publish it ONCE on another high value site. If it’s good, keyword rich content people will usually find it and link to it. In this case it might be best to publish on a high traffic niche site other than your own if your goal is to just contribute to the greater good.

If your goal is to rank for this content in the search engines then only one version of the article will rank anyway. So choose the site that has the best chance of ranking. Make sure to include a prominent link back to your site if it’s on another site and you’ll accomplish two important goals (getting a link from a prominent site AND driving traffic back to your site). I think trying to rank with content on your site should be the top priority though.

If your goal is to get links to your site, then you should consider publishing your content on another high PR, high traffic, highly relevant site. You’ll contribute to the quality and value of their site and you’ll get a nice, high quality link in return that might boost your PR and your traffic.

If you’re simply trying to add value to your own site then DON’T publish it all over the place. You’ll get the added value of rankings that lead directly to your site and links to your site. I think it’s as simple as that.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. Affordable content management systems
2. How to create a two column page of content in Wordpress
3. Using Wordpress as a content management system

Readability

SEO is important but with a little style and effort you can get the job done without compromising the “vibe” of your site. Presentation is everything and people do not visit or link to sites that are hard to read and do not please the eye.

I’m sure you’ve seen the culprits in the past where people have clearly “tried” to optimize their site for specific keywords and you’ve asked yourself as you’re reading through the text “Has this person made it through high school English?”. Words seem to be out of place and overused, possibly repeated in places where they’re not necessary. Below is an example of what I’m referring to. (Reminder, this is bad so I’ll keep it short)

As an SEO friendly designer, SEO friendly design is important to my SEO friendly design campaigns because SEO friendly design is the way to design an SEO friendly page.

Man, I hope I don’t get penalized for stuffing my page with keywords but I had to illustrate my point! Hopefully I’ve driven my point home about what not to do. If you write content like the aforementioned text above, people will think you’re an idiot and they’ll never return. That’s even if they find you in the first place because Google hates content like this. Their spiders are smart and becoming smarter every day. They KNOW this is not a normal way of speaking and they know that words are being overused in one sentence.

The most important thing to note is that humans will not enjoy reading content like this so don’t do it. Take the time to write great content, use your keywords in the page title, the article title, the first sentence, sprinkle them throughout as needed and try to finish up the article with your keywords. Just make sure to write naturally and do not use words to the point where they sound unnatural.

Manhandle your code

If you have a talent for manipulating your website code, take some time to learn CSS and HTML because it provides very precise control over the layout of your pages. CSS/HTML is easy to learn and with a little bit of reading you’ll go a long way. Even if you have no interest in learning code you should take the time to learn the absolute basics like the break tag, paragraph tag, how to make a link, etc. and then retain a quality programmer to help you manipulate the code on your pages as needed.

When designing a page that’s SEO friendly, design your page so it makes sense visually but maintain control of the code behind the scenes. A good programmer with SEO skills will know how to do this so make sure to ask when hiring.

One of the first things you can do is minimize programming code at the top of the page. Search engines only index a certain number of lines on your page so you want your content to be the focus. If you have a lot of javascript on your page or fancy scripts running for this and that, take the time to put this code in an external file and link to it with one line of code.

The thing you should consider is positioning your content and keywords toward the top of the page. In the old days of table-based HTML layouts, you were somewhat stuck regarding the order of the code on your page. If you had a header, a left column for navigation and then your content on the right, this is the order that the code appeared on the page. So depending on the amount of code required to pull this off, the actual content of the page might appear hundreds or even thousands of lines down and possibly never get indexed. This is not true with CSS.

With CSS you can place elements on the page any way you want and with precision. You can also order this code on your page and it will still render properly when the page is viewed in a browser. You an essentially place your header at the bottom of the code but based on the CSS code you can position it as the first thing on the page.

My point in telling you all this is to get you to place your CONTENT first in your code so it all gets indexed. CSS is the vehicle that allows this so take the time to learn what’s possible or insist that your designer program your pages with CSS and place your content block at the top of the HTML code.

Lastly, make sure to properly label your graphic elements. Search engines can’t read images so they have to rely on HTML code to determine what the image contains. If you have an image of a rooster on your page, use the alt tag in the image code to label this image as alt=”rooster”.

You may also consider naming the image file name in a way that is descriptive. For obvious reasons it’s a much better practice to name your rooster image as rooster.jpg instead of image1b.jpg. The latter means nothing to the search spiders and it probably doesn’t mean much to you either. Label your images in a clear way and it will help the search spiders learn about your page content and it will surely keep you sane as you manage the files within your site.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. SEO Friendly Design: Part 1 – Crawlability and Cross linking
2. SEO Friendly Design: Part 4 – Text design and Page Elements
3. SEO Friendly Design

This is not a post about the finer points of web design because this is not the place and there are a million other sites that focus on the art and craft of web design. My sole point here is to convey my belief that designers should be left to do their job – unless they do something that is 100% wrong and against everything that you stand for – something that they’re not aware of – they should be trusted most of the time. Designers are hired for a reason so why not let them do their job?

Now, this is not to say that designers are ALWAYS right. You should feel free to step in if something is blatantly wrong or you simply don’t like the work. There’s always another way to travel in design. But there is a fine line between a successful design and one that completely misses the mark. What you think is important or what you think is right might ultimately kill the design and affect the overall success of your website.

There is a fine line. I don’t have an example to illustrate this in web design but you usually know it when you see it. But I do have two great examples to illustrate the concept. First, I’m a big fan of Pixar animation. (The Disney company that has successfully brought their animation division out of the tank) If you closely study what makes the characters and the overall movies successful you’ll find that it’s a success because of the details. Characters are believable, characters are funny, characters are believable because of the very, very subtle details that the animator labored over to make them so. Without incredible attention to detail and a knowledge of design and animation the character and ultimately the movie would fall flat on it’s face. The same concept holds true for design in all other arenas – especially web design. The right colors, fonts, placement of elements, textures, photos, navigation elements, etc. all need to be precisely placed for success.

To close out my illustration of this idea I have a funny example. I followed a twitter link from a friend and saw an advertisement for a t-shirt company that sells humorous shirts. I followed the link and just laughed out loud at most of them – mostly because they NAILED the joke with a very simply illustration. The success of the joke relies precisely with how the details are presented by the designer. There’s a very fine line between a joke that leaves you rolling and a joke that falls flat. In the example to the right I don’t believe that this joke would even be slightly funny if the designer didn’t nail the elephant’s expression and how it’s holding the weapon. I believe the same attention to design and the details should be applied to your website – and an experienced designer is the one that can get the job done right.

Chris Auman is the President and Creative Director for Sanctuary Media Group, Inc. – You can follow him on Twitter.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. SEO Friendly Design: Part 4 – Text design and Page Elements
2. SEO friendly design: Part 2 – Organization and research
3. SEO Friendly Design: Part 3 – Navigation

It doesn’t have to be horrifying or complicated actually. With a little bit of a plan you can turn what most beginners consider a daunting task into something fairly painless and highly effective for your new venture.

So what is the magic plan? What is this big secret that I speak of? The answer can be summed up in two golden words. Keyword Research.

What is keyword research?

When you type words into Google to search for something, those words are referred to as keywords, search strings or key phrases. Keyword research is essentially finding the exact keywords that users have actually searched for in recent months. Your goal is to uncover keywords and phrases that fit your target business or industry. Ideally you want to identify the keywords that have the most searches with the least amount of competition. In a nutshell, if your website subject matter revolves around these specific words of wonder – and better yet – your website content matches the subject of these keywords exactly, you’ll be considered “more relevant” to the searcher’s inquiry. The result being that you’ll show up higher in the search results. Mission accomplished. By knowing what people are searching for specifically you can place your most important keywords inside your website sales content or blog and eventually find your way into the search results for the products and services that you sell. Without proper research and supporting data it’s almost impossible to get it right regardless if you’re an expert in your field or not.

Keyword research involves spending time trying to learn what people are specifically searching for. For example, let’s examine the holistic health industry. You might be surprised that people tend to search for “spiritual health advice” instead of “holistic health advice”. The results of your research can affect everything from the name your choose for your business to the words you use in the content on your website to the words that you target in your advertising. By performing proper research you might find (I’m just guessing here) that the first example key phrase returns an average of 100 searches a month but the latter might return 1000 searches. You’d obviously target the keywords “holistic health advice” more often in your content if your business revolves around holistic and spiritual wellness and you might even consider using the word holistic in your business name.

First Steps:

Taking the time to research what people are searching for is a necessary first step when starting a business online. When I say “first step” I mean it really needs to be the absolute first step you make when starting a business. Even before you settle on the type of business you’re going to start and what you’re going to name your business you should take the time to consider the following:

• Is there a demand for my business already based on keyword search volume?
• If there is a demand, is there room for me?
• Is there a niche that I can exploit that I am not aware of?
• Are there products or services that people tend to buy or research more often within my business niche that I should focus on first?
• What words are people using to find what I want to sell online and can I use this data to help me name my business, build a more effective tagline or determine the first steps for my business?
• Based on the keywords I find, are there specific phrases, insider jargon that I am not aware of?
• Based on the amount of people searching for something can I find an even better business idea?

Next Steps:

Once you’ve chosen your business and made the commitment you need to research how you’re going to promote your new business online. As I’ve already suggested – to be successful you need to know what people are specifically searching for. You need to complete a thorough keyword analysis that includes current search volumes for recent months, competitor data, search phrases from organic search queries and search phrases from pay-per-click engines. Specifically you need to know the exact words that your potential customers are using to find your products or services. Learn about the popular phrases, jargon and terms that users search for most often. Research the keywords that your competition is currently targeting and try to figure out why your competitor websites rank at the top of the search results. Once you have this information in hand you’ll have highly valuable data. You’ll be armed to the teeth with ammunition compared to most small business websites on the web and you can feel confident that you’re using the keywords that your customers use most often. Use them everywhere that you do business online and off.

Getting Started:

So how do you start and get the data that you need? One of the first places you can set out to explore is the free Google keyword tool. Simply type in some keywords or a key phrase that relates to your business and they’ll return the estimated times that keyword was searched for in the last month. As an added bonus – and without even asking – they’ll provide you with all the other related key phrases that relate to your business.

But that’s not all. Google actually goes beyond what others provide. The Google keyword tool will return information on current advertiser competition in that category, last months search volume, average search volume, trends and the month that the highest search volume occurred in the last 12 months. You can easily add keywords to a list and export them for safe storage and review later. A valuable service indeed and it’s also free to use as much as your heart desires.

There are many other sources for keyword data but the tools mentioned here are a good place to start. (Did I mention they’re free?) You’ll be amazed at the data that you can uncover and how that data can bring your idea or your current business into focus.

Summary:

Getting to know what your target audience is looking for is very important. If you spend the time up front to utilize the many tools and free resources available to you online you’ll justify your decision to start your business, you’ll make better decisions and when you write the content for your website you won’t be stabbing in the dark guessing. You’ll be running a precision campaign that’s specifically based on real world numbers and words and phrases that real people have used to find what you’re providing or selling.

—————————–

Chris Auman is the President of Sanctuary Media Group in North Canton Ohio. He’s an internet veteran and entrepreneur. Sanctuary Media Group provides services for over 100 clients around the world with everything from website development and online marketing to custom programming and consultation.

Sanctuary Media Group does provide keyword research for businesses and online marketing campaigns. We recommend this research before we start a website design and before any new SEO or PPC campaign. We utilize the free tools mentioned in this article plus powerful subscription based tools to find and analyze all the keywords that are important to your business. For more information about our services please contact us. We’ll arm you with everything you need to grow your business online.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. Keyword research for SEO and online marketing
2. How to succeed online with a website
3. A quick overview of social media for business

Text design and page elements

When designing the text, information elements and links on your page consider the color, size and placement on the page. When I say this, I mean consider them visually and in the code. Many people consider this part of the process a “designer only” department but it’s not.

For example, your page titles should always be labeled with an H1 tag. The H1 tag not only presents the title of your page in a larger font but it also tells search engines that this text has a lot to do with the subject of the page. Most of the time it actually IS the subject of the page summed up in a couple words. Placing your target keywords within an H1 on the page will get you a long way to ranking well so make sure that your page titles are coded properly.

Consider laying out additional sections with headers as h2 and h3 tags to call importance to them as well.

You can further bold important keywords throughout your text where possible too. This is a good way to mix in similar but different combinations of key phrases and call attention to them.

On a pure usability note, this is also a preferred way to call out important points in your text because studies have shown that the majority of people who read on the internet scan information. By calling out important points it will add to their user experience and benefit.

Text links on the page should contain your keywords and colored with a contrasting color from the background of your page. Link text is very important to search engines so fill your links with important keywords instead of linking to information at the end of a sentence.

I should also mention here that search engines are paying attention to proper sentence structure and spelling more and more. Sites that have high quality, technically correct content will most definitely rank higher. At the most basic level this tells them that this is quality content. I don’t claim to be an English major but I definitely try to proof my writing for spelling and do my best to craft sentences that read clearly. I don’t always succeed but my point is that you should try because it matters.

Visually pleasing = a happy, dedicated reader = a “fan” that links

This is the area where most leave it to their designers but in all fairness there are parts of the design process that truly help with SEO and have nothing directly to do with what the search engines think of your content.

Making your site visually enjoyable and easy to read will immediately show that you care enough about your site to devote a decent amount of time and dollars to the presentation. This will help with your overall respect and trustability and users will return and more importantly they’ll link to you.

The part about your site being visually enjoyable is a given. I know from personal experience that I tend to go back to sites that I enjoy working within. It’s the same reason I like working on a stylish, clean desk. I might even go to a site that’s less useful just because I enjoy the entire experience, not just the information that I get from the site.

This all contributes indirectly to SEO. The more people that like your site, the more they’ll link to you.

The layout and placement of elements on your page is important.

Where you place elements on the page helps to draw the eye to where you want it to go. For example, you might have an RSS icon or bookmark on the page but it appears at the top of your page and not where someone is likely to see it when the time is right. You might have a signup for your newsletter (which is important for staying top-of-mind with your readers so they continue to come back and continue to link) and it’s not highly visible or eye catching.

Make sure that you decide what’s most important on your page.

Everyone likes recognition but your pretty mug on the page or authorship tagline is not nearly as important as the RSS subscription link or the link to bookmark or signup. So take some time and weigh all these elements in the design process. Make the right decision that will help people get the most of your site and ultimately bookmark, revisit your site many times and link, link, LINK to your content.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. SEO Friendly Design
2. SEO Friendly Design: Part 3 – Navigation
3. SEO Friendly Design – Part 5: Readability & coding

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.

Most designers lay out their designs in Photoshop, cut out the images, assemble the files in Dreamweaver and link the images as the navigation. I’ve seen this countless times from graphic design companies and other design focused sites. By looking at their site you can clearly tell that they have a command of their design skills but they know very little about how to design a site for the search engines.

They might even take the time to put alt tags on the images and that’s a good first step but unfortunately most have no idea what an alt tag is because they’ve never studied the language.

I can attest to this because I’ve been there.

I started out in 1994 and a colleague forced me to learn the HTML language. I knew what alt tags were when I first started designing sites but I didn’t care. My goal was to make a visually rich design, not to get geeky with the code (even though I understood it).

Eventually I learned to take the time. Even if alt tags are on the page though, studies have shown that rankings can definitely be improved if the search engines have a good, keyword-rich link to follow.

This has been an ongoing argument for years because designers (and SEO consultants) claim that you can embed keywords into your alt tags and that will solve the problem.

It’s also claimed that you can put your main navigation links into the footer nav and if you’re proficient with css you can position these links at the top of your page in the code so search engines see them and follow them. Semi-true. What happens if you have a large site? There is no perfect answer except whatever choice you make, MAKE SURE that the search engines can get around easily.

A good tool to test this is the fabulous seo-browser.com that shows you exactly what your site looks like to the engines. If you don’t see your links when viewing your site here you’ve done something wrong.

You’re goal should be to link as many pages from your homepage as possible and build the links so they can be seen and followed.

But what is the ideal solution? I’ve seen a lot of people discussing this topic over the years and the definitive answer to the question is most certainly to build your navigation as text and css. I’ve seen listings move up significantly as soon as graphic links with alt tags are converted to a text based nav element. For whatever reason, this is the way of the world and what the Google Gods desire; you might as well bow down or you’ll be mowed under by the crowd.

You may also opt to design your navigation with css so it looks like it’s an image. What is this you say? If you have a decent command of css and html you can build navigation that looks like images but is pure css and text. It takes a little bit of effort and a knowledge of css but it can be worth it if you’re goal is to compete in the search engine listings. If you’re dead set on image-like nav elements and you’re not able to accomplish this yourself it will definitely be worth hiring someone that can pull this off for you. Techniques like this are what separate the big boys from the children in the world of SEO design.

In my humble opinion, I like simple text links for navigation.

My theory of design throughout my entire life is that less is more. I hate it when someone hangs a beautiful picture on the wall and then proceeds to cover the wall with busy wall paper. How does this enhance what you just placed on the wall? It adds static to the beauty and takes away from the focal point.

I believe the same holds true for navigation design. It might be your first reaction as a designer to jazz up the navigation and try to “wow” the client but sometimes this can be a disservice if you’re not highly skilled. If you look at the navigation on this site you’ll see that it’s simple and clean. There is no clutter and you know from a mile away what you need to do to get around.

The goal of this navigation on this site is to get you to the information and nothing more.

Simple, bold, clean white text on black draws in the eye and is easily read. This my friends is the ultimate goal.

If you have a decent command of design theory you also know that white and negative space can accomplish a lot. You don’t need gradients and gloss effects to be a great designer. It’s all about the little details that make a design great. This too is what separates the Gods from the wannabes in the design world. (Not that I claim to be anything more than a wannebe myself)

My point here is that you can accomplish a lot with text if you know what you’re doing or hire someone who does. The search engines will love you for it.

Obviously this is not the definitive answer because there are reasons to go above and beyond when designing a hip website. You do have to consider the demographic and target audience and there are occasions where you can step outside of the box and go a little crazy.

For the most part, web design is about getting users to content and getting search engines to index that content. You’re navigation should always help make this easy for your users and the search engines. The best way to do that is to keep your elements simple, clean, text-based and keyword rich.

Design your site so you can get to every page on the site with a maximum of 3 clicks

We’ve touched on this issue in the past but it’s an important point for several reasons.

First, you want your users to find your content quickly and easily. Ideally you should be able to access every major section of your site from the homepage. You can accomplish this with direct links or if you have a larger site you can design a navigation scheme that allows users to utilize a system of drop down menus. An example of this can be found at a site like acmestores.com where you have broad, top level categories and sub-navigation that directs the users to every individual page on the site. With navigation like this there is no need for more. If you view this site in seo-browser.com you’ll see what I mean.

What happens if this doesn’t work for your site? Consider the use of a site map.

A sitemap is essentially one page on your site that links to every other page on your site (with keyword-rich links obviously). The sitemap is usually linked from the homepage or the header of every page on the site.

A sitemap should also be placed at the top of your code so the search engines find the link easily and follow on to the rest of the site pages.

A site map doesn’t have to be fancy, it just needs to accomplish it’s job and that’s to help the search engines index all the content available on your site.

Site maps can be built and maintained manually or you can automate the process.

In a perfect world the site map will be used by your users too but if you design your navigation in a clear way they shouldn’t need it. It’s simply a easy way to document and clearly link to ALL content on your site.

A sitemap also a way to embed keywords into links that otherwise might not fit appropriately into your content. This all helps search engines determine what they’re looking at and how relevant your content is. In the SEO world this practice is called deep linking and/or cross linking.

An excellent way to get a sitemap for you site is to generate an XML sitemap. Google has this to say about XML sitemaps:

A sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site, along with additional information about each URL. Sitemaps give Google and other search engines important information about your website, including A complete list of all URLs on your site, How often the pages on your site change, The date each page was last modified, The relative importance of pages on your site. Sitemaps are particularly helpful if your site has dynamic content, your site has pages that aren’t easily discovered, Your site is new and has few links to it, Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other.

This is not the ultimate answer to getting your pages indexed properly but it’s a darn good start. I would recommend signing up for a Google Webmaster account and uploading a XML sitemap to your site as soon as possible if you don’t have a physical sitemap on your site.

Even if you already have a sitemap, an XML sitemap will be a great help to Google and you know how we all love Google. Go! Get started right away.

Related Information and Blog Posts:

1. SEO Friendly Design: Part 1 – Crawlability and Cross linking
2. SEO Friendly Design: Part 4 – Text design and Page Elements
3. SEO Friendly Design