Do You Make These Common (But Deadly) Website Design Mistakes?
Building a website can be overwhelming, here are some design tips to help keep you on the right path (or is that web?)
--- Designing a Frames-based web site
Frames may make the job of maintaining a big web site easy, but search engines hate them. Most search engines cannot find their way through them and end up indexing only the home page. Lose your frames right away. You will start getting positive improvements the moment you redesign your site without frames.
--- Having an all-Flash or graphic-only home page
This is another classic mistake. Many designers design web site home pages like brochures. A beautiful cover which has to be opened to read. But on the Internet every click takes away some prospects. Did they click your ENTER button or the Back button? Search engines need content to index. If you don't have words on the home page and only a Flash movie or an animated graphic, how will the search engines know what you do?
--- Not having a good title
A good title is critical for getting good search engine positions and the most vital thing -- the click-through. With the title, you are always walking a tightrope. You need a title with your most important keyword near the beginning but it should still appeal to the human reading the results.
--- Hosting your site with a FREE host
Don't do it. It takes away all your credibility. Most of the search engines don't even index web sites on free hosts. Even if they do, they rank them quite low.
--- Stuffing lots of keywords in the keywords tag
Do you have a keywords tag that lists all the words related to your product in a big long series? This is a certain recipe to invite negative points. Put only the 2-3 most important keywords in there. Here's a quick test - don't put any term in the keyword tag if it doesn't appear at least once in the body copy.
--- Not having any outgoing links
Do you know why the Internet is called the Web? Because the web sites link to each other. If you only have incoming links and no outbound links, it's not appreciated by the search engines as it violates the basic structure of the Web. Because some people try to conserve PageRank (a proprietary index used by Google to measure link popularity), they avoid having any outbound links. This is one big myth. You can get very good points if you have some outbound links with keyword-rich anchor text and preferably keyword-rich target URL also.
--- Insisting on session variables and cookies to show information
Session variables are used extensively by ecommerce-enabled sites. This is to trace the path used by the visitor. Shopping cart and various other applications also benefit by using session variables. However it should be possible to visit the various information related and sales pages without needing to have session variables. Since search engine spiders don't index cookies, they can't index your pages properly if the navigation requires cookies and session variables.
--- Regularly submitting your site to the search engines
"We will submit your site to the top 250,000 search engines every month for only $29.95." Who has not seen these ads or received Spam with similar messages? And which are those 250,000 search engines? There are only a handful of top search engines worth bothering about. For some sites if you resubmit while you are waiting to be indexed, you entry is pushed to the end of the queue. So you can resubmit regularly and never get indexed!
--- Optimizing for more than 2 or 3 search terms
It is virtually impossible to optimize a page for more than 2-3 keywords without diluting everything. Don't try to work on more than 3 phrases on one page. Split. Get similar phrases together and work on those in this page. Take 2 or 3 out of the other phrases and develop a new page with entirely new copy. Remember, you cannot just copy the same page and squeeze these new phrases in there. It will look very funny to the visitor.
Author: http://www.JamesBurchill.com - James is a freelance writer and consultant
Related News:
4 Reasons Not To Design Your Own Website
Remember, your web site is the first thing that the online buyer will look at. Therefore, a bad quality website design would reflect on your business, giving negative perception on your products or services. The number of consumers buying online is growing rapidly and the last thing you want is to have your potential customers to shop on your competitors’ websites because they are better.
5 Things You Need To Know Before Hiring A Web Designer
Everyone loves saving money and some will even go beyond to do so. You are saving money only if you get at least the same quality web site design for less money. However, it would be considered very expensive if you are getting an insightful and error prone web site design for it. Finding a good web designer for your web site is the first step to the success of your online business.
From Good Web Design To Great Web Design
While it is relatively easy to poke fun at bad web site designs, it is a much harder task to distinguish good design from great design. A great web designer is more like a problem solver. Every web sites has its own set of functions to address one or more problems. Finding the root cause of the problem is the first step of great web site design concept. In the nutshell, web site design is a two steps process; finding the problem and then applying the right solution to address it.
10 Must See Scarilious Web sites
Hi Ghost lovers, Haunters and the haunted, are you looking for the good old scary times? Here are what you have been waiting for, The compilation of 10 of the most Scarilious Web sites. They are the best of the scariest and bloodiest web sites of them all that you'll be downright scared of your own shadow.
Sailors Build Boating Websites in Seconds with Free Website Platform Built by Sailors for Sailors
For sailors and Boating enthusiasts, it has always been a chore to keep good communication with fellow crew members to share info, pictures, and schedule events. Blue Water Media addresses this need with a newly created website platform called Telltale. Telltale allows sailors to create their own personalized boating website within minutes.
PR Leap
The Evolution of Web Designers
A growing number of web designers are learning how to code as their clients have more sophisticated requirement. This new trends will emerge to create a new breed of web designers, Web Application Designer?
Mac OS X Leopard-enhanced Freeway Web Design Software
Softpress announced that on October 26th 2007, it will release the Leopard-enabled Freeway 4.4 that is compatible with the Apple's Mac OS X Leopard’s new 'Quick Look' functionality, in which, you will be able to display an enlarged preview of a file without opening it.
Web Site Cookbook: Page Design and Navigation
Color, layout, and navigation are what usually come to mind when one thinks about web design. This paper explores some of those choices and present solutions that will help the user balance aesthetics with usability.
ZDNet
Is Man Better At Web Design?
According to a 2007 Web Design Survey by A List Apart, the average web designer is white male whose age is between 25 and 32 years old.
Event: Voices that Matter in Web Design
By David Dahlquist :: Filed Under » Events Heads up, San Franciscans—New Riders, Pearson Technology Group’s Web design imprint, is bringing it to the Bay by ...more
CMSWire, CA
First Ever Web Design Survey Results
Close to 33000 web professionals answered the survey's 37 questions, providing the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development ...more
Slashdot
Related Articles:
Professional Website Design
Has it ever struck you, visitors to your website could find the website design rather annoying? To ensure return visitors and a website that is popular, analyse their pet peeves and grouches and determine to exclude them from your web design.
Effective Website Design For Massive Traffic
STEP 1:Do your homeworkPlan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site.
Google News Inside Launches New Attractive Website Design
Google News Inside has been through many changes. But without a doubt, this design is perfect for what Google News Inside represents. Professionalism, quality, and accurate information about Google.
RedneckGifts.net Launches New Website Design, Advanced Shopping Cart Infrastructure, and New Products In Time For The Holidays
Increased sales and involvement with the NBC Pre-Emmy Party Celebrity Gift Bags prompted expansion. Redneckgifts.net is increasingly popular, and expects record sales this holiday season.
Affordable Website Design and Maintenance Services
Does your company need a new web site designed? Do you need website maintenance for an existing web site? A lot of companies throw big money on website design and get little in return.
Social Networking Website Design Tips
There are already a lot of social networking websites out on the Internet, and yet, more and more people still wants to create their own social network. One probably good reason is that those already out for public use, still does not cover the niches you want, or some still do not have the features you are looking for.
Website Design: How To Make It Work For You
The conception of the Internet is marked as one of the greatest advances in technology. Almost everything in the world changed with the arrival of the Internet. The Internet also brought numerous changes in the way people conduct their business.
WSI (We Simplify Internet Marketing) Enters Dayton's Professional Services Website Design Field
Julie Murphy, WSI Internet Marketing Consultant, announces today the company's launch of its professional services website development project, http://www.thegrowthcoach-mehrler.com.