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 Avoid the most common website design mistake of all time. Learn how to develop web pages that are search engine friendly!
Website Content Design Objectives
Website content design is driven by a number of important objectives that at first may seem to conflict. For example I have written elsewhere about the importance of designing website content that matches the look and feel of offline marketing materials such as direct mail, print ads, TV or even banners. Designing the look and feel of your web pages to match your direct mail or other advertising is an important way to give customers vital clues that they have arrived at the right place and gives customers confidence that their transactions on your site will b e safe and secure. Website Content Design ErrorsUnfortunately, many designers choose to use graphics as a way to match the look and feel of web pages to other marketing materials. Choosing to create a high graphic content website is one of the most common errors seen. Choice is innocent enough... attempting to develop website content in HTML does not give much flexibility with font selection, offers little control over font size and the relationship between text and photo elements, and HTML's layout options are boxy or static, etc. etc. etc. Plus, many people who design content for web pages are used to developing content for print using InDesign, PhotoShop or Quark. So, they tend to choose the tools they know best. High Graphic Content ProblemsThe high graphic content method (essentially designing content with large static images with text, photos and layout) gives website designers much greater flexibility in presentation. BUT, it can be a major problem for attracting web traffic through organic search. - Pages with high graphic content load slower which is an annoyance to surfers and may cause them to hit the back button before they even see your page. This is called a "bounce" and its a bad metric. Slow page load time can also cause your page to be demoted in the search algorithms used by Google et al. to determine page rank. The search engine ranking will favor fast loading pages.
- The BIG PROBLEM is that your web page has little or no text based content for the search engines to scan, score and categorize. And if the search engines cannot read your website's content they do not know what your page is all about and therefore do not know how to present the web page conducting searches by keyword.
Bottom line, when your customers are searching for solutions and products based on keywords and content... your pages won't show up! How can you fix your website?
Developing Search Engine Friendly Web Pages- Add text based content to your web pages -- you will get the best results by simply biting the bullet and adding HTML based text content to your website. This can be as little as a couple of well thought out paragraphs that containing the important and relevant keywords and information search engines need to assess the content of your web pages. This injection of text does not necessarily have to take the place of your graphic content, you can add this text based content in addition to your graphic content and preserve the essence of your design.
- Know your keywords -- before you begin developing content and adding paragraphs of HTML based text do some keyword research. Determine what keywords your customers would actually use to find sites offering products and services like yours. You may be in for a surprise
If you simply cannot change the structure of you pages try this: - Use ALT Tags for Pictures and Graphics -- based on your keyword research write relevant text based descriptions and tags for your images. These elements are added behind the scenes into the code used to display your images and are not visible in your customer's browser. So, if these tags cannot be seen why do they exist you ask? Well, these tags can be seen by visitors who change their browser setting to not display images or by handicapped visitors who are using reading software so they can have the web page contents read to them. The good thing is the search engine spiders also read them and can use them to index and categorize your web pages.
- Develop Static Text Based Pages -- develop content rich pages in plain old HTML. You can mimic the content found on your graphics heavy pages or develop new content. Remember to make these pages useful and readable. Then make sure these pages are heavily linked in to the rest of your site using both internal and external links. Now, your organic search traffic will find and visit your HTML text based pages while traffic driven from print or direct mail to a specific URL will still see your branded and graphically coordinated content.
Read This Entire Series On Page Description Writing
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If your website’s home page is getting good ranking for the specific keyword you might think that your search engine optimization work is done... But you could be missing out on a large volume of potential traffic. You should consider the use of long tail keywords for search. 
When client we have worked with planning direct mail promotions very often we are asked the question, "what response can we expect from this mailing?"