That is a good question. The reason I bring it up is because for many web designers there seems to be the attitude that they should simply provide several areas of fixed content that may appeal to search engines.

For most web designers this is a time saving tactic that bows to the notion that a site MUST be Search Engine optimized (SEO) without thinking about the life of the website post-launch.

Sometimes the online business owner does not fully understand the role of fresh content to the improved status of their website. In most cases the business owner is simply anxious to get the site developed and launched and hasn’t taken the time to wonder what happens after it goes live.

The web designer may not bring this up either. It is not that the web designer may not want the best for you, but they also know it may be labor intensive thus time consuming for them. They may also realize you might not have significant new data to include.

Fresh content can be culled from a variety of locations. You can develop fresh content on your own or you can ask vendors for content that they may have that could be dropped into the website as needed. One of the best tools for gaining fresh, topic-specific content is through a free articles directory.

This can solve some of the issues surrounding the need for content, but it may not address the ease with which you may want to see when it comes to placement of the content.

What I mean by that is that your web designer may be the one responsible for alterations to your site, but they may also be busy enough that your request may not gain first priority. Some site owners report requested changes to their website can take days, weeks and sometimes months for their web designer to manage.

In some cases it seems to online business owners that the web designer is only interested in getting you up and running, but does not care as deeply for the day to day changes you may need.

While there are some very responsive web designers available there is also a more personal solution to making content alterations to your website that functions on a timetable of your choosing.

Web builder technology allows you to develop and maintain your website when and how you want without the need for a third party designer.

In a world where SEO is so important to online business it is important to be able to keep your site fresh. If a web designer is not able to keep up with your needs it may be important to explore the possibility of web builder technology.

In many cases you can develop multiple articles for release and place an embargo on the content until a certain day and time. What this means is you can develop a months worth of articles and instruct the software when you want it to place the content online.

Imagine being on a business trip and still having new content placed on your site in your absence.

You can be your own web designer. The results are positive, the responsiveness is immediate and the costs are significantly less than other alternatives.

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But that was before the Internet boomed, before its user base multiplied by millions, and before almost everyone else built web sites of their own, competing with your own in attracting users and readers. That was before modern search engines came to be, way before Google became a household verb, and changed the Internet in big ways. Now in the modern age of the internet, where search is the second most popular activity in the net, having a bumper sticker of your web site’s URL is no longer as cool or as effective as it used to be. You must now rely on one of the major pillars of a successful web site design – search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the method of increasing a web site’s ranking in search engine results listing. Before going further into the details of search engine optimization, it is good to know why it’s important to rank well in these listings and how it came to be.

Let’s see for example how a good web designer that is fully unaware of search engine optimization will lay things for a typical web design project: a very clear purpose for the website, a good aesthetic design, clear and concise words that are aptly toned for the target audience, an intuitive navigation and usable user interface, and for the writers’ part, a content that is rich and relevant and no-nonsense.

All things done right. In the end the client will have in his hand a well-designed web site full of information and content that is ready to take on the world of the Internet. Or is it? Before anything else, the million-dollar questions must be asked: how many users will read that rich and no-nonsense content that you have? How many customers will be able to see the products that you are trying to sell? How many clients will become aware of the services that you will offer? Search engine optimization is mostly about these questions. In fact it is mostly about trying to give the positive answers to these questions – many readers, many customers, and many clients.

Where do website users come from? In the early phases of a simple personal web site they usually come from the owner’s circle of family and acquaintances that are aware of your brand new URL. Although this may be enough for some personal web sites surely it will take a lot more hits than what those acquaintances would provide when a website is aiming for a larger and more geographically-unconstrained audience. After all, that is one thing that the Internet is all about – breaking geographical constraints. And for this kind of web site traffic need, there is but two words that answers that question of where your users will come from: search engines.

While there were search engines that existed before Google came to the scene, Google brought to the table a completely new way of searching information. The algorithm that Google used, relying heavily on links, (among many other important factors) proved to be very effective that it left other search engines in the dust. This revolution in search that gave relevant search results became so successful that it shaped the users’ habits in finding information on the Internet. Users stopped memorizing web site URLs, and started depending on the power of the search engine to give them back the relevant URLs for the information that they need. And though search engines can give you search results that spanned multiple pages, recent studies have shown that a few percentage of the users even bothered to go beyond the first page.

So that answers the why and how questions that we raised earlier about the importance of search engine listings to web site owners. As far as web design is concerned, everything that is mentioned above also points to one thing – that a good web design is just half the battle. Search engine optimization brings a whole new kind of a game to the table.

There is no definitive answer to the question: how will I make my web site rank well in Google (or Yahoo, or Alta Vista)? There are many factors that affect web site rankings, and the exact formula for this ranking algorithm is considered as a search engine company’s secret sauce that sets it apart from its competitors, and more importantly, this secrecy also serves as a protective wall that tries to prevent the contamination of search results with irrelevant contents and spam pages. But this doesn’t mean that they leave web site designers and owners in the dark. Search engine companies do help web designers and search engine optimization professionals in making pages that are more search-engine friendly. Online communities also exist that help others in their search engine optimization problems.

Search engine optimization is an established and growing industry of professionals who offer services for this specific purpose. But though people who specialize on this kind of optimization exist, it is also important that web designers understand the underlying concepts of search engine optimization. Though optimization techniques can be applied to the web site design towards or at the end of the project, having a good knowledge of the factors that improve a web sites’ search engine ranking saves the designer from cumbersome changes that might have to be done later if optimization is set aside. Having search engine optimization considerations as you design your web sites also focuses your design for a more definitive purpose. In the end knowing more about search engine optimization as a web designer is a big advantage for a more efficient web design resulting to a website that will be noticed and read by visitors all over the world.

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The first thing people are likely to notice when they visit your site is its appearance. It is a good idea to make sure the content is clear and concise so there won’t be any confusion about where to find information. That will save visitors time, and can mean the difference between their continuing to browse your site, or simply finding another like it. The following are some tips that will help you effectively design your site, and can help promote you as well as what you have to offer.

Loading time is probably the most crucial aspect of web design. Just because you have a great looking web site does not mean others will see it if it takes a long time to load. The design you choose should be optimized for the web, and should generally take no more than 15 seconds to load. If the load time is longer than this, people are likely to click on another site instead. While pictures, graphics, and sound can definitely make it appealing, they can take a while to load, so you don’t want to have too many on the front end. The same goes for each individual page on your web site. If a particular page takes too long to load, the person perusing your site may decide to go elsewhere for the information.

Clear navigation is another important aspect of good and effective web design. If your site is easy to get around, users are less likely to become confused. If information is too difficult to locate, they will more than likely go elsewhere to find it. Be sure the links and information are placed so that they make sense to those visiting your site. If there is a logical order, be sure to follow it.

Design your site in terms of percentage, not pixels. This is important because of the many different screen resolutions available for computers today. You want to be sure yours will work for these various resolutions so that more people will be able to access your site and view its contents.

Web browser compatibility is also a very important aspect of good web design. When creating your site, don’t stop when it looks good and works well with one browser. Make sure it works with commonly used browsers such as Internet Explorer and Netscape. This is important because what is compatible with one browser may not be with another. Since the object is to draw as many people as you possibly can to your site, making sure they are able to access it is important.

There are many other features you can add to your site to make it more appealing. Keep in mind that the people who visit your site will come from a wide variety of computer backgrounds, and will own different computer equipment. Be as diverse as you possibly can, and remember that the web is constantly evolving, and in order to keep up, you must evolve with it.

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Design: People often confuse design with development. Moreover even within design, user interface design is often confused with graphics design. Web user interface design involves the design of the flow of the website and the layout of the specific web pages within the website. The web user interface designer concentrates on the usability of the application. The user interface designer will typically develop “wireframes” using tools like Adobe Photoshop to convey the design. These are often initially developed as prototypes and usability testing is carried with user groups out to ensure that the web application will be intuitive and easy to use. Graphics design on the other hand relates to the aesthetics of the page. The graphics designer is responsible for the aesthetic layout of the pages and the creation of the various graphical objects inside the pages such as images and flash objects. The graphics Designer will typically use a combination of tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Captivate to create the actual graphics objects. A designer will need to work closely with other groups to make sure the design process does not compromise the performance of the application by making sure that the graphics objects are small thus ensuring that the various web performance metrics are unaffected.

Development: This involves converting the design into an actual application. The development typically involves an architectural phase where the underlying modules that make up the application are scoped out. If persistent data storage is needed, a database schema should be designed to accommodate the data storage needs. The choice of the operating system (e.g. Windows, Linux or Solaris) where the web application will run, the web server (e.g. Microsoft IIS, Apache or Tomcat) which will run the web application and the back end database (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL or Postgres) which stores the data will need to be made. Various development frameworks are available to build web applications. The most common ones are ASP and ASP.NET from Microsoft, Java Servlets and JSP from Sun, PHP and Perl that are open source. The choice of the application framework is typically dictated by the strengths of the members of the development team. The architectural phase is followed by the implementation phase. This is typically the longest part of the project and during this phase the actual code is written using the design specifications and graphics objects developed by the design team. The programming will typically be done using a combination of the application frameworks mentioned earlier together with HTML, JavaScript and CSS style sheets.

Quality Assurance and Testing: A surprising number of people are of the view that quality assurance and testing is desirable but is not actually needed. Unfortunately this view has its roots in total ignorance of the process that is needed to build a good end product. Regardless of how pretty or slick we make the application, if it does not work as expected, users will reject it. Quality assurance and testing involve two different kinds of tasks. Functional and regression testing is used to verify that the developed application is doing what it is supposed to do. This is achieved by test automation using a functional testing tool. Load and Performance testing is used to ensure that the application performs as intended when it is subjected to the typical load of a production environment. Load testing is practically speaking impossible to perform without using an automated load testing tool since it involves the simulation of a large number of concurrent virtual users. This effect cannot really be achieved manually and needs the assistance of an application that is designed to subject the application to a specified load and then measure its performance when it is subjected to that load. Quality Assurance teams will need to track the bugs or defects in the application using bug tracking tools. Such tools will allow defects to be tracked by all members of the team.

The three groups mentioned above tend to be specialized for their skill set. As an example, people often make the mistake of using developers as quality assurance testers. This is not a wise strategy because most developers who are good at writing software are quite poor at finding bugs or defects in their own software.

Writing good and compelling web applications requires an understanding of all phases of the process, design, development and quality assurance. Skipping phases or taking shortcuts will result in low quality software that will generally cost more in the long run.

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Tip #1: Make sure your Web site loads in 5 seconds or les…

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web site design, hosting, affordable web design, tips, design ideas, best practices, web application

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When creating an affordable Web site for your small business, there are certain things to keep in mind from a design perspective that can make or break your site. Even if you do not plan to spend a fortune on your site, paying attention to each of these items you will ensure that the final product is something of which you can be proud.

Here are 5 tips for designing your small business Web site, even on a budget:

Tip #1: Make sure your Web site loads in 5 seconds or less: Have you ever tried to view a Web site only to find that it takes 10 or 20 seconds to come up on your screen? Unless it has been recommended by a friend or you have some other burning desire to visit the site, you probably likely gave up and moved on. The first 5 seconds is very important in terms of the attention span of your visitor. During that period, you need your site to load and for the visitor to be able to “get” what your site is about. If it takes longer than this, your visitors will run out of patience and leave. Tip: if you want to show off a long flash presentation, try featuring it on a page other than the home page.

Tip #2: Limit the menu bar to 5 options: Your Web site needs to be singular in purpose and focused in appearance. If your site is trying to be all things to all people, it will end up being of value to almost nobody. The simplicity and focus of your site design is reflected in your navigation and symbolized on your home page by your menu options. If you believe your site requires more than five menu options, make some of them sub-menus that are available only after the user selects one of the five main options.

Tip #3: Make clearly visible a call to action: Ever shopped at an IKEA? Their stores have a non-traditional layout that allows you to look around freely and yet literally leads you from one section to another, right on through to the multiple cash registers and food goodies waiting for you at the end of your path. Let this serve as a model for how to set up your Web site: on every page, you need to make it abundantly clear to your site visitors just exactly what it is you want them to do. Do you want them to contact you? Order your product or service? Add a comment to your Web site? Whatever it is, make this call to action very easy to spot both textually and graphically from anywhere on the site.

Tip #4: Provide free and clear access to additional help options: You do not want to lose sales (or visits, or whatever your goal for your visitors maybe be) just because you failed to give someone the chance to ask a question. Just as with your call to action, make it clear to visitors that no matter where they are on your site they can easily locate help via phone, e-mail, live chat, call back, user forum, or knowledge database. Hint: present the various options in a prioritized manner depending upon anticipated user needs.

Tip #5: Show consistency among other design elements: The look-and-feel of your site as a whole is really just a combination of all of its individual components. Pay close attention to every detailed component of your new site. Use appropriate colors and graphics, pay attention to font size, make sure your messaging is readable and makes sense, and make sure images look crisp and appealing. Items that you think are minor might form the basis for whether someone chooses to stay on your site or find that of a competitor.

Whether you are designing your own site or hiring a professional designer, pay attention to these items and you will have a winning site for your small business, even on a budget.

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SEO Web Design and Site Optimization:

Search engine optimization is more than just a trend nowadays. It is used and applied by almost all sites on the internet that aim to make money and reach online popularity. Among the many strategies of optimizing a web site, SEO web design is one of the topmost priorities.

The impact of the design of the site on search engine robotic crawlers or spiders can help raise the ranking of the site. This is where SEO web design comes in. There are many ways to make the web site more attractive to robotic visitors and human visitors alike. Actually, spiders and crawlers from search engines do not mind the overall aesthetic value of the site. All these robotic crawlers need is the information it can get from the site. The tricky part is how to put relevant information in the site in order for the crawlers to properly index the site due to its relevance. SEO companies who specialize in optimizing web sites must also know how to put a site in front of others in order to bring it to the attention of the Internet users. The search optimizers who will handle your site must be able to know the right strategies to place the web site ahead of others in its field through accepted methods of optimization.

SEO web design is a competitive area where web designers, or what I prefer to call website architects, work hard to come up with ideas and designs that are aesthetically appealing and relevant at the same time. There has to be consideration for ease of getting around the website, being appealing to a wide range of visitors and finding the right place for the website. Making a a basic, visually appealing site is easy with the many technologic advances available today, the problem with these advances are that they are sometimes quite tricky to use thus making your website difficult to navigate in. SEO web design should be easy to use and friendly to both human and robotic browsers.

Easy navigational access can be done by making the pages of the site easy to navigate to and having easy to understand and use button or labels to click on. The pictures and images on your SEO web design should be just the right size and scale to enable users to see them promptly after clicking instead of taking a very long time to download. Waiting for images and other graphics to load can be off putting for most visitors and will eventually lead them to another site which is more optimized and easy to view. Even spiders and crawlers will give up on a site which is not easy to navigate and get into.

The overall appeal of the SEO web design should not only be focused mainly on the niche that it is targeted on but also for Internet users who might have stumbled onto the site. SEO web design should have a universal appeal even for the most specialized type of sites on the Internet. Some webmasters or website owners could opt for specialized SEO web designs and these can also be done with the targeted audience in mind. It will also benefit the site if it is indexed as it should be. You might want to have a specific SEO web design which is built around the entire concept of your site and this can add to the ranking if you are quite specific with what you aim to sell or market. If you are marketing a specific product or information, SEO experts can focus on this product or information and build the SEO web design around it.

Another aspect of SEO web design that needs to be considered is what your competition is doing. The saying, “know your enemy” is the key here. You do not want to have the same boring marketing strategies as the competition. Why? Because it is a good idea to keep abreast with what they are doing and how well they are doing in this field. There are many site optimization tools that can help analyze and determine what is needed for the site. Hence, in regard to SEO web design process, content is one of the prime needs and tools of making the site rank high during searches. Finding out or identifying the right keywords to integrate into the site can be crucial in making the site among the top ranking ones. Keyword search tools and having keyword rich content and titles can help to optimize a site efficiently.

SEO web design experts should also bear in mind that there are web strategies that may be unacceptable for search engines. Using these underhand or black hat tricks to perpetuate a site in rank can cause the search engines to ban the site and also the SEO web design company that did the search engine optimization work for it no matter how well the SEO web design is.

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An Easily Recognized USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

When a visitor arrives at any of your web pages (not only the homepage), he/she should understand what your site is all about immediately. You only have a split second to grab their attention. Make sure each web page has a powerful keyword-rich headline that will keep the visitor reading.

Graphics that Complement without Dominating the Web Pages

Every website needs a few graphics here and there to make the web design pleasing to the eye, but be sure your graphic design and logo design do not dominate your pages. You want visitors to read your page, not look at your graphics. So, keep graphics to a minimum, and use them only when they help to create an even reading flow on the page. Many sites use a pleasant “newsletter” style when there is much to read on a page, sprinkling graphics or photos throughout the text in a wrap-around sense. For logo design, keep it small and simple. There’s nothing more annoying than waiting on a page to load because its logo is too big!

Keyword Rich Content for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Be sure your designer understands about SEO and keywords. Every page of your site should be designed with search engine promotion in mind. This means gearing your meta tags, link text for pages or in menus, headlines, image “alt text” contents, etc. to attract search engine traffic for the long haul.

Easy-to-Use Navigation

Be sure the navigation on your web pages is easy to use. Many visitors will not take the time to “search” for hidden links or to browse through a confusing menu. If ordering custom web design from a professional, write out on paper how you would like your link system to flow from page to page. If you have content, place visible, colored links within the text to give visitors a chance to click while reading. Have menu bars or links in the usual places – sidebars and top/bottom of the web page.

Promote your Website

Some design firms will offer promotion bonuses with a custom web design package. This benefits you because it helps you to get a head start on building traffic. You can take advantage of the design firm’s skills and knowledge about Web promotion and search engine optimization. Don’t forget to promote your website in every way possible. Print your site address on business cards, newspaper ads, letterhead, etc. Also, promote your site online using only targeted advertising.

Custom web design techniques and promotion are so tightly knit together that it’s impossible to separate the two. Be sure to include both in your custom web design plans so you can see positive results from the start!

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