Web Design Articles

Designing and creating a website that is search engine friendly requires a basic understanding of how search engines work. We focus on the overall layout and usability of your designs from the perspective of how a search engine robot would see your site.

10 Easy Steps to Improving Your Website | By Daniel G. Roberge

Many websites suffer from old, outdated site designs that do not accurately reflect the positive services of the company. Often times different, non-technical employees update various pages without regard to an overall site continuity. The result is a mismatch of styles, typefaces, and pictures that just do not look appealing anymore. It's time for a change.

If your site is more than 5 years old I recommend a full site redesign, but in the meantime here are 10 easy steps for you to consider if you need to make changes right away:

  • 1) Select 2 or 3 typeface styles and stick with the normal and bold options.
  • 2) Select a main theme color and one or two complimentary colors.
  • 3) Review your company information for outdated services or descriptions.
  • 4) Add eye-catching photography that represents your industry.
  • 5) Update your company contact info (are key emails still directed to ex-employees?)
  • 6) Add a product information overview document as a PDF download.
  • 7) Rename your main section link names to be clear to your visitors.
  • 8) Add industry specific keywords to your HTML and resubmit your site to search engines.
  • 9) Reduce the "FLUFF" and refocus your content on your core business services.
  • 10) If you are not sure how to do any of these call 1+ (800) 682-9413 and we will help you!

How Can Your Company Benefit From a Site Re-Design? | By Daniel G. Roberge

  • Improve your customer's sense of trust in the services you provide
  • Organize the presentation of new company information
  • Reduce future maintenance time (IT man hours)
  • Site will be more compatible with future web browsers and higher code standards/li>
  • Improve search engine rankings (SEO combined with semantic markup – H1, H2, H3)
  • Improve the ability to leverage site statistics
  • Pages will download faster from reduced markup code
  • Reduce page cutoff when printing

Dramatic visual improvements are possible - sometimes with only a couple of minor layout or navigation edits. Your site content should have regular updates with new company information as often as you have it. Any product information, price edits, new services, or press releases should be posted to the site to spur customers to use your products or services.

The Benefit of Coding to Web Standards | By Daniel G. Roberge

When a document is said to adhere to web standards, it means that the document:

  • Consists of valid html and xhtml code
  • Uses Cascading Style Sheets to separate presentation style from actual data
  • Is properly structured and semantically marked up to be read in a variety of browsers and properly indexed by search engines

Improved ROI through XHTML and CSS

  • Simpler development and maintenance - Using more semantic and structured HTML makes it easier and quicker to understand code created by somebody else.
  • Compatibility with future web browsers - When you use defined standards and valid code you future-proof your documents by reducing the risk of future web browsers not being able to understand the code you have used.
  • Faster download and rendering of web pages - Less HTML results in smaller file sizes and quicker downloads and page rendering.
  • Better accessibility - makes it easier for screen readers and alternative browsing devices to interpret the content.
  • Better search engine rankings - The separation of content and presentation makes the content represent a larger part of the total file size to improve search engine rankings.
  • Simpler adaptation - A semantically marked up document can be easily adapted to print and alternative browsing devices, like handheld computers and cellular phones, just by linking to a different CSS file.
  • Site-wide updates - You can also make site-wide changes to presentation by editing a single file.

Reduced Development Hours
Styling of the document (color, size, typeface, related positioning) is controlled by the CSS text file, so for instance, if usability testing finds that the text is too small, then adjusting the text size in the CSS text file will have it cascade throughout the site.

* 1 text change in 10 seconds vs. hand-coding each and every page (how many man-hours?)
We must create search engine-friendly pages. We want to have our pages easily indexed by the search engine spiders with important words and phrases appropriately tagged, to receive proper valuation. Structurally coding our XHTML with H1, H2, H3, paragraph tags, lists, etc. will tell the search engine what parts of the page are the most important. Styling with CSS will allow all browsers to read our pages in a consistent manner.

Partner with Roberge Design for your next project - Developing a new website or RE-DESIGNING an existing one does not have be an intimidating experience. Let Roberge Design help you succeed with your next Internet-related project.
Call 1+ (800) 682-9413