Site Design - What's best for High Rankings?

[Lady P]

Hi Everyone,

We have been fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to redsign a current client's website and the client has also chosen to renew their online marketing contract with us. My job will be the promotion of the website and I have been assigned the task of instructing the designers on what are the best ways of laying out a design for the benefit of web promotion.


Things I need to advise on are:

Templates
Navigation
Graphics
Amount of Copy
Location of copy
Should the copy be segragated into boxes
Heirarchy
Number of pages

And anything else that the designers should consider for the site to be as well built to be as search engine freindly as possible.

Can anybody help with this and/or demonstrate examples of sites that are well suited to search engines.

Thanks

Laura

[weslinda]

I'm not sure what you're asking here. It sounds like you are interested in us doing your job for free. You sold the client on your skillset, are you unsure of how to proceed?

[Lady P]

Hi weslinda

I am in no way asking for you to do my job for free. As a SEO and design company we are very proficient and I have a number of clients on the front page of Google's rankings for keywords that are searched thousands of times a month. But these are projects that I undertook AFTER the sites had been designed.

This is my opportunity to put my two-pennies-worth in at the start and give my client an even greater chance of gaining good SERPs.

I research the forums most days so I already have a pretty good idea of the best design methods for search engines (e.g. don't overload pages with graphics, don't put content too far down the page, don't use templates, keep navigation simple, don't use a flash intro page)

I was under the impression that this was an open forum where I could ask for advice on any particular parts of SEO that are a bit 'hazy' and I was simply looking to have my current notions confirmed or busted.

[Webnauts]

Lady P look at our new web site found in my signature.
If that is not enough, or you do not understand howto, how much budget ($) do you have for that?

Be also aware, that our site has also diverse server configurations for SEO purposes, which results may be seen by checking our HTTP Headers, but not how we have done that all.

Some basics about our site creation may be found on our site technical statement.

[weslinda]

LadyP...this is an open forum, but I would not call a list such as the one you provided short or small. It sounds to me like you are interested in the full gamut of information needed to present a solid solution for your client.

Your List Included:
Templates
Navigation
Graphics
Amount of Copy
Location of copy
Should the copy be segragated into boxes
Heirarchy
Number of pages

Perhaps I'm just out of line, but I feel like this is information you should know if you have charged a client for this service.

You also asked that anything we feel you have left out should be covered as well. I hate to sound rude, but I don't think it's our place to help you provide a solid solution for your client. You charged them, then you're asking for free advice from us.

I think the conversation is different if you were the actual client, looking to redesign and not the person who has been contracted to do the redesign.

[Lady P]

weslinda
I see that my crime here has been to cover too broad a list of subjects and not be specific enough with explaining my actual need. I hold my hands up to this and I thought I cleared up the details of what I was querying in my second post on the matter.

'I research the forums most days so I already have a pretty good idea of the best design methods for search engines (e.g. don't overload pages with graphics, don't put content too far down the page, don't use templates, keep navigation simple, don't use a flash intro page)'...

'...I was simply looking to have my current notions confirmed or busted'

I should point out here that no members of this or other forums seem to have had issue with answering the post and have provided me with informative advice and confirmed many of the practices I already had in place. As I mentioned in my second post - I actually have a relatively clear idea of the rules I need to ask my design department to follow, I was looking for extra information and to see if anyone had a different view. Isn't that what these forums are about?

Despite re-phrasing my query and explaining that yes I do know quite a bit about seo and I'm not trying to get someone else to do my job you still berate me for my initial post and ignore my attempt to explain!

I suggest next time you don't know how to answer something you simply leave it to the people who do know rather than waste a lot of screen space with nothing.

[seorocks]

Hiya

what sector is the website offering? what sort of services?product? etc. This information is essential to identify factors for good design. The list you provided can only be answered when the above has been explained. e-commerce sites tend to have different layout from content based websites.

Templates - they are good for CMS and for pages created on daily bases with little or no changre from current design.

Navigation - you really need to look at how can you make the website easy to navigate. bread-crumbs are very important to let your visitor know where they are and how to get back a step or 2. i would also recommend including links at the end and top of the page with relevant content links.

Graphics - all depends. if your a web designer you will need to show images of your work, if you are selling a product (front and back or side view) is important and maybe enlarge image is needed. graphics will need to be of a reasonable amount and make sure they are (alt) tagged with good keywords - no spamming!!!!

Amount of Copy - shorter pages are read more by visitors than very long pages..include links to part 2 and 3 if the article/content is way too long. people dont like scrolling.

Location of copy - where else? on the page i guess. what do u mean?

Should the copy be segragated into boxes - all depends! is the site a news website? then yes! boxes can make things easier to scan the article info quickly and decide which one to read more about..

Number of pages - the more the better if it's content based so that the spiders can index more pages for the site and start building a history of content. older pages have more weight! and more likely to get a higher page rank. make sure the pages are linked internally and you have a site map.

Good luck.. hope this answered some of your questions. you really need to research what the competition is doing, how they did it, and why are they in the top! no one get's there unless they are doing something right ;)

[weslinda]

Lady P...we'll agree to disagree, I would answer your question, but it will cost you. That's a pretty extensive list for me to cover free of charge. I didn't feel I was berating, and if that was the impression I apologize.

I don't have an issue with answering, and I have many answers to your questions, my opinion was that if you were charging someone, you should know the answers to those, and not hoping for someone to confirm them by giving you every bit of information on those topics.

If you would like to see some ideas of what to avoid in a site, then you can read my article which is a sticky in the site design category and perhaps that will start you down the right path.

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=69461

Again, I'm not here to berate or insult you, I simply felt that asking for great ideas to build a web site so you can tell your designers seemed a bit far reaching in its scope.

[Webnauts]

I think seorocks have answered all questions of Lady P very well! ;)

Lady P if you already knew a lot as you claimed above and you have looked at my web site http://www.seoworkers.com you would not have any further questions. :)

What do you think seorocks?

By the way, best luck with your project. You will make it. :)

John

[Lady P]

Thanks Webnauts, seorocks and weslinda for your advice and points.

I will ensure that the future posts that I make are more specific and don't cast the net too widely.

Cheers

[seorocks]

ur right Webnauts - i had a look at ur site..what i like about it, is the simplicity..i noticed on your website Webnauts that you used <h2> tags in all of the headings on the page..so i searched for a <h1> heading and only THEN noticed there is a title to the page at the very top within the dark blue area. i missed it out, which could also mean many people did too. if the title is very important, i would recommend having it on a white background - if it isn't that important, why didnt you use <h1> tags for the other titles instead? am sure they do have keywords you wish people to find you with.


am just curious why you did it that way.. hope you should some light..

have a lovely day

Claire

[Webnauts]

Our web site www.webnauts net requires redesign, as we consider already outdated in concerns of SEO and semantical structure.

Take our brand new site www.seoworkers.com for viewing real cutting edge technologies and techiques. :)

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by seorocks

ur right Webnauts - i had a look at ur site..what i like about it, is the simplicity..i noticed on your website Webnauts that you used <h2> tags in all of the headings on the page..so i searched for a <h1> heading and only THEN noticed there is a title to the page at the very top within the dark blue area. i missed it out, which could also mean many people did too. if the title is very important, i would recommend having it on a white background - if it isn't that important, why didnt you use <h1> tags for the other titles instead? am sure they do have keywords you wish people to find you with.


am just curious why you did it that way.. hope you should some light..

have a lovely day

Claire

Claire or you are confused or I do not understand.

We use the <h1> only once everywhere.

At SEO Workers we use that at the header of the document.

At Webnauts Net we use that as the first heading of the main content area, which we consider as insufficient document outlining.

Why do we use only once the <h1> tag? How else should I do that?

I am sure if your designers have any idea about HTML, they will understand why.

But soo far I do not know many designers who really know html. Maybe yours? :)