Simple is Best

When a million other websites beckon your visitor, you better have good solid content. Yet technically, your composition must be as simple as possible.

While web developers are constantly tempted to use the very latest technologies, search engines remain less sophisticated and are easily confused by what they see.

When a search engine robot takes a snapshot of your site to find out what its all about, everything depends on what it can see. And since this only happens every three or four weeks, your site becomes 'locked in' for that period of time. To make matters worse, the robot periodically changes the way it views each web page - changing the way it determines what is and is not relevant.

How can we ensure the robot gets all the right information! The secret is simple! Keep your website as simple as possible so what is seen is only the important information that makes your site unique. But how easy is it to build a website like this? That is best answered by revealing that a whole new science called Web Optimization studies this very subject.

Lets look more closely at the important aspects of optimizing your website.

expert design

There are two key considerations when designing a website: the visitor and the search engines. Visitors want information fast - in fact, very fast - or they will quickly move on. Search engines want to find out what your site is all about - what critical key words define it and what important sites link to it. Getting the right balance is essential for success.

Your website needs to have a minimum level of sophistication to be credible - but not so much as to be flashy.

the dangers

Most Internet users still use slow dial-up connections meaning a slow page load will cost you severely. Even visitors with high speed services will punish you if your site is slow. Typically you will lose 1/3 of your visitors if they cannot see your page within ten seconds.

While background, and other images may look great, they are the main cause of slow page loads. Visitors are not coming to your site to see your nice logo - they are want to see what you can offer them.

So unless it is absolutely neccessary, images should be small or not used at all. Note that no images at all are used on this site.

In the same vane - an introductory or splash page showing a graphic or movie also makes no sense. It is simply seen as denying visitors the information they seek. And, they block search engines from seeing the critical text information on your real home page. Your site may never be visited!

content continuity

Search engines rate sites with good text continuity much better. Long passages of text usually means lots of information which search engines love.

The page design must cram important key words into long yet interesting sentences to satisfy the needs of the visitor while allowing the engines to properly store and index your site.

contact us

If you are interested in having us build you a website and an associated promotion system please email us here