OZ WEBSITES

WEB DESIGN AND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION SERVICES

Web Design and Search Engine Optimisation

There's a lot of information out there on web page design, so much is useful, but only if you are not serious about having a high ranking in the search engine. Search engine ranking is critical and valuable. Just think yourself, how often do you have the time or the inclination to go past the first page of a google search.

The search engines are changing their crawling habits of sites all the time. It can be hard keeping upto date with their procedure. That's why it's important to have somebody that's able to enhance your front page. Not by flashy entrances where the customer gets tired of waiting for your site to download, so they backspace to the search engine, google, yahoo, dmoz or the like and finds another link, usually your competitor. Not by inserting frames and flash and other tricky devices such as counters, that are done for the administration department of your company, so they can feel important amongst their peers at the next boardroom meeting with a flashy design.

These design are not only expensive but quiet often they rank poorly in the search engines eyes, transferring to lower sales than what you might of had. Some web designers even have the gall to promise you links from their bank of other subscribers. This is cheating the system and it's an old and worn out trick. All search engines are awake to this and if your designer is putting this up as "enhancement of your site" better get someone else to handle in effect what is your cyber store front.

Some of the major mistakes that designers use in their design are :

1. Splash pages - warm and fuzzy but time consuming and almost useless in the search engines eyes, due to lack of content.
2. Small and Low-Contrast Font Face .If it's hard to see it's hard to read.
3. ALT Tags on Images - if it's on your page make sure the search engine knows.
4. Make sure the surfers can navigate away easily from your site, even if it's to another site that you think might be of interest to them. Make your site friendly and the chances are you'll have repeat visitors. Yhe more people stop at your store the more people shop at your store.
5. Back button reliance is a no no, give them a home page button to click on to.
6. Music, not good, especially on the home page . How annoying everytime you hit the home page button you have "THAT" music again.
7. Unclear font. Make sure that your page is easily readable. Don't mix capitals with lower case. Keep your font at something like Arial or Helvetica. Don't centre all your texts. The title is usually placed there, however the main part of the text is better to the side.

Of course these things don't apply to all sites, generally they hold true to most. To maximize your seach engine ranking simple is usually better.