Are You Wasting Money By Paying Your Web Designer For SEO?

Web site designers know that keeping the client happy is the most
important thing; however, this approach often backfires when one
of the client"(tm)s goals is to gain top search engine rankings.
Good SEO web site design delivers a beautiful and functional
website, a pleasant experience for those who use it, and a search
engine-friendly design. But what happens when a web designer has
a client who wants esthetics or navigation that takes away from
the site"(tm)s ability to gain top search engine rankings? Do web
developers go along with their client"(tm)s wishes at the expense
of search engine rankings, or do they politely guide the client
toward achieving all of their goals?

The biggest difference between web designers and SEO
professionals is what motivates them: creativity versus strategic
thinking. A web designer is ultimately motivated by making a
website look good to the client, thus satisfying them visually.
An SEO professional is ultimately motivated to gain top search
engine rankings for competitive keywords, thus gaining
visibility. More business owners are now waking up to the fact
that web designers are more artists than online marketers. So it
is vital to have the SEO professional and web designer work
together cooperatively on web site design.

"We do search engine optimization, too."
Often, a web site design company does a few aspects of search
engine optimization but does not really do what it takes to gain
top rankings. Companies can get roped in on this claim because a
firm does a great job at web site design or because the client
has "one-stop shop" syndrome, and so assumes a design firm is
equally skilled at SEO.

Most web developers do not consider the implications of search
engine optimization during the design phase. For example, to gain
top rankings for competitive keywords requires outranking
hundreds or even thousands of other websites that have already
been optimized for that keyword. Simply updating the meta tags
will rank the site at the bottom of the "optimized" heap and
will require ongoing work to gain a top ranking.

The client wants to keep costs down, so the web developer
compromises the SEO to stay within budget. The client needs to
know from his advisors (designers and SEO professional) what is
and is not practical, so he can reassess the budget and design
based on information supplied by an SEO expert. Because budget is
important, developers often shortcut past this advisory
checkpoint "" at the expense of gaining top rankings for the
client"(tm)s site.

It"(tm)s important to find a good web developer who will listen
to your requests, and who also will advise you on the best way to
implement the design and SEO. He needs to talk realistically with
you if the amount of work involved is not within your budget. Too
often, web developers simply implement a client"(tm)s wishes
without addressing the limitations and problems that come with
that solution. Ethical and knowledgeable web developers can
explain why you want the opinion of an SEO professional.

There are a number of issues that web designers might not handle
correctly when top search engine rankings are important,
including:

Search engine-friendly design
Obviously, you want visitors to have a good experience on your
site. But you also want search engine spiders to find all the
pages and content that will rank your site for a particular
keyword. If your site isn"(tm)t spider-friendly, it will never be
top ranked. Here are some of the search engine-friendly web
design issues we deal with regularly:

* JavaScript drop-down or slide-out menus can prevent search
engine spiders from following navigation links in web pages.
There are several design alternatives that involve text links and
don"(tm)t cause this problem.
* Requiring cookies on your website also prevents spiders from
indexing your content.
* Web pages that require users to input any type of
information in order to access the content blocks search engines
from your pages.
* Shopping cart systems that invoke session IDs. All shopping
cart systems utilize session IDs, but the further along a shopper
is in the buying process, the more search engine-friendly the
system.
* Unique title tags for each page of the site. Many automated
web design programs and dynamic database systems do not allow for
more than one title tag for every page of the site. Using a
design that describes the uniqueness of each page of your site in
the title tag achieves better results.

Navigation structure
Search engines don"(tm)t notice if your site has creative
navigation, but do notice if the navigation is cluttered.
Depending on how many pages your site contains, tightly focused
content organized by topic can pay off with higher search engine
rankings. Design navigation to optimize themes and internal
linking.

Website redesign etiquette
After a redesign, there are usually old pages that are no longer
used and might have been removed from the web server, but which
are still listed in the search engines. Don"(tm)t miss out on
search engine traffic because your web developer didn"(tm)t
redirect those old URLs to the new ones. There are various
protocols, depending on the web server, to handle URL redirects
and maintain search engine rankings. A custom error page is also
useful for visitors who click on a broken link or an address that
is no longer available.

Copywriting and duplicate content issues
If your web page contains the same wording as another page on the
Internet, it could be filtered by the search engines because it
is considered duplicate content. Search engines use a filter to
remove duplicate content pages and spam from the results they
provide. Unfortunately, many good web developers"(tm) work has
fallen victim to the duplicate content filter. These developers
unknowingly do a disservice to their clients when there are
things they could do to avoid their pages"(tm) being filtered out
of the results. Common causes of duplicate content include:

* Identical web pages "" whether affiliate sites, copied pages
or doorway pages "" that have the exact same content on them.
* Product description pages with the exact same description as
pages on the manufacturer"(tm)s website.
* Improperly hosting multiple domain names for the same
website.

Without question, original content is the best content for
websites. Always use a quality copywriter to make your web
writing unique and compelling for your particular audience.

Conclusion
Resist the temptation of the one-stop shopping experience. If you
give in, you will likely be sacrificing one or more of your goals
for the convenience. When the business owner forges a cooperative
relationship between the web site designer and SEO professional,
everyone wins. This means thinking through the SEO issues at the
beginning of the web site design plan.

Would you prefer to have the site that looks good and keeps the
customers happy or the one that also gets 40 e-mail requests and
new customers every day? This is reality for businesses that will
not settle for anything less than experts in SEO and web site
development.

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Tom Shivers is a search engine optimization
professional and President of Capture Commerce,
Inc. (http://www.capturecommerce.com), which he
founded in 2000 to help businesses leverage the
Internet for growth and profit. Capture Commerce
specializes in search engine marketing and conversion
rate marketing, and currently serves clients across
several industries including travel, automotive,
industrial, education, and the arts. Learn more at
http://www.capturecommerce.com