If you are an experienced user of the Internet then you have probably heard the phrase “Content Is King”.  For those who haven’t, we’re here to tell you why quality content is crucial to your websites success. The content on your website is a great way to communicate with your target audience and get their attention. One of the best ways of drawing users into your website is to write content that is relevant to what they are looking for. Users will come back again and again to your website for resources if they know that the information is valid and written well.

In today’s technology age, users want their questions answered immediately. Making the content captivating, brief and easy to read will give the users their answers the quickest way.

Before you begin to write your content it is ideal to research what keyword terms or phrases that you would like to rank for when a user is looking for your website. Your website may not rank on the search engine’s first page for every single keyword term or phrase, so it is good to pick a set of words and phrases that will provide maximum search volume. Your content should contain targeted keywords or phrases, but you don’t want to overdo it by adding the same keywords over and over again. Your keywords should show up 2 to 6 times for every 100 words. Adding keywords to the first 25 words of text is important as well.

Meta tags and descriptions should have your keywords, and be relevant to the content on your webpage. Page titles let users know what is on the page. This is displayed at the top of the browser window.  The Meta description should give a brief summary of the page’s content. The title tag and page description are both key elements to search engines when they spider what is on the page. Make sure that the text you use is an accurate description of your website. Not only do search engines spider your title tag and keywords, but they spider your content. Because of developers injecting websites with faulty keywords, search engines have caught on and programmed their algorithms to make the content on a website more relevant than it’s Meta keywords.

Use header (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) tags as headings to paragraphs. This document structure lets users know what the section of content is about without reading the entire section. Search engines spider your header tags before you content, so it is important to label these correctly. It is good rule of thumb to use one main header tag (H1 tag) on a page. Using multiple will make the header not as relevant.

The content on your website can also help with backlinks if users think that your website has quality content. Backlinks assist to show the search engines that your website is relevant, popular and deserves a higher ranking.

Quality content can separate you from your competitors. There is always competing websites in your niche. By writing quality content you stand out from the rest and look professional. If you have a website that is flashy and has cool colors, it doesn’t mean that you have the best user experience. A great design doesn’t compensate for awful content. User experience is crucial and should go hand-in-hand with design.

You might have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before but those who haven’t might ask, What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? SEO is the on going optimizing of a web site by updating and improving the external and internal aspects in order to increase the sites traffic from search engines. SEO deals with many aspects from building links and marketing the uniqueness of your site, to making it search engine friendly, to recognition of key terms and phrases that help generate traffic. Search queries, the words that users type into the search box which contain key terms and phrases most suitable to your site, carry exceptional value. The ultimate goal is to gain as much search engine traffic as possible to gain exposure because exposure can make or break an organization.

The next question you might have is how do search engines find your web site or sites you are searching? Search Engines need a way to “crawl” the web and index all the different sites and documents, the way they do that is by using links. The link structure of the web assists to bind together all of the pages on the web. Search engines automated robots called “spiders” or “crawlers” can reach billions of interconnected documents through the links. Once the pages are found they are stored into gigantic hard drives to be recalled when needed in a query.

When designing your web site you might want to make a checklist to make sure that your site will be found by the search engines.

You want to make content indexable to the search engines, the way to do this is make the content HTML text format, or else the search engines will not be able to read it. The engines can’t read images, flash files, java applets and other non-text content, actually they are virtually invisible to search engine spiders. There is a way to make images in gif, jpg or png format visible to spiders by assigning them “alt attributes” in HTML, this provides the search engines a text description of the visual content. Also, with flash or java plug-in contained content can be repeated in text on the page.

The link structure of a site needs to be crawlable so that the spiders can browse through the pathway of a website in order to find all the pages on the site. Even before that though, search engines need to see content so they can list the pages in their enormous keyword based indices. Your website might have great content, keyword targeting and marketing but that won’t matter if the spiders can’t reach those pages.

The keyword usage and targeting are very important to website. Keywords are the building blocks of search and language. When the engines crawl and index content of pages, they store all the keyword based indices. The search engines have millions of small databases based on keyword terms or phrase. They measure keywords that are used on a page to determine relevance of a document to a query. The keywords are prominently used in titles, text, and meta data.

Title tag is the title on top of the website and should be a clear, concise description of a page’s content. 70 characters is the maximum amount that will display in the search results. Keywords should be included in the title tag because it helps with your site ranking. Start your title tag with a brand name mention to increase brand awareness and higher click through rate. Make sure that title tag is captivating so that you will pull in visitors to your site.

Meta Tags are intended to provide a substitute for information about a website’s content. Meta robot tags can be used to control search engine spiders activity on a page level. The meta description tag exists as a short description of a page’s content. The meta description advertises what your website has to offer, this draws users to your site. Meta descriptions shouldn’t be longer than 160 characters.

Usability and user experience are second order that influences on search engines ranking success behind keyword placement, links and site structure. Search engines are able to measure the sites popularity, which lets the search engine know that the site is of high quality or is not up to par and no one wants to link to it. Crafting a thoughtful, empathetic user experience can almost guarantee that users will come back to your site. Encouraging sharing, bookmarking, return visits and links signal to search engines and contribute to higher ranking.

URL structure is important because you want users to be able to easily and accurately predict the content you’d except to find on the site, so make sure your URL are appropriately descriptive. Minimizing length and trailing slashes makes your URL easier to copy and paste and fully visible to search engines. If your targeting keyword terms or phrases they should be included in your URL. Create a simple static URLs. Use descriptive real words, instead of meaningless numbers or figures nobody can remember. Use hyphens to separate words in a URL.

There are many ways to get links and link building is a big part of SEO work. Many sites offer directories or listing of relevant resources that you can submit your site to. You can get customers to link to you. Building a company blog and make it a valuable, informative and entertaining resource. Create content that users want to share with others and inspires natural linking. Lastly, build content that can be shared through a citation based licensing agreement.

As the leading furniture source in the Yuba City and Sacramento Area… read more

1. Know your target audience
   You know who your target demographic is. We know how to cater to them.
2. What is the goal of your website?
   Will you be selling products? Will you be displaying your inventory online, but not selling? Do you want to display only your basic contact information and services?
3. Once potential clients and customers are at your site, what will they be looking for?
   Now that they are at your site, what will you be trying to convey to them? Will they be looking for information about your newest service or will they be buying a product?
4. Content
   Content is what is going to drive people to your website and keep them interested. Having a properly outlined content will help expedite the quote process and the implementation of your website.
5. How often will you need to update the content?
   Chico Web Design offers a variety of solution for content management. Having an up to date website will not only increase your search engine rank standings, but give customers and potential clients a reason to come back.
6. Artwork
   This is important. Chances are your printer may have a high resolution logo, or the graphic artist who created it initially. Please get it ready for us. Acceptable file formats include, .AI, .EPS, .PSD (.PSD is only acceptable for web design).
7. Domain Name
   Your domain name is very important (ie, your www.yourbusinessname.com). Choosing an intuitive, easily typed domain name will help your customers and potential clients find your site. Something short, to the point, and easily remembered is always best.
8. Web Hosting
   In order for you website to visible on the World Wide Web, you must place your files on a computer which will serve web pages. This is called a web server. Chico Web Design offers web hosting services but we do not require you to host with us.
9. Search Engines
   What do you think people would type into a search engine to reach your website? What keywords or key phrases? For more information, see our article about Search Engine Optimization.
10. Cost
    Anything is possible, it just takes time and money! Having a specified budget in mind will help us accommodate to your exact specifications. Although you may think this is a loaded question, having a budget to work within will let us maximize our time and efficiency.

Are you ready?

Give us a call at 1 (877) 893-5257 or 1 (530) 893-5257 or Contact us.

Clients often ask us, “After you are done building our web site, will it be number one on Google”? We get this question with almost every website proposal we complete. More often then not, we don’t have the answer. Only Google knows!

First off, we do not claim to be Search Engine Optimization experts, nor do we bill ourselves out at such. The advice you will receive here comes only from the years of experience I have as a project manager, designer, and developer. What we do as a design and development firm is create websites that are search engine friendly, content driven, which have light HTML pages that will only increase your odds of ranking higher.

Website design should not be categorized in the same field as Search Engine Optimization. I often equate it to my clients as the difference between an a automotive repair shop, and a automotive body shop. Yes, they are both in the automotive industry, but different fields of expertise.

Let’s get started!

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the “science” so to speak, of rankings and indexing websites via Internet search engines. There are an infinite number of attributes and algorithms that make up where your site is indexed in search engine results. Starting with your content, to the number of inbound links, page popularity, and so on. The bottom line is there is no answer on how to become number one, just theories.

Meta Data

You may have heard of this term before. Meta data, in its simplest definition, is information about particular content. Every page of your website can have Meta data. In theory, search engines crawl or spider each page of your site and view your Meta data, which if set up properly to describe the content, will give the search engines a better understanding of what resides on the page.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords are a list of keywords or keyword phrases separated by a comma. The theory behind Meta keywords is that the terms selected may be associated with that particular page on your site. When giving Chico Web Design your keywords, we always prefer 30-40 keywords or keyword phrases that you believe people may type in to reach your site. In general, we tell our clients to think geographically. The more specified these terms are, the better chance you have at receiving the rankings you want.

For example, if you owned an Italian restaurant in Chico California, you may want to specify that geographically in your Meta keywords.

Ie, Chico Italian Bistro, Chico Italian Restaurant, North Valley Restaurant, etc.

Why? Because what good will it do your business if someone from Texas views your web site looking for a great restaurant to to go to that evening?

Meta Description

Meta description, just like Meta keywords is placed in the source of the HTML document and is hidden to the viewer. The description often gets placed in search engine results under the link to your site. A good description will be 3-4 sentences and entice the viewer looking at search engine results to click on the link. If this is not defined on your page, they will often grab whatever they please so it’s best to define them.

Again, geographically targeting your description in my opinion is helpful.

For example, using the Italian restaurant in Chico California.

Locally owned and operated, the Chico Italian Bistro is quaint place to enjoy great Italian American food. With a variety of dishes to choose from, the Chico Italian Bistro has been serving customers in Chico California for nearly 20 years. Locally owned and operated, on the corner of 5th street and Main.

Search Engine Friendly URL’s

All URL’s are safe to the browser. You will often notice on some sites that the URL in the address bar has miscellaneous strings of characters that mean nothing to you. Well, they also mean nothing to search engines. That’s why we choose to use Search engine friendly URL’s when developing a website for a client. For example, a search engine safe URL would look something like this

http://www.chicowebdesign.com/web-design-portfolio/web-design.php

To the viewer and search engines it’s very explanatory and descriptive of the page. Just by looking at this you may think that you are looking at a web design portfolio.

Content is King

One of the most important things you can do with your website is create resourceful, keyword driven content. There are many theories on how many keywords should be placed into the content and quite frankly I don’t know the answer. What I do know, is that planning your content around your keywords will only help you. What I typically do is create a list of keywords I want to use throughout the page and then begin writing my content.

As with anything related to SEO, you can use too much. Placing too many keywords thoughtout your content is not a good idea, but a nice lean balance between will help you get the results you are looking forl

Inbound Links

Many of the most popular search engines place heavy weight upon, along with many other attributes, inbound links. An inbound link is a link from another website to your website. In general, you want to have as many links as you can from related websites. For example, having links from your manufactures, vendors, and even competitors.

There are many free website directories related to your field online. A quick Google search with your industry + free directory will yield results.

Flash

Flash, when used correctly, is a great tool to keep viewers interested. When used inappropriately it can take all of the search engine capabilities away from your website. Flash is image driven, and therefore the content cannot be spidered by search engines. There are alternatives, such as creating an identical site in HTML, but now you must manage two different websites.

Basic flash elements, (ie, www.4researchsolutions.com) when used correctly, in key areas of interest make it a nice pleasurable experience for the user and do not take a way from your search engine spiderablility*.

How long until my site is searched or spidered by search engines?

More often than not, it takes 2 to 3 weeks. We cannot speak for all of the search engines, but typically we notice results in about the 2 to 3 week range. There are a few things you can do to speed up the process. The best thing to do is to have us create a splash page or a coming soon page. This will let the search engines know that there is something here, even if it’s nothing but a logo and it will begin to be spidered.

Also, since Chico Web Design gets spidered almost daily, having a link in our portfolio section, as all clients do, will help speed up the process as well.

What will Chico Web Design do to help my brand new site?

As we stated above, we do not consider ourselves SEO experts, but feel we have enough web experience to understand the basic concepts that will only help your site get the traffic it needs.

When developing a website, Chico Web Design uses W3C standard HTML helping to keep our pages as “light” as possible. Producing “light” pages allows the search engines to focus on the content and ignore a lot of the useless code that was once used to create layouts. We also use search engine friendly URL’s and will apply any Meta data that you would like into your site, all you have to do is give us the copy.

In conclusion, SEO is a very complex science that no one person knows the answer too. What Chico Web Design does as a web design and development firm is implements the most up to date techniques used to help start your optimization. If you want a professional to help you optimize your site to it’s fullest potential, please contact us and we will be glad to put you in contact with a professional. But remember, someone who is good at SEO can cost up to $300 p/hour.

*yes, I made this word up!