Are you going through the process of a website rebuild?

There are some very important points to take note of during this process, to make sure that your site:

• does not lose any search engine rankings, or
• have any broken links, be they within your website, or through anyone who has bookmarked your website.

So what are the things that could affect my website?

Each page in your website will very often have an associated rank, especially with Google. If your page is named www.website.com.au/page.html, and in the new site this exact page is now called www.website.com.au/new-page.html then Google will view this as a new page, and your rankings could start from scratch.

Of course wherever possible keep the old page names exactly the same as the original names.

How do you minimise the risk of a loss in rankings?

A 301 redirect in a .htaccess file on the server is the best way of doing this. The 301 redirect is a command that shows you have moved that page permanently. You may still find a temporary drop in rankings of pages within your site, but from experience, I have found that this generally ranges between no time at all, and a two to three weeks.

Please note, the above reference to a 301 redirect will not work on a windows server. Refer to your Windows hosting support for this reference.

Other important elements to think of, that can also affect your search engine rankings, as well as lost traffic/business.

• Bookmarking – When people have bookmarked your website in the Internet Browser – a 301 redirect will fix this.
• RSS feeds – Internal and External.
• Social Media/Networking/Bookmarking sites, and Directories – Try to updates your links on all of these sites.
• Internal Links – Internal links within your website carry SEO value from one page to the next.
• External Websites that link to you – These can be very important, as Google places high value in some external links that point to a website. Changing your pages, could result in a large drop in rankings. – Try to updates your links on all of these sites.
• HTML Structure – Is it the same as it was, or improved? Consult your SEO expert on this to be sure.
• Meta Tags – Are these the same as they were or improved? Consult your SEO expert on this to be sure.

Please note, that using the 301 redirect method will certainly ensure there are no broken links, however it will not pass on the same SEO value associated with each site link, so it is important to update as many of these links as possible, to ensure minimal impact to your site.

If you need help with your site move, contact us today for a quote.

There has never been a better time than right now to give your website a health check. Businesses around the country are using the start of the New Year as a great excuse for redefining goals and setting new targets, so why not include improving your website as one of your New Year’s resolutions?

I’m always amazed by the number of businesses who don’t take the opportunity to invest time or effort into developing or improving their websites. The end result being a shabby representation of their business. All too often, websites have been quickly thrown together without much thought or imagination, or the website is years old and out-dated.

Starting the process can be difficult, so I’ve put together a checklist:

Step One – Appealing to the eye

The first step is to consider whether your website is appealing to most people and whether the design is modern and up-to-date. If you are unsure, you can easily find out by asking staff, colleagues, or friends. I would also recommend that you take a look at your top main competitors to see what they are doing with their websites.

And,… if you find yourself apologising to people for how your website looks, this is a definite sign you need to upgrade fast…

The simple fact is, if people see a website that doesn’t visually appeal to them, they will leave before they even get to see how good your products or services are.

Step Two – Content

How up-to-date is your content? Does it accurately reflect all the products or services you offer?

Do you have content that entices visitors to return to your website at a later stage? This is really important, if on their first visit to your site, they are early in the buying cycle, then you want to make sure they remember you so that when they are closer to making a decision to purchase, you will be number one in mind. Having interesting hints, tips, or features of your website is a good way to bring them back at a later stage.

And while we are on that note, if they are early on in the buying cycle, what can you introduce to your site to better educate them and bring them closer to making a decision?

Step Three – Usability

Is your website easy to navigate, enabling your site visitors to find the information they want quickly? For websites that grow quite quickly, it’s easy to lose the right navigation structure, making it difficult for website visitors to get around the site. Take the time to map out the flow of your website on a piece of paper (for smaller sites), or for larger sites Excel can be a good way to setup the flow. Remember, if someone can’t quickly find what they are looking for on your site, it is only a couple of clicks back to the search engines to find your competitors.

Usability and accessibility standards can also be an issue many do not consider. If users with disabilities visit your site, not only could you be losing potential valuable business from them, but did you know that in Australia and many other countries, it’s a legal requirement to have your site accessible for disabled users?

An interesting case back in 2000 proved that these laws can be enforced, as in the case of Bruce Lindsay Maguire v Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, in which Maguire won.

Step 4 – Pages being accessible

Do all of the links in your site work? This can be a problem more frequently than you think, as many website owners are simply unaware. A free tool called Xenu will easily scan through your site and provide you with a report to verify this.

Step 5 – Your home page

Does your home page provide a simple, clear message of what your business offers? Many businesses make the mistake of cramming so much information into their home page, because they want their visitors to know everything about them the moment they visit their site. The end result, a home page that looks messy, hard to read, and searchers leave before they find out what you have to offer.

Step 6 – Your sales message

Do you have a call to action, or a strong message to “buy now” if applicable? Without reasons to buy, you are likely to see a low conversion rate throughout your site.

Placing video on your website is  also a great way to connect with your site visitors and to convert new business. So if it’s in your budget, I would really recommend it.

Step 7 – Website Reporting

Last, but definitely not least, what are your website analytics reports telling you about how your website is performing? Chances are, that the majority of people reading this are asking, “website reports?” Most businesses don’t look at their reporting, either because they don’t understand the information in the reports, or think they don’t have the time.

The information in these reports can be critical to properly, and effectively managing your website. Without this understanding, you won’t know how to improve your site, or worse still, you may change a section of your site that is performing really well for you.

Small changes to your site, based on this information, can have a big impact on your bottom line, which means more $$$ for you. Isn’t that one of the main reasons you’re in business?

Conclusion

If you’ve answered ‘no’ or ‘unsure’ to any of the questions above, then I encourage you to make improvements to your website a priority. Whether it’s your in-house web development team, or an external web development company, making sure your website is brought up to today’s standards in design and technology is of vital importance if you want to keep your business moving forward.

Think of it like this; if you walked into a shop or office, and it was really shabby, how would you feel about giving them your business? A website is no different… So what are you telling your potential clients about your business?

So, you’re ready to build a new website, and you have been shopping around for a web design company, or about to build the website yourself. If you haven’t chosen a web design company yet, I encourage you to read part 1 of this series.

Now that you are ready to start designing your website, you need to put a plan in place for what you want your website to achieve. Planning is a very important component in getting ready to build your website, and to see what is necessary for its design. If you don’t plan properly, and don’t think of everything you will need before the website is built, you may find your costs will skyrocket simply because of the additions you need to include. Of course the web design company you have chosen; if you are using one, should be able to guide you in the right direction, but no-one knows your business like you do, so both parties should be involved in the planning.

Planning

Define the purpose of your website.

What do you want your website to achieve for you? It is important that you clearly understand the purpose of your own website.
Websites can be used for different purposes, such as:

• Marketing, branding, site positioning
• Promotional campaign site
• Transactional sales-oriented site
• Customer service support site
• ‘How to’ instructional site
• Product or service demonstration site
• Lead generation site
• Viral or buzz creation site

Who your target market is?

What type of visitor to your website are you trying to attract? I come across many small to medium businesses that don’t have a clear definition of who their target customer is. The clearer the understanding you have, the easier it will be for you to connect with your target audience and the more successful your website will be. If your website is not clear in what you offer, then it is highly likely you will quickly lose these visitors.

Some businesses are afraid to leave a clear indication of what they offer because they are worried about their competitors finding out information about them. Your competitors can easily find this information out anyway if they choose to, and all you are really doing is losing potential customers as they leave your website because they are not clear about what you are offering.

Take the time to look at some websites that you like and don’t like. Write down what appeals to you and what doesn’t. Use these points to refine your website.

Does your website portray the same message as the rest of your marketing? Often businesses forget that a website is a part of the overall marketing mix, communicating who you are, what you do, and why you do it better than your competitor. Marketing is also about branding, and positioning your business. If this is done properly you will stand out from the crowd. Does your website honestly reflect this? Make sure that your website is consistent with the rest of your marketing mix.

Marketing your website

Do you want to attract business through the search engines? This may seem a simple question, but many people think it is enough to build a website and the traffic will come. I come across people all the time that still think that being found through the search engines is not important, only to find six months down the track how important it really is.

A recent client approached us to add the finishing touches to their e-commerce site. During this process, one of the questions I asked was, how they were planning to market their site as it was purely an online selling tool with no bricks-and-mortar business associated with it. The response was; I don’t know, I thought I would build the site first and work that out later.

Unfortunately this is not an uncommon approach these days when it is quite easy and cheap to get an online business up and running.

Many people don’t realise that whether you have a bricks-and-mortar business, or your business is entirely online, it takes planning and hard work for your business to be successful. There were a number of reasons why this website would not work well:

• It was built entirely using only graphics, even the text was in graphics. On an ADSL 2 connection it took more than thirty seconds for the page to load, which is simply too long for most people to wait.
• At this time search engines cannot read graphics. Search engines like Google would have no interest in listing it in their rankings.

Choosing the design style

One of the hardest things in designing a site can be getting a clear understanding of what a client wants in the look-and-feel of their site. Design depends on individual taste, and designing a website from a first draft that the client will like from the start, can be a real challenge. Some clients have a very clear understanding of what type of design they want, but most do not.

It can be really helpful to find some websites that you like the look of, and use them as a basis for what you like I am not encouraging anyone to copy another website, but it does help to have a clear idea of what you like and don’t like.

What colours do you want?

The colours you use play a major part in the success of your website, for a couple of reasons.

• If the colours are not appealing to your visitor, then they may be instantly turned off by your site, and you will lose them altogether.
• If the colours you use are too bright, or do not contrast well, then visually impaired people may not be ale to read the information on your website. A great tool to use to choose your colours is: http://www.kuler.adobe.com/# I strongly recommend that you integrate your business colours, or at least as closely as possible. Of course, if your website is the first step towards changing your branding, then it is fine to use different colours.

Note: As a rule you should not use more than three different colours in your website colour scheme.

Website Content

The content in your website is something that will often grow over time, so if you haven’t fully written the content for your site before you are ready to start, don’t be too concerned. In saying that, you should at least have the basics together so that when the site is being built, it is being built with the correct structure.

The content you place in your website is an extremely important element. It needs to connect with your visitor quickly research shows that on average you have 7-8 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention and to convince them that they have come to the right site.

In the current market you should look for a good mix of video, audio and written content to get your message out there. This mix will vary depending on what you offer.

Content should be well written or presented and easy to understand. If you aren’t a natural writer, don’t despair, there are people that can write content for you, or at least improve on what you have put together. For more on writing content for your website, read my article ‘SEO and Website Content‘

Logos and Images

What logos or graphics will you want to use on your site? If your business has a logo, then it is important that you clearly display this, without overshadowing everything around it. Some people make the mistake of trying to make their logo so prominent on the page in their excitement to get their brand out there, that it spoils the overall page effect.

Using the correct images on each page of your website can help a potential client relate to your website. i.e. if you are a B2B website, you will want to have images of business people or business related images. Images can be a great way to break up a page that has a lot of content on it, to make it more visually pleasing and easier to read.

• Do you want animation within your website? While animation can look great, sometimes too much animation can take the focus off the important elements of your website. Your chosen web design company should be able to offer you the best advice on what will suit your individual business needs.

The more planning you do before you are ready to develop your website the more you control the cost of it in both the short and long term, and you will see your website up and running much faster.

Many small business owners have a hard time seeing the value of a website redesign. They believe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And this is understandable. Unless you are eating, breathing and sleeping technology and staying up to date with the moving target of Internet business, you’re not likely to know intuitively if your site needs a redesign.And as a small business owner, you may be concerned about the up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand how a redesign can help you drive traffic to your site, convert more users and even save monthy, you’ll feel more positive about making the investment in your business.

Old School Web Design – Tables-Based HTML

Not long ago, fax machines were the best way to deliver business documents fast. But now it’s so easy to scan and email documents, and even capture digital signatures through email, the fax machine is quickly going the way of the typewriter. With email, recipients can choose to read and archive the message online, or print it out themselves on their own desktop printer. No need for individual telephone lines for the fax machine, taking up desk space, replacing toner, uncurling fax paper and listening to screeching fax machine tones!

Tables-based HTML websites are like the fax machine. At one time tables were the best way to render information on the Web. But like curled paper and fading ink, tables left something to be desired. Designers were constrained by tables that allowed data to be rendered only in tabular form. The clean, professional and creative layouts today’s best designers create with Cascading Style Sheets could never be achieved with tables-based HTML.

New School Web Design – Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets separate the presentation elements of a website (code) from its content (words). CSS allows web designers and developers to format the layout and style (fonts, spacing, text size, colors and so on) of multiple Web pages using one file, rather than entering the code to each individual page. Making changes to styles and layouts is much quicker and easier with CSS as well, as updating one file “cascades” the changes to every page on the site. There is less room for error, and the website maintains a professional consistency.

But web designers and developers are not the only ones who benefit from CSS. You as a business owner benefit even more. How?

5 Solid Reasons To Redesign Your Website With CSS

1. Branding and Aesthetics

Consumer behavior experts tell us that, presented with many similar product or service options, and little prior knowledge and experience with these brands or companies, consumers will rely on mental shortcuts to make purchase decisions. The way your website looks compared to your competitors has a large influence on how a visitor perceives your company’s professionalism and goodwill. If your website looks modern, crisp and clean, you leave a positive impression on your visitors about your company.

2. Better Usability

CSS also reduces the amount of HTML code a website requires. Tables and extra tags for fonts and colors cause pages to load slowly. The longer it takes for your page to load, the more likely a visitor will hit the back button. Even though the majority of people use a broadband connection, many are still using dialup. And others may be using a high speed wireless network which, depending on how many others are sharing the same wireless channel, may experience fast or slow connections.

3. Accessibility

Rapid advances in wireless communications have made it easy to surf the ‘Net using PDA’s and cell phones. Tabular page layouts simply don’t display properly on small screens. A business that wants to be accessible to anyone, anywhere now and in the future needs to have a website that can be viewed on mobile devices.

CSS design also greatly improves the user experience for the visually impaired, as they cause fewer problems for screen readers and Braille programs.

4. Search Engine Benefits

It has been estimated that up to 80% of all purchases online begin with a search engine. And an entire industry is dedicated to helping businesses rank highly for specific search terms to take advantage of the power of search engines.

Although the relevance of a webpage to a search term is determined by HTML elements like title tags and heading tags, content is still “king” because visitors are looking for content, not code. When you have a high code-to-content ratio, your keyword density (the relative frequency of your targeted keywords on your page) is diluted by HTML instructions for how tables, fonts, styles and colors should be rendered. With CSS, there are no tables, and formatting information is contained in one style sheet. So search engines see more keywords and less code.

Search engines are more and are more likely to index deeper pages of your site and send you more referral traffic.

5. Bandwidth

Cascading Style Sheets can save you monthy and increase the number of eyeballs that see your page in other ways. “Bandwidth” refers to how much website traffic your hosting company will allow you to have each month. Because every time a user lands on your site, he or she must load your pages in his or her browser. Not only visitors, but search engine spiders consume bandwidth too. The more code your pages have, the more bandwidth you use.

If you exceed your bandwidth usage, your site will be suspended until you buy more bandwidth or reach end of the month. Suppose your site receives a sudden surge of traffic shortly after a popular magazine features your company. That would be the worst possible time for your website to go offline! CSS makes for a more efficient use of bandwidth, and reduces the chances of such problems.

So Are Tables Taboo?

Absolutely not. There are bona fide reasons to use tables to display certain types of content. The beauty about CSS is that you still can use tables when you need to, but you don’t need to use tables for everything which significantly reduces your “code load.”

How Do I Know If I’m Already Using CSS?

A quick test to see if your site is using CSS is to load your website in your browser (any page will do). Right click anywhere in the window, and a menu box will appear. Click “View Page Source.” You should see keywords like rel=”stylesheet” or type=”text/css” near the top of the window that pops up to view your source code.

If you’re already using CSS, there may be other ways your business could benefit from a website redesign. Driving traffic, improving the customer experience, making your website more accessible to users and saving time and money on webmaster updates make it well worth the investment. Whether you choose to redesign now or in the future, make sure that your web designer and developer are skilled in CSS.

About The Author
Linda Bustos is the Marketing Director for Image X Media, a Vancouver web design and Internet Marketing firm. She also blogs about social media and business.

When a business owner decides to bring their business to the web, generally the last thing that they think about is search engine optimization. They assume that whomever they hire to do their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the search engines and the traffic will magically pour in. Unfortunately it takes more than that to drive search engine traffic to your site, and even more unfortunately most developers don’t program with SEO in mind, nor do they educate the client about the process involved in gaining traffic from search engines.Whether it’s carelessness or a lack of knowledge, or a combination of the two, this often leads to a client that several months down the road doesn’t understand why their site doesn’t get any traffic and isn’t helping their business. A good designer will not only program with SEO in mind, but will also educate the client about the basic principles of SEO, whether they are the one who executes it or not.

Many times the clients I inherit have gone through this scenario and then face drastic on-site changes to get their site search engine friendly before we are even able to begin the arduous process of link building. Whether you are designing a site for yourself or for a client, following the simple steps below when programming will ultimately save the business time and money and result in a search engine friendly site that truly maximizes the online potential of the business.

Use Proper Tags for Headings, Bold Text, Italic Text, and Lists

HTML has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists for a reason and you should use them. Using CSS you can practically style them however you like, but actually using a heading tag for your headings, and bold tags for important text, will help allow search engines understand what text on a page is a heading or what is more important than the surrounding text. Simply applying a CSS style that makes text larger or bold doesn’t do that.

Optimize Your Images

Search engine spiders can’t read text within an image. Adding ALT text to your image tag helps, but ideally you should remove all wording from the image and style it using CSS, adding the remaining portion of the image as a background image to the text. Here is a side-by-side comparison of two images that look the same in your browser, but much different to a search engine spider.

Avoid Canonical Problems

Believe it or not, search engines can see http://yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, and http://www.yoursite.com/index.html as three different pages. A simple solution is to use a 301 redirect to point all of your pages to their “www” counterpart. You can also select the preferred domain that Google shows in the new Google Webmaster Tools console.

Get Rid of Session IDs if You have a PHP Site

Have you ever seen a PHPSESSID variable added to the end of a URL on a PHP page (it looks something like PHPSESSID=34908908)? This happens because PHP will add a unique PHPSESSID to URLs within your site if cookies aren’t available. This can be extremely problematic for your site’s search engine ranking. Google and Yahoo will see a unique PHPSESSID in the URL every time they visit a page on your site, and in turn think that said page is a different page each time. At worst, this could be viewed as duplicate content and get your site banned, and at best it will reduce the perceived value of each page. One solution that I’ve used successfully is to utilize url_rewriter.tags.

Put CSS and JavaScript in External Files

Nearly every site nowadays uses CSS and JavaScript for something. While both are great for enhancing user experience, neither will help your search engine ranking if left on your page. One of the factors that search engines consider when ranking your site is the percentage of code relevant to the search term. CSS and JavaScript can take up hundreds of lines of code, minimizing the importance of your text and in turn hurting your ranking. By putting them in separate files and simply including them in your page by reference, you can reduce hundreds of lines down to one and increase the amount of code in the file that is relevant content.

Minimize the Use of Tables in Layouts

The debate about whether or not tables should be used in site design has been going on for years and there’s no end in site. I fall somewhere in the middle and there are certain circumstances (like organizing tabular data) where I think tables still make the most sense, but I also appreciate the SEO benefits of using CSS layouts. CSS layouts drastically reduce the amount of code in your site that isn’t content that the user sees. Just like moving CSS and JavaScript to an external file, the less on-page code that isn’t content, the better. Check out search engine friendly layouts for some free example layouts.

Validate Your Site

A site doesn’t have to be perfectly coded to rank high in the search engines (there are many, many other factors), but valid HTML will help ensure that search engines and browsers alike will accurately see your page. Try using the official W3C Validator or install this handy Firefox extension. Validating generally identifies areas of code that are redundant, unnecessary, or not accepted across all browsers. All of which will help make your site more search engine friendly.

About The Author
Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize – simple to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. He also provides SEO consulting for small businesses looking for a cost-effective way to drive more traffic to their site and convert more visitors into customers.