Planning A Web Design Strategy To Include Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

The phrase "web design strategy means a range of different things to different people, and involves more than merely "design decisions. The term seems to imply that the issue is about color, page layout and the use of Flash animations. Yes, these factors are part of the big picture, but the "bigger picture is about the overall design of your website, meaning its entire "architecture.

You need to find out how your site's overall "information architecture affects its visibility to search engines. The truth is, specific web page elements like your navigation scheme and technologies like CSS (Cascading Style Scripts) or JavaScript can either interfere with or aid a search engine's ability to "spider and rate your site. Sometimes an element can do both, at the same time!

The whole topic of a "site architecture or web design strategy that supports Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has really been quite poorly addressed. Many companies that do SEM consulting have less than state-of-the-art knowledge of how information architecture and design strategy affect a site's usability and organic rankings. If your consultant, or your own research, is focusing only on search advertising, media buys and bidding processes, you are not getting the whole picture.

A top position in the Google results is useless if site visitors aren't being converted into buyers. A successful site architecture and site design strategy will address the needs of both the search engines and your visitors/customers.

Directory setups

Generally speaking, the pages nearest the root directory are the most important pages of your site. Essentially, by placing them near the root you are telling the search engines your priorities, strengths, and focus.

One of the oldest and

Navigation is key

Important elements of your site's design is Nabigeshonsukimu. In general a set of pull-down menu button (DHTML) rather than down, even old-fashioned hypertext link, and is easy to use and easy to use than buttons. During the text link format for these programmers to use the CSS (click) the simple truth is, the site is not the end user's preferences, you will need to consider the designer and owner of the site.

The fact is, many usability tests and user focus groups reveal definite preferences among Internet users for intuitive buttons and those dynamic, pull-down menus. Even though some usability experts may not recommend these latter approaches, you really must consider how the users react to them, since it is their actions that lead to sales and rankings, not the theories of the tech squads.

File names, directories, URL's

When queried on which URL is more memorable - domain.com/car/seats.html or domain.com/carseats.html - more than 90 percent of people in an online survey reported preferring the one without the subdirectory. A surplus of "forward slashes" is a common complaint heard by site designers who take the time to check in with actual users.

Many SEM experts create extra subdirectories as a means of adding another keyword in a URL, assuming that it will help ranking. It is fairly well established that keyword-rich title tags are far more beneficial than keyword-rich URL's. Never forget for whom you are creating those URL structures. It's the users. URLs that are easy for users to remember are also easy for them to pass on to others.

Web page categories

Some usability experts have web pages broken into seven specific, while others argue that we have 11, or even a dozen or more. The actual number is not really that important. The knowledge to take away is that there are different types of pages, the SEM-oriented Web strategies must take into account. Which you use depends both on your type of business and your approach. And as you will conceptualize, design and promote any website is dependent to a large extent on the nature of the site that it is.

Some type of index page, category / library pages, advertising (pointing to) web pages, product pages, news / media page, Web forms, Web services, shopping cart pages, search / results page and the "credibility of the page. Each must requires a different approach. it would be foolish to optimize your product pages are the same way as to optimize a number of other types of pages, self-optimizing and design strategies, depending on many factors, not least, and this It is action (CTA) requires that each page type.

Layout, look and feel

Naturally, layout strategies will be as varied as the different page types, and a product page will not work according to the same principles as a news page. Of course, you also have to have an integrated and consistent overall design. When you are planning for a site, you need to focus not just on the overall effect, but all the individual ones that are put into play on each page. There must be some overarching sense to the site, while still allowing for differences at the page level.

Successful site design and web strategy entails issues of language, design, color, shape, layout, look and feel. The strategy must make sense while allowing for sufficient flexibility and creativity "along the way." Certainly you want to improve the ability of search engines to access your keyword-rich content, but the bottom line is that you want to increase those site conversions. Keep your eyes on the prize and stay vigilant.