How well is your website performing? Are you satisfied with the amount of customers who view your website? Do you get enough business through your website? By reading this article you will be in a position to do something about all three questions.
It's all very well having a nicely designed and appealing website for your business but it's of no use if you don't get the customers to visit it. The number one term you will find associated with this is search engine optimisation. You will find endless sources on the Internet telling you to optimise this and optimise that but what does it all mean?
Search engine optimisation simply means making your website as friendly to search engines as possible. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN provide your business with the ability to reach a huge amount of customer's, they are by far the most successful method to boost sales for your business. If your website is nicely optimised then you will have a greater chance of appearing higher up on the search engines.
Most customers will type in a phrase into the search engine and view the first couple of websites that it finds, they will usually be successful in finding what they were looking for on the first page of results. Statistics show that customers very rarely look further than the first page (90% don't look past the first page) so what good is it if your website was on page 10? This is where search engine optimisation comes in, it will give your business a greater chance of being on that first golden page in the search engines.
There are many methods that all contribute to a higher ranking but some are more influential than others. The first factor is having a well built website. This is a standard feature that all website design companies should offer.
The second method is keywords. Keywords are the words that are associated with your business, the idea is to include these words in your website so when a customer types in a phrase in a search engine, your website is more likely to appear. Keywords should be chosen carefully to target the correct market for your business. It's no good targeting the word "Fruit" if your business sells website design.
The third factor that contributes to a high search engine ranking is back links. This simply means a link from someone else's website to yours. The more links you have to your website the better. Search engines view your back links as a sign of popularity and obviously the more popular you are the more successful you appear. One of the best methods for this is to submit your website to online directories, not only will you get a back link but you are also likely to get a lot of customers coming to your website from that link. Make sure that you select trusted directories and one's that can relate to your business, there is a chance that you will get penalised by search engines if you sign up to link farms (websites that collect lot's of spam and poor quality links).
Finally, having a website that is constantly updated also gives you a boost in terms of search engines as they like to see fresh content. This is also likely to draw customers back to your website as they know they are likely to see something new. This in turn will boost the amount of traffic you get to your website which will also help in gaining a higher search engine rank.
These are just some of the methods in which you can improve your website performance, there are many other factors that contribute to a high search engine ranking. Most are an on-going process so it is very beneficial to your business to continually try to improve your performance as there is always someone competing against you for that top spot.

"Content is King! If you want a website to generate back-links and have quality content the search engines love, be sure to make it readable by both people and search engines. Search engines are working to give people quality results. Thus, they are looking for sites with quality content. So - by building site content for people, not only are you getting back to basics (information dissemination to people via the Internet), you are creating a site search engines will love. So, build sites for people - and the search engines will come.

When creating a new website or redesigning an existing site, there are four critical rules which should be followed to make the site effective, functional, loved by search engines - and successful.

1. Easy to Read

When building a website, the first thing you need to be sure of is that your website is easy to read. When you write content, remember that most web site visitors don't read every word of a page - in fact, they only scan pages to find what they want.

Break up Your Content

Break up your pages and use headers between major ideas so people scanning your site can find what they want quickly. Use meaningful headers between each paragraph or major idea - this helps with SEO. Headers should be created with the H1 through H4 tags for SEO. Always use good writing structure. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that run on. You should break up any long paragraphs.

Color and Fonts

To help readability, use high contrast colors between font and background. Black text against a white background may seem stark, but it is very readable. To make a website easy on the eyes, try an off-white background and a dark gray (almost black) text color.

Things to avoid with content color:

    * Avoid vibrant background colors like purple or yellow. Such back colors make text difficult to read.

    * Avoid using an image behind your text.

    * Avoid using bright text colors on bright backgrounds.


Fonts Matter

One simple statement covers the font issue:

Simple fonts are the best; the more fancy the font, the harder it is to read.

Since many browsers only have the standard font set, use standard fonts. In reality, there is no "standard", but there are certain fonts that are installed on most browsers. These include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Your readers will see something different than you see if you use other fonts.

Standard Compliant Browser for Development

When developing and testing your site, use a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you develop your site to be standards compliant, it will work in most browsers, including MS Internet Explorer (IE). It is recommended that you test your site using the latest and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7). To run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, TredoSoft.com has a free installer that will install multiple versions of IE. It works great!

Keywords in Content

Of course, when writing content, not only should it be formatted to be readable, but it must also be consumable by not only people, but by search engines. One way to make the subject of the content known to search engines is to use the keywords that people use to search for your site in your content. Be sure to use keywords in your header tags, your first paragraph and throughout your text. The keyword density should be between 4% and 7% - but any more than that could 1) be hard to read and still make sense and 2) be considered spam by search engines and banned. Keywords should also be used in your TITLE tags and your Meta description.

2. Simplify Navigation

The menus and links make up the navigation that the visitor uses to get from page to page in a site. Always plan a site around how people will get from page to page. A visitor to your site should be able to get to what they want within three clicks of their mouse.

Multiple navigation points makes it easy to find things. Repeat the top menu and at the bottom. Also create a left or right menu.

Using links within your text to other areas on your site. You can create links so that they are good for search engine optimization (SEO). There are generally two ways to create links within your text:

   1. The wrong way: "For search engine optimization techniques, click here."

   2. The right way: "Good techniques for search engine optimization are important to use."


Using link text (anchor text) that describes what the link is about is the best way. Search engine web crawlers (programs that automatically index the contents of websites) visit your site, they "read" links. Spiders can index descriptive links into a subject or keyword category. Spiders have nothing to work with when reading a "click here" until it reaches the linked page.

This is Cross Linking - use it as much as possible when it makes sense to do so when writing your content.

3. Consistent Design

At most, one or two layouts should be used in your site design. As a reader browses your site, they should be able to get used to looking in the same place for your navigation, for your sub-navigation and for your content. That's all there is to say about that.

4. Lower Page Weight is Better

Page weight is the total size of a page on your site in bytes - code, text and images. Your site's page weight makes a big difference to your viewers. Lighter page weight is better for your readers because the page will download faster. The faster a page downloads, the faster they will get to the content.

What is Means to be Light

    * No large images.

    * Fewer images are better.

    * Optimize images for the web at no more than 72 dpi

    * Use as small an image dimension as possible for the given design.

    * Use a table td bgcolor attribute or a background-color style attribute for solid color backgrounds.

    * Make gradients horizontal or vertical (not diagonal) so that you can use a small image "strip" and repeat it.


How "Heavy" Should a Web Page be?

Certain studies show that 64K is a good maximum webpage size. 64K is a maximum, however it is still, in my opinion, really big! The smaller the page, the better. 25K is good, 15K is even better. There is a balance between design and function. It is a good idea to focus more on function.

Try putting pages on your web host server as you build your site so you can test it as you go. For pages online, you can test the page weight at www.quasarcr.com/pageweight/ to be sure you are on track.

Ways to make pages lighter:

    * Use linked style sheets

    * Use DIVs instead of TABLEs where possible

    * Use simple repeating backgrounds for effect


Summary

Visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for within about three clicks. Search engines should be able to navigate easily through your site. Making a site easy to read with consistent page design, and easy to navigate will make it easy to find information. When people can find information, they are more likely to refer your site or link to it - which is exactly what you want to encourage. You will be on the way to building a readable and hopefully successful website that is loved by search engines if you follow these principals. 

I have been doing some research lately and not really finding a good amount of quality designers in Las Vegas. I see alot of the same thing. Old cheesy looking web design sites. These sites have not been updated probably in months or even years.

Finding a quality web designer in Las Vegas can be tricky. Just by going online to google typing in Las Vegas web design you are bombarded with over 23 million sites. There is a couple good local listings on google but thats it. If you are looking for a web design in Las Vegas or any area be sure to do your homework.

A majority of the so called designers out here are weekend web designers. What’s a weekend web designer you may ask? Well, its one of those designers that do not dedicate their design full time. They may be good at what they do but are they reliable and can they be reached at normal business hours or even after hours? This is a main problem my clients have when hiring a web designer.

Some designers start and then never finish or even are not dedicated to full process. Creating a website is not just slapping some code up on a domain. You need to have your site optimized and targeted to either sell your product or drive leads. Getting the appropriate traffic is one major importance. If your site is just designed and not planned you might be setting yourself up for a huge disappointment.

So keep in mind, hire someone that is in it for the long haul. Hire a designer that is dedicated to making his clients happy and also being reliable. This way its a win win situation.

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