Apr
14
Why we Should Ban Splash Pages
Filed Under Design General | 5 Comments
Splash pages often appear on every SEO and web designer’s “#1 No-No’s” list. Why?
Splash pages lack content, a primary ingredient in SEO. They usually link to your “real” home page, and to the homepage only. Do you really want google thinking your most important page is related to “click here to enter” (often the only anchor text on a splash page)?
Splash pages lack navigation. internal site linking and site structure are critical to SEO, not to mention the poor usability of a site that returns you to a splash page every time you want to get back to the homepage; the frustration is libel to cause ‘office rage“.
Imagine if you have to view an ad before being able to get to your content – then imagine your competition ‘sans-ads’. Who gets the customer? Think of splash pages as ‘ads’. (In fact, this is the only time someone should use a splash page – if you require your user to view an ad before entering, and they are willing to do so for content they otherwise couldn’t get elsewhere – think forbes.com or NYT.com).
First impressions are lasting impressions. Or, to be more specific, the last impression your client will get before going to someone else’s site when the first thing they see is a splash page. Studies show reports of analytic funnels showing 25% of traffic immediately leaving the site when they are presented with a splash page. When attempting to provide users with the info they are looking for, why make it more difficult for them?
Feel free to comment if you feel that you have a legitimate excuse reason for a splash page.
Apr
3
Is your site optimized?
Filed Under Tools | Leave a Comment
DomainTools.com, a favorite amongst myself and my colleagues, offers a wonderful tool for SEO. This goes beyond whois info, and gives you an “SEO” Score.
I ran it for a website that I’m building, and it was awful generous (94%) , considering i have no content on the site and no products, its just a shell:
Check your site’s score out using http://whois.domaintools.com/mydomainname.com. I should note that they point out what you can do to improve your score, including adding ‘alt’ tags, creating anchor text, etc.
I got curious and did a few of the big SEO ‘guru’s sites:
http://whois.domaintools.com/mattcutts.com 67% *
http://whois.domaintools.com/shoemoney.com 96%
http://whois.domaintools.com/seomoz.com 87%
http://whois.domaintools.com/seobook.com 80%
http://whois.domaintools.com/wolf-howl.com 91%
http://whois.domaintools.com/searchenginewatch.com 85%
What are your thoughts on how they score SEO?
* note: this tool only scores domains, no root directories. Mr. Cutts blog is in the /blog/ directory, so, lets “cutt” him a little slack.
Mar
28
SEO & Navigation
Filed Under Design General, Usability | Leave a Comment
A websites navigation is an important part of on site optimization. For SEO, any / all navigation should be coded as text, not images; these will become your most clicked on anchor text, and helps SE’s see what your categories are all about.
First, a few notes; avoid using AJAX, Javascript or Flash for your navigation. When you view the source of your page, you should see your links within the code – pulling that navigation (for example, with drop down navigation occasionally seen in e-commerce stores) from an outside file won’t help you.
For usability & SEO, do yourself a favor and put your navigation in the traditional places users would look – on the left or at the top. Google puts more weight on the content that appears at the top of a page, and the user is much more likely to stay on a page thats intuitive to navigate.
Please, at all costs, avoid Mystery Meat Navigation. Even worse, avoid not using any navigation and putting all your content on one page.
Now that you have your navigation designed, take a look at the site architecture and URL structure before coding.
Now that thats out of the way, Lets play “Guess where the navigation is?“
Mar
13
SEO basics checklist.
Filed Under Blog Design, E-commerce Design | Leave a Comment
New to SEO? Not so new to SEO? Here are a few items that should be at the top of your ‘to do’ checklist, regardless of your SEO savvy.
- Meta & Title tags
- Internal page linking
- XML sitemap uploaded & ping’ed
- Links to authoritative, external websites
- Google & Yahoo! local profiles, if applicable
- Directory submissions listings (geographic / topic specific)
For a more extensive checklist, click here.
Mar
1
Usability & Design
Filed Under Usability | Leave a Comment
When designing your website, your first goal should be usability. Usability should take precedence over SEO and visual appeal. Without a user being able to use your website, both SEO and visual appeal are both pointless.
See example of poor usability on Seth Goden’s Blog: When you need to explain (“click on my head”) how to navigate, your site is not user-friendly.
Remember the primary goal of your website; if your goal is to achieve an end result, make it as easy as possible for the user to accomplish that goal.
10 Rules of usability:
· NO splash pages, unless they serve a legitimate purpose.
· Utilize proper site structure, with all pages accessible from a left or top navigation (Navigation should always be ‘above the fold’).
· Provide an HTML version of Flash sites.
· Make your navigation obvious; don’t make users ‘guess’ where to click.
· No page should leave a user ‘lost’, without full navigational abilities.
· Predictability is more important than prettiness.
· Use dark text on a light background in an easy-to-read font.
· Start content ‘above the fold’; headers shouldn’t take up more than 1/3 of the viewable page (without scrolling).
· Aim to be as accessible as possible.
For more on usability, visit the Software Usability Research Lab, or subscribe to this blog to read coming posts on usability.
Feb
20
Hola!
Filed Under Sites Reviewed | Leave a Comment
Welcome to DesignedforSEO.com. My goal is to share my knowledge of how to design your website to be search engine friendly. If you aren’t already familiar with what search engine optimization is, check out our SEO links on the right. Want your website reviewed? Send me an email, I’ll review it here at no cost.
