I agree that web design and SEO have to work together to create quality web site. To successfully promote your business you need to have nice web design, easy to navigate, user friendly and professional and you also need good SEO to rank high in the search engines. The search engines are getting more and more sophisticated and we have to keep this in mind if we want to get noticed.

Please remember that the Community is for sharing wisdom and best businesspractices, not for improving SEO.

Sometimes it's not even a complete redesign that you need. For instance, on one website we added a trio of buttons to help three different groups of customers easily find what they were looking for. Prior to the buttons, 95% of visitors stayed on the home page. Once the buttons were added, nearly 20% of visitors went deeper into the site. http://www.goldmedalgreats/' You can see the three buttons here. Message Edited by NicoleD on 08-13-2009 09:55 AM

Hi, According to me for features of an effective web design: Website accessibility. A website is not only designed for the non-organic search engine robots and organic healthy humans, even people who are physically challenged should be able to access the website and understand what you want to say. SEO friendly: A website design should be SEO friendly with check rules such as having relative and distinct meta tags, alt tags, prominent keyword reach within genuine content (no keyword stuffing), and search engine robot readable code. Appealing design. Appealing and attracting visitors is an art. Using strategic color combinations with contrasting backgrounds from the main content, and the overall content placement are some vital points to be taken into consideration to create an appealing web design. Consistent design. A much significant and easily overlooked point in web design is that it should be consistent. Using different web designs for each page would leave visitors believing they are on an alien website and you may lose the trustworthiness of our website. Loyally represent what you want to say. Your website design should fully stand up to your inline reputation. If you are creating a website for an enterprise it should have an air of professionalism and elegance. A blogger may have a web design that says more about the topic that the blog is about. Social networking websites are more playful and should have easy network connect reach. And so on and so forth. Tatvasoft - Software Development Company

The problem is that the vast majority of web designers out there aren't marketers, and the business owners who hire these designers aren't well versed in marketing themselves. And when you have this combination, you end up with a website that performs very poorly. There are some talented designers and SEO experts out there, but having your site at the top of Google and Yahoo means absolutely nothing if the website doesn't converts those visitors/prospects into paying customers. In most cases, the designer will usually build something that is super fancy and Hollywood slick with all the bells and whistles. Now... there's nothing wrong with bells and whistles, but when the site isn't able to do it's job at converting prospects into customers, then the site has failed it's purpose. It's the business owners responsibility to guide the designer in what they want the website to do, and if the business owner is NOT a marketer, then they should hire a 'direct response marketer' to help consult on building the proper website. When a person lands on a site, they're typically looking for information that will help them make a decision on whether to purchase the product or service. Unfortunately, when you go to most web sites, the website is usually too busy talking about how great the company is, or how many years they've been in business, or how many awards they've won... The problem is that the prospect could really care less about 'the company'. The website should have a headline right at the top of the page picking up on the dialogue that is already taking place in the visitors head... For example... If I broke a denture tooth and I need to fix it, then I need to land on a site that picks up on the conversation taking place in my head. Which would you respond too: #1 Denture Lab in the Southeast. We have over 60 trained dental technicians in our lab with a combined experience of over 239 years! or this one... Quickly and easily fix your own dentures at home and save hundreds... The second example connects directly to the prospect who just broke their tooth. It's simple stuff like this that will make or break a websites performance. We actually wrote content for a denture repair site and their sales skyrocketed once the old content was replaced with content that the prospect themselves really care about: See for yourself: http://denturecorp.com/ Prospects don't care about you or your company, they only care about how they can benefit, and that's the type of language that needs to be put into these websites. Not all this annoying flash and music playing in the background (unless you're in the entertainment business of course). Take yourself totally out of the equation and write/design for the prospect. They're the ones buying your products/services, not you (and the 'ego'). Make this medium all about them... Educate them... write free reports that explain your process (from the perspective of how they'll benefit). Offer strong guarantees -- if you're not willing to assume any risks on your product or service, why should they? For those who like to talk about themselves and put their photographs on the website, there is a place for that... it's called an 'About Us' page. Don't be putting this stuff on your homepage. They DON'T care. There are a million other factors that determine how well your website converts, but not enough time to discuss here :-) Hope this helps! Carl

I agree (well I would its my job :) , but saying that you can have the #1 for a major keyword, but it does not mean you will make money. The key is 'conversion' and conversion rate optimization.

Your right not all webdesigners are good SEO people, a website must contain many factors to get organic traffic from Google. A website must have unique content, banklinks to good Pr sites and must be promoted thru forums and many social networks. I find a good way of marketing your website is the video blog your content wheather your selling a service or a product. A person named Dennis White is an expert in that kind of marketing. If video blogging is of interest you might want to check his site out. http://videoblogcash.com/ Message Edited by CharlotteW on 06-30-2009 12:52 PM

SEO should be accounted for in every stage of design! Business should be thought of holisitically.. if you ignore one part the whole business suffers!

I can say that well done SEO is more important then any other detail when planning the online business. Just ask your self, would you like more a ugly shop on great position in the mall or most expensive high class super store in a middle of desert ? The true is, traffic is essential for online success.. Apartmani Zagreb Message Edited by NicoleD on 08-13-2009 09:59 AM

Not sure if you're posiing a question or not. BUT the point you raise is a great one. People should take their marketing dollar and focus on a few different areas of getting leads/consumers. I don't think they should do too many things at once though. I've witnessed too many busineses spread themselves too thina nd not be successful at any ONE thing. Each aspect failed. The key, in my opinion, is to be able to test and TRACK what is working for you. If you're going to do postcards (for example) what does a successful result look like? Are you getting moe calls? Are you getting more visits to your website? Are you getting more sales? Heres' what I suggest: Set up a unique 800 number or a unique extension that you can track the # of phone calls coming to. Set up an extension on your current domain, OR better yet buy a new domain name and point it at that extension page so it's easier to type into the browser. (don't just send them to your homepage because you wont know exactly that it's from your postcard. Place a coupon on the PostCard and ask them to bring it in so you can track ho many have been redeemed. And Set u a list on your website that they can sign up to get more discounts, etc. so you can market to them over and over again with things that THEY actually want. NOTE: another good thing to do is to actually ask your customers what they want and then give it to them. Don't just guess at what YOU think they want.