Before you start the redesign and all throughout the process, it’s important you make your SEO strategy a top priority. First, you don’t want to lose the rankings and traffic you’ve built up to now but you also will not want to miss the more targeted visitors you will get when your new and improved site is up and running.

Ignoring the following 6 steps when redesigning your site will put your online position in peril. So if you’re looking for quality web design services, be sure they understand the following before hiring them.

1.  Keep content/keyword rich pages near the top of your site’s hierarchy

Search engines are quite meticulous when seeing how pages within your site are linked together. They use this form of internal link popularity to determine a particular page’s place within your site’s hierarchy. Pages linked from every other page are given more weight than one’s linked from only a few.

In light of this fact, you should be sure your content and keyword-rich pages are placed high within this hierarchy. If a particular page was bringing in a lot of traffic before, don’t bury it too deep within the site.

2. Categorize content by niche markets and avoid duplicate content

Online searchers generally ask questions when initially looking for solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. Therefore, the more ways you can categorize your information for these different issues – or target markets – the better.

Categorize all of your top-level pages to reflect this fact and make it clear your products and services can address their problem. And be sure – regardless of how someone finds a certain bit of information on your site, be sure they end up at the same URL to avoid any duplicate content issues. For example, if a specific product can be listed as both a product and a service, place the same URL in both categories so regardless of how someone views it, they will end up at the same place.

Courtesy of cool-photos.com

3. Stay on top of URLs if transitioning to a new content management system (CMS)

If you’re going to use a new content management system for your site to help better administer it, be sure you place 301 redirects for any URL you have to change. Since search engines will take some time to index new URLs, you want to be sure you maintain your position in the search engines and current traffic levels.

If you must, you should re-direct your top-level pages at minimum. Doing so will quickly pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones – and prevent prior visitors from seeing a 404 error/not found message when they come back.

4. Code links with a navigation menu in a search friendly manner

It’s important you code all links within your navigation menus in a search friendly manner so they can be crawled and pass on those benefits to your rankings position. Many graphic designers don’t realize this – some Flash graphics and DHTML menus are invisible to the search engines, causing them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.

Therefore, make sure all navigation menu elements are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. Avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation and ensure all content can be reached through their own dedicated links.

5. Be sure your new CMS system allows you to customize HTML elements

While automation may seem nice for HTML elements like titles, meta tags, headers, URLs and alt attributes for headers, it’s imperative your new CMS system allows you to customize these. There should ideally be no limit to the number of characters for each of these elements but do remember, the search engines have limits you should stay within.

6. Avoid session IDs and other tracking links

Tracking visitors on our websites gives us insight into what works and what doesn’t. For ranking purposes though, this can be a double-edges sword. It’s best to avoid these types of internal elements but if you must, be sure the clean URL is the only one given to the search engines. If not, the search engines will duplicate the same page over many URLs, splitting your link popularity.

If your new CMS system has tracking elements inherit within it, be sure you use a canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.

Sharing these “secrets” with your potential developer may make them feel you’re usurping their knowledge and authority but heck, it’s your money, so be sure whoever your hire has all of the know-how to make your site work. Many professional graphic designers are not SEO experts per se.

They may create some very nice looking websites and marketing materials but it won’t matter too much if it can’t be found.

From a strict SEO perspective, there is indeed a debate as to whether the domain name affects rankings in the search engines. In addition to this, we also think about how it will impact the user’s experience – from the first impression it creates when it’s first noticed to how easily people remember it.

While there are several things to consider when choosing a new domain name, your web address should meet the following 4 criteria.

1. Easy to remember

Your domain should be as descriptive of your business as possible so it helps explains to newcomers what your business is about. This includes the order of words as well as the words themselves.

2. Easy to spell

Try to avoid words people may have difficulty spelling. This will save you headaches when trying to give your web address over the phone and help avoid typos from people typing it in directly or in any press coverage.

3. Contains keywords (industry, location, etc.)

While it’s debated as to whether there are any SEO benefits to be had in your domain name, all things equal, it may help. Use hyphens to separate words so search engines can recognize them (seo-advantage.com vs. seoadvantage.com). If you do this, be sure you purchase both domains so you can redirect folks who don’t use the hyphen and not lose out on their traffic.

4. Brief

What’s a good length for a URL? That depends but you shouldn’t sacrifice the other elements just so you can have a short URL. Your initials will make the URL brief but it won’t carry much benefit otherwise…but don’t make it so long and full of keywords that it’s hard to remember and difficult to enter in.

Remember, you need to think about how this URL will look on your business cards, brochures and other marketing materials as well.

The domain name you ultimately choose for your business will be influenced by your business’ name and situation. If your company is well known or its name meets the criteria above, use it since you will want to build your brand in that regard. Keep in mind that you can purchase several domain names that you think people may try and type in to find you.

Some final advice – get some impressions from friends and colleagues before settling on a new domain name. You never know what a second, third or fifth set of eyes can pick up on!

A short discussion at WebMasterWorld says yes as one webmaster says his new blog was indeed indexed by Google. The webmaster was experimenting to see how quickly his site would be indexed by simply ‘tweeting’ out the new URL.

Much to his satisfaction, his site was indexed the same day he posted his ‘tweet.’

While he can’t say this event was 100% due to Twitter, he wasn’t terribly surprised his site was indexed so quickly considering the arrangement between Google and Twitter and subsequent amount of bot activity that tweets are generating these days.

Forum veteran “Tedster” says he isn’t entirely surprised either but neither he nor the webmaster suggest that tweets are the road to success. However, Tedster does say he knows of another site that got a page indexed and ranking with only Twitter links.

While this may seem to be a good way to jump start indexing and ranking, it’s by no means a sustainable strategy. To build and maintain high search engine rankings, webmasters have to include all of the elements – good site architecture, links and original, valuable content.

Twitter may be a good place for Google to discover and index new content but since it’s “real-time,” it certainly cannot provide sustained ranking or indexing power.

Therefore, Twitter can be a great tool in jump starting your site’s indexing and ranking but you must follow up with elements mentioned above to sustain and build your position in the search engines.

So what is Google Caffeine?

Caffeine was formerly kept secret by Google and only limited details were released to the public last August. The search engine characterizes it as the “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search.” It appears this new architecture includes crawling, indexing and ranking changes and that it’s not simply an addition or change to their existing infrastructure but rather a complete overhaul.

Based on Google’s announcements regarding Caffeine, we can best surmise that this new infrastructure may include ways of crawling the web more effectively, determining reputation and authority and returning relevant results quicker…however, Google’s spam chief Matt Cutts says the changes are “primarily in how we index.”

Most of these changes do not affect the user-interface (what you see) very much but you may have noticed some subtle changes in a search engine results page in the last few months. Take this search – “buffy the vampire slayer” for example – and how it returns video and news results midway down the page.

If we use the existing infrastructure, Google displays news results at top, video in the middle and images at the bottom.

Google’s new infrastructure has undoubtedly caused quite the stir in the online world, with webmasters and SEOs scrambling to try and understand how this will impact their rankings…along with many a speculative blog post about how to best optimize to the new changes.

In the end though, it still comes down to having the right foundational elements – a crawlable site infrastructure and compelling content – maintaining these will certainly keep you ahead of the curve.

We’ll keep you posted on Caffeine and its effects on optimizing websites for the search engines…in the mean time, keep creating compelling content for your target audience and be sure your site’s architecture is setup so search engine spiders can effectively crawl your site.

SEO pros and other webmasters have been discussing what they’ve been observing with their traffic for the last several days – even one saying “webmasters from very clean, very large websites report dramatic drops in long tail search traffic. MAYDAY seems to be the appropriate shout-out for those affected.”

Many complaints poured into the WebmasterWorld thread talking about rankings drops for phrases longer than 3 keywords…one post even says his “traffic dropped 50% in a few days, 100,000’s of long tail k/w.”

Another says he was seeing some recovery by mid-April just to see 90% of his long tail keyword traffic fall off by MAYDAY…then many more began saying they’re experiencing the same thing.

WebmasterWorld administrator Tedster gives some insight into what maybe happening – and that is Google is making a change in how they approach their phrase-based indexing, which is made possible by their new Caffeine infrastructure. Before, long tail keyword search results were “best guesses” – interpretations on what you’re trying to say.

Assume that any five words put together could constitute a long-tail keyword phrase – that’s literally so many combinations that your head will spin off, including any computers. Therefore, Google simply guessed what you were trying to look for.

“Something very real has shifted at Google, but apparently it takes a certain type of webmaster/website to notice it – significant long tail traffic closely monitored in detail,” Tedster says.

If you target long tail keywords, are you seeing any significant decline in traffic?

This year’s MAYDAY certainly was certainly a milestone in Google’s update with Caffeine…check back again for more on Caffeine and what it means but don’t be too concerned about this if you have a good, crawlable site with engaging content that’s relevant to your market – in the end, that’s what matters!

This is the central reason why installing a “site search” function on your website is a necessary investment for making your website a dependable lead generating tool.

Below are 7 advantages you can expect to see from installing a “site search” function on your website.

1. Satisfies customer’s “I want now” attitude

Time is money no doubt and many people who encounter a confusing site with lots of content won’t stick around long to dig through it. A site search gives someone the opportunity to quickly enter keyword phrases on what they’re looking for rather than sift through what they see as a confusing navigational structure.

2. Helps make your site more “customer-centric”

Successful websites must cater to a wide-range of Internet users – knowledge seekers, prospects, buyers and long-term customers. Site search helps you do this since it helps knowledge seekers find information on your site more easily…in essence, site search helps you transform your site from a “one size fits all” to a more “customer-centric” approach.

3. Appeals to the “searcher” type site visitor

People are different and prefer different ways of finding things. If someone uses a Google search to find you, they are more likely to rush to the search box to find information within your site.

4. Obtain valuable marketing data

With the right analytic tools, you can gather data from your site search function that gives you valuable information on who visits your site and how they navigate around it – their desires, intent and behavior. You can see exactly which pages they looked for and found and which ones they read and which ones prompted them to leave the site…this information can be tremendously helpful when planning your marketing strategy.

5. Site search provides insight into usability issues

Saving usage data and click path from real users through your site search function allows you to easily locate where users had difficulty, giving you clues as to places you need to update or expand. Adding typical searched on phrases can help you and your copywriters learn about who is using your site and plan content accordingly.

6. Get new product ideas

Looking at user’s searches can also help you identify new products. If a large number of customers search for something you don’t yet offer, you may want to consider offering a product that fills that void – especially if your site is already bringing in traffic for it.

7. Learn new keywords

Site search may also help you find keywords you weren’t aware, allowing you the opportunity to work those into your content. You may have pages you think are relevant to a specific topic that is missing the words people actually use to look for it. This information can help you refine your content and reach a wider audience.

To be successful online, you need to be mindful on new ways people are using to find and disseminate information online. Those looking to evolve their websites according to user demands could use a good site search function on their sites.

We recommend starting with Google custom search, which is readily adaptable to your needs.

If a site seems drab and visually unappealing, it’s to be expected that a person’s time on that page will be very short. That wonderful article or landing page you labored over for hours sits languishing online like a fish out of water.

Now if you’re exclusively a content developer like me, you don’t have to know all the ins and outs of good design. What you do have to understand are some basic fundamentals of what works and what doesn’t so you can be sure that great content you develop shines to its full potential. And knowing it helps when you’re working with a web designer either on your own team or with another company.

Continue reading for some good general guidelines of organization, formatting and designing your web pages. These tips were part of a whitepaper entitled Best Practices for Conversion: The New Engagement Funnel in 7 Steps.

1. Scrutinize your competition

Go through your competitor’s web pages and look at their copy and layout. Document places you feel stumped and then compare this page with yours. Revise or eliminate sections to make yours better.

2. Place most critical page elements within the first 300 pixels

According to usability research from many sources, over half of site visitors do not look “below the fold.” Therefore, get right to the point and keep your value proposition within your screen’s first view.

3. Keep your layout simple

Increase reader comprehension by using a one-column format with ample margins and white space. Limit paragraphs to five lines…dense copy discourages reading. Simple layouts are also more conducive to search engine crawlers and in turn, rankings.

4. Be obvious and use standard usage conventions

Site visitors shouldn’t have to think very much to understand your message and how to use your page. Be clear when describing links and use a standard underline format when linking to another page, like your shopping cart for example.

5. Make sure your page loads quickly

If a page isn’t loading quickly, most visitors will get frustrated and leave – and the more ‘junk’ you have on a page, the longer it will take to load. You should strive for no more than 8 seconds on a dial-up connection (yes, there are many people who still use dial-up to get online.)

Learn more about these and other elements to consider when designing your landing pages. Remember, your landing page is potentially the last place your visitors will see before purchasing. If your goal is lead generation, it’s step 2 in the process. It doesn’t matter if there are only a couple steps or many in your marketing funnel, your landing page needs to excite visitors and build confidence in your products/services and company.

<a href=”http://www.domain.com/page.html#LINKANCHOR“> (Unique anchor text is underlined)

We’ll try our best to explain what’s going on here so beginners beware, this may seem a bit confusing.

Say you have a homepage and you want to link out to another page on your site that has information about cars and trucks. In the past, Google would typically only credit the first link on the page and ignore the other two. Meaning, if the first link has cars and second has trucks as its anchor text, Google would only use cars to define what the page is about and ignore the trucks (2^nd) link.

Errioxa discovered that if you have three links to your cars and trucks page like the ones shown below, Google will ignore the first and credit the other two. This observation lines up with Google’s recent interest in internal anchors, which are sometimes within the site’s URL you see displayed on a search engine results page.

1. <a href=”http://www.domain.com/carsandtrucks.html”>Cars & Trucks</a>
2. <a href=”http://www.domain.com/page.html#DOGS”>Cars</a>
3. <a href=”http://www.domain.com/page.html#CATS”>Trucks</a>

In the above example, someone searching for cars would be taken directly to your specific page on the topic…this is a big help to users but also may be a way to get more unique anchor text attributed to your page that focuses on multiple topics.

More experimentation needs to be done to measure the true effectiveness of this approach. We hope to do this when and where we can and report back any results.

We could very well find this to be a good strategy for better control of a site’s links, which is why Google started paying attention to internal anchors in the first place since they provide their users with a streamlined way of accessing information on a website.

What’s a webmaster to do in this instance?

If you’ve spent any time online, there’s no doubt that you have encountered a webpage saying “Error 404” or something like that. Whether a URL was typed in wrong or you were simply looking for something that didn’t exist anymore, a 404 error message indicates to you and the search engines that this page no longer exists.

Having a lot of 404 redirects isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the eyes of Google and other search engines…however, 404 redirects should be setup in a way that’s inviting to the reader and encourages them to stay on your site.

According to Google employee John Mu, 404 redirects are not a problem for the search engine, especially if the page helps a user find related information within the site.

With respect to site visitors and conversions, static 404 redirects are very uninviting, breaking the conversion process much of the time. Let’s say you sell power tools and someone is looking for a particular model band saw but the product is obsolete and is no longer manufactured. If that prospective buyer finds a link to their preferred saw on your site clicks the link and comes to a static page that says “Error 404” and nothing else, they will most likely go elsewhere to find their saw.

Static 404 pages are also a problem for search engine spiders since they find pages on your site through following links. If there are no links on a 404 page, it will not know where to go.

Five must haves for a 404 redirect page include:

• An apology for the error (even if the visitor is at-fault)
• A search box that’s prominently displayed
• A link to your site map
• A link to your home page
• Links to other main areas on your site

The above example could include a picture of a carpenter who’s frustrated that he can’t find a tool he needs on a job, adding some humor and empathy to the customer’s predicament.

If you’re 404 redirect pages are static, spruce them up by including a template of your site along with some of the elements mentioned above.

The point is – do not have static 404 redirect pages. They could cost you dearly both in terms of search engine rankings and conversions.

But too many sites out there still rely on “click-here” or “more…” or other simple phrases centered on the same thing. How many times have you seen the phrase “Click here for more information” on a website – not very inviting is it?

For many companies, “click-here” or “more information” is perhaps the most widely used text on their site. Besides the uninviting tone of those phrases, companies who use them are missing out on a lot of ranking opportunities.

This New Jersey Transit Authority site is a perfect example – at the end of each paragraph seen below, they have a “more info” link directing potential passengers to the service’s transit schedule. Instead, it would be better if they drop the “more info” altogether and integrate the link into the copy – such as:

Memorial Day Schedule Information

Memorial Day Weekend bus and rail schedule information is now available!

Not only does this link take advantage of internal link structure to increase keyword exposure, it gives the reader a better idea of where they’re going.

So be aware of how you’re linking out to other sites and to other pages within your site. Avoid common phrases like “click here,” etc. Continuing to use those phrases means you will be missing out on great ranking opportunities – not to mention, the confusion your visitors are likely to experience.