St Helens Web Designs that can be found

Last Updated on Thursday, 11 March 2010 19:02 Thursday, 11 March 2010 19:02

Web Design - Articles

By Paul R Winter

 With the growing number of Internet users, globally and here in St Helens, it is important that your business website can be found by the search engines, as these are the prominent source for users to gather content and visit websites. Although there are many good website designers in St Helens, it is important that you choose a designer that can get your business website found and placed properly by the search engines.


Getting your website seen is undoubtedly the most crucial part of having a business website online. If you intend on doing a lot of hard marketing and intend to gain traffic in the short and long term solely by these methods and links from other websites, then you can just concentrate on getting your website looking and functioning the way that you desire.

However, if you are someone that wants to make the most of the online traffic that is available, then there are a few boxes that need to be ticked. Most importantly, can your website be found and read by the search engines? Many websites have features in place that can reduce your website's visibility or, in some cases, eliminate its visibility altogether.

The first thing to consider is what words or phrases should bring searchers to your website; these words are your 'keywords'. Carry out thorough keyword research before making any changes to your website the following article will help you to choose keywords with commercial value to your business; Target Keywords with Commercial Value. Once you are happy with the chosen keywords ensure that they appear in important sections of your website such as;

Meta Tags

Whilst viewing your website, click view from the browser menu then view 'Page Source', you should find Meta Tags located between the HEADER tags (). These are the primary points for search engines to read and establish a page's readability and contents value to its users.

Robots

The 'robots' Meta Tags can instruct the search engines whether or not to read the content. If this Tag does not exist within the website code, then the default 'index and follow' applies. If this Tag is present with content such as "no index" or "no follow", then this particular page will restrict search engines ability to view and index your content.

Title

This is not an actual Meta Tag, but is closely associated and so is treated like one by many designers and internet marketers. The title, located between the TITLE Tags (), will appear within the tab of the webpage when opened. The title is easily edited, but some companies choose to just fill these with words such as "home page" or "about us", which is not very descriptive to the search engines, and can increase the difficulty in getting your website promoted through the search results. A better option is to use words or phrases relating to your website i.e. keywords that you wish to be found for on search engines. Ensure that the keywords are both relevant to your content and that they also appear in your content; this will help you to rank higher for relative keywords on search engines.

Description

The description tag ("description") works on two fronts. Firstly it is used for the search engines to better understand the content of a page; secondly it is used as the paragraph which will be displayed in the search results. A lot of thought needs to be put into this section, firstly, to ensure that is it descriptive as well as inviting to visitors to increase the clicks through to your website.

Flash versus XHTML

Flash can not exist on a website without HTML or XHTML, so there is not an actual Flash-only choice. However with websites primarily using flash for a website, the content can be unreadable and so will not do well when trying to rank in the search engines. There are tools available that allow you to see what the search engines see, a good and free tool to use is Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer which can be downloaded at Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer.

It is recommended to have an XHTML site that has small sections of flash content embedded. This allows you to benefit from the visual appeal of flash but benefit from optimised content from the XHTML to increase the traffic to your website.

Within an XHTML website, there any many factors that attribute a readable site, such as limited or no use of tables and inline frames (iframes). This does get technical and can become very complicated. In its simplicity the less code-to-content ratio, the better; but it is advisable to contact a professional SEO Company/designer to establish the quality of the website code.

Paul is head of programming and design based in St Helens Paul works for Essio Marketing Limited a Web Design St helens and SEO Services Company.