The main question many web designers and developers often ask is whether they should sacrifice all of the creative and artistic elements of a web site to rank in the search engines?
With a rise in search engine marketers the top ranks are saturated with the pages of companies that can pay for such insight. That being said, it's certainly possible to employ high ranking tactics for your own website. Actually, the most basic tactics can move you up from an 800 position to a 300. However, it's the top of the scale that everyone strives for, where efforts seem almost inversely exponential or logarithmic, you put a ton in to see a tiny change in rank.
How do you meld the ambitious overhauls required to attain significant ranking and NOT compromise the design of your site?
Design must not be ignored.
If you have an existing site, you more than likely have tied it into your existing promotional content. Even if you've allowed your website to cater to the more free form of the net, it should still be designed as a recognizable extension of your business.
The quetion we have to ask ourselves is must we sacrafice design to achieve a top ranking? If your research into search optimization leaves you shuffling around thoughts of content, keyword saturated copy and varying link text, you are correctly understanding some of the basic pillars of search engine optimization.
However, if you do all the nessasry optimizaitions and achieve the goal of ranking at the top of Google, who would stay on your site if it looks boring, stale and hard to navigate? There are two ways to successfully combine design and SEO. The first is to be a blue chip and/or Fortune 500 company with multi million dollar advertising and branding budgets to deliver your website address via television, radio, billboards, PR parties and giveaways with your logo.
Lets face it chances are thats not you, and certainly not me, lets look at the second option. It begins with some research into your market, some thoughtful and creative planning, and a designer who is already a search engine optimizer. If your budget permits you can get a combination of people with these skills that can work very well together.
“Design is for brochures, instant results are for the web.”
The concept of design is so broad that there is little truth in that statment. In reality, SEO needs the quantity and detail of supporting text that a brochure has, but good web design has to catch a viewer's attention in 5 seconds and have them stay on your site for 5 minutes. A simple concept is the longer a viewer stays on your site the likelyhood of them returning on purchasing a good you may be selling increases. At the end of the day it's pretty difficult to read and absorb the content of an entire brochure in less than 5 seconds.
Search engines need rich, related, appropriate, changing content. And for them to rank you, all of that must be on your pages and incorporated into the design and strategy of the site. But if it's not well organized and broken down into bite size chunks, no one is going to bother learning about what you're offering.
Construction 101- Attractive Design and SEO
Many companies and individuals may not like the idea but it's very difficult to optimize a site without completely overhauling it. Websites are investments treat it as so. Design and SEO must be strongly rooted into every aspect of each other, possessing a true, symbiotic relationship.
Aesthetic Importance vs. Traffic
Everyone has an idea of what they want their site to look like. We want the splash pages, cool flash and graphics the background music but how does that justified to the bottom line we must ask ourselves. If you want/need to establish an online presence, you will have to make some compromises in these areas.
Understand exactly the role your site should play in your company marketing. It is safe to say that you should ask these following quetions:
1. What is the goal of my website and who is its audience? Is it for existing clients to see? Is it to reach new clients? To venture into yet untapped market segments?
2. How strongly do your other marketing efforts promote your site?
3. Is your website an extension of your existing collateral that must reflect the same graphical look?
4. Is your website meant to assist to your sales force or is it your sales force?
Top quality designers always asks these quetions to their client to ensure their designs are on the same page as their clients.
Real case of Design balanced with SEO and salability
If you sell lets say jewelry online where your site is your only business, you must have a catalog of exceptional photography and detailed, high-resolution close up images. But, you must be optimized and rank well if you want to sell any of that jewelry. Its nice to have a well designed site, but if you and your designer are the only ones seeing it your website does not mean much.
If a client approached me with this project, my recommendation would be this: If you sell a product, people have to see that product. The site must be slick but also easy to navigate. The home page has to capture the buyer's attention. Think of your home page as your sales pitch. If my client is selling expensive jewelry to targeted income, the site should have a lot of class and elegance and present a scene of prestiege. However, if it's jewelry you do as a hobby, the site shouldn't look like it was built as a hobby.
A suggestion would be to have a very optimized home page with some discussion of the quality of your product, the history of your company,the location of the company and how to get in contact with the company. This is also great sales copy. Include a few special catalog pieces with descriptions below some smartly placed images and readable type graphics built out of CSS and you are well on your way to achieving a cool to look at, content rich, well optimized site.
Planning Your Site
If your designer is not a search engine optimizer, you need to hire one to work with your designer from the initial development stage of your site. If you would like a visible presence that is not dependant on traditional marketing efforts to get your name around, then you will have to optimize. When searching for a designer keep in mind the expertize on search engine optimizaition. Finding a deisgner with both expertize comes a dime a dozen and they tend to be more pricey but in the long run a well rounded designer is a better investment than having to hire a search engine marketer and a designer.