Difference between revisions of "Learn/SEO-Mistakes-Even-Experienced-Web-Designers-Make"

Latest revision as of 13:57, 7 November 2012

By [[User:|]] on

Build search optimization into your site

Even really good web designers can make structural, coding or design decisions that pose real problems for search engines. There's so much detail involved in website creation, sometimes a design decision that's great for users can have a big, unintended negative effect on your search rankings. It's a real loss to your business if your beautiful and very usable website doesn't get customers coming to it from the search engines.

If you launch a newly redesigned site that includes a critical SEO mistake, you'll probably know immediately, because your traffic will plummet. But if your site is brand new, or it's been essentially the same for some time, it's quite possible you could have one or more of the problems discussed in the articles below. If your site does have one of these SEO issues, there won't be anything very dramatic going on - your site simply won't rank as well as it could.
Read the rest of this article on AboutUs.com blog.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{ArticleTemplate
+{{ArticleTemplate2
 | Writer = Michael_R_Cottam
 | Name = Michael Cottam
 | Header = SEO%20Mistakes%Even%20Experienced%20Web%20Designers%20Make
 | Subhead = Build search optimization into your site
-| Bitly = http://bit.ly/TwinHomePages
+| Bitly = http://bit.ly/SEOmistakes
-| Date = November 4, 2010
+| Date = November 5, 2010
-| Image = Image:MichaelCottam.jpg
-| AgencyImage = Image:MichaelCottamLogo.png
-| AuthorWebsite = MichaelCottam.com
-| ShortBio = is an independent SEO consultant in Portland, Oregon, and an associate at [[SEOmoz.com|SEOmoz]] in Seattle, Washington.  Michael co-founded TheBigDay honeymoon travel and registry company in 2001, and was responsible for the website and SEO for that company. He's on the board of [[SEMpdx.org|SEMpdx]] and manages sponsorships for SEMpdx events, including the annual  [[SearchFest.org| SearchFest conference]].
 }}
+==Build search optimization into your site==
+----
+Even really good web designers can make structural, coding or design decisions that pose real problems for search engines.  There's so much detail involved in website creation, sometimes a design decision that's great for users can have a big, unintended negative effect on your search rankings. It's a real loss to your business if your beautiful and very usable website doesn't get customers coming to it from the search engines.
-Even really good web designers can make decisions that pose real problems for search engines trying to index a site.  There's so much detail involved in web design, it's easy to forget some of the nuances of optimizing a site for search.
+{{SiteReportMedRecAd}}If you launch a newly redesigned site that includes a critical SEO mistake, you'll probably know immediately, because your traffic will plummet. But if your site is brand new, or it's been essentially the same for some time, it's quite possible you could have one or more of the problems discussed in the articles below. If your site does have one of these SEO issues, there won't be anything very dramatic going on - your site simply won't rank as well as it could.
+<br />
-A few issues are commonly overlooked - and the good news is, every one of them is easy to address. The articles listed below tackle these issues one by one, and show you how to identify, avoid and fix them.
+<big><strong>''Read the rest of this article on [http://www.aboutus.com/seo-mistakes-even-experienced-web-designers-make/ AboutUs.com blog].''</strong></big>
-For a start, you should take a look at how search engines see your site. The AboutUs [[Online Visibility Audit]] can help you here. It's a quick overview that shows you where your site is doing fine, where it needs improvements, and offers you guidance on how to fix known issues.
-I'm one of about 20 people who answer questions for [[SEOmoz.org|SEOmoz]], which has a forum for its "pro" members. I've seen an interesting and diverse range of SEO issues, ranging from figuring out why a competitor's site ranks slightly better than the member's site, to utter catastrophe where the member's site disappears completely from the index.  And typically these members' sites are well-designed, with nice navigation, great user experience, and rich content.  From my experience with these Q&A questions, plus my own SEO consulting work, I've come up with my "Top 10" list of classic SEO mistakes that even good web designers make.
-In general, the kinds of mistakes in my list don't have obvious symptoms.  It's more a matter of not ranking as well as you might if you HADN'T made the mistake.  If you made the mistake as part of a site redesign, and all of a sudden your traffic and rankings dropped dramatically, then you'd know something was wrong.  But most of the time, there's no sudden change--you've just NEVER ranked as well as you should have.  It's like you bought a manual transmission car, and never realized there was any gear but 1st.