Most web designers and developers are savvy enough to know that building a website with SEO in mind is a lot easier than implementing SEO changes once a website has been up and running. What are some basic steps that one should employ when building their website.

Firstly, it’s extremely important to carefully plan your content and meta data well ahead of time, even before all of the aesthetic considerations. Knowing what the primary keyphrase is for all of your top level pages before you start to write the content will make it easier in the long run. Also, writing all of your titles, descriptions and keywords in advance will save on having to create them in the future. Content and meta data writing can be very time consuming, especially if SEO is an afterthought.

When developing your SEO strategy, you should also remember to actively seek out inbound links. Set aside some time to find industry leaders and hub pages that would bring you quality traffic and pass on some of that valuable “link juice” to the website.

In a recent interview with Matt Cutts, a very interesting topic came to light.  In discussion, the topic of 301 redirects came up and how it relates to PageRank.  More specifically, is there a loss of PageRank if you use 301 redirects to change URLs?  Matt Cutts stated that he thought there probably would be some loss in these instances.

“Matt Cutts: That’s a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301).”

What exactly are we talking about here?  Well, let’s just say you have a website such as: www.mywebsite.com/mineisthebestproductever.php, and you want to know if changing that URL via a 301 redirect to www.mywebsite.com/mine-is-the-best-product-ever.php will perhaps give you an advantage for keyword targeting.  In short, no, the benefit of spacing out the keyword within the URL will not outweigh the loss of PR over time. 

In many cases, you do not need to change your URL’s.  If you create content effectively on the correct page, there should be no reason to use 301 redirects within your existing site. 

A scenario where you may not be able to avoid utilizing 301 redirects is when you are creating a brand new website with SEO in mind.  In this situation, using 301 redirects is unavoidable because you will be creating new pages, deleting old ones and moving content around to fit your new website structure.  This is an acceptable use of 301’s because they are needed to restructure the site.  Any loss seen in PageRank, will be made up in the future IF you build your site correctly with SEO in mind.

Some tips to remember:

• Don’t change your URL’s for keyword purposes.
• Have a plan when creating content so you will not have to implement 301 redirects.
• Avoid using parameters in URL’s where possible.
• When redesigning your site, try not to change domains.

Changing URL’s for the sake of getting more keyword relevance or to move content is not worth it from an SEO standpoint.  Plan your content wisely and consult professionals when redesigning your website for the best possible results.

Having a quality presence online is imperative for almost any business. Making sure that your website is optimized for search can help to drive quality traffic, resulting in increased leads or customers.  However, a website optimized for search will only go so far.  We often see prospects or clients who have worked to optimize their website – their positions for keywords have improved and their website has seen more traffic. But, at the end of the day, they are not getting more business. The next question we often get is, why not?

Well, as you can imagine, there are many factors that could play a role.  First and foremost, does the website have a goal?  It may be to inform the visitors, encourage them to fill out a form, purchase a product or complete another specific action. If so, is that goal clear to the visitor?  If not, then it can be beneficial to take a step back and determine how your site will lead to increased business for your company.

One more micro element to take into consideration is the color scheme. Colors play a significant role in the feelings that a website can evoke.  What colors do you use on your website?  They can say a lot about your brand and the way someone feels while on your website. A previous post was written about Color Psychology and how you can use it to influence your site visitors.  It is worth checking out to see how your site’s colors are being perceived. 

Search engines don’t take into account the color scheme of your website for indexing purposes.  If it has plain text that is crawlable and keyword targeted, your site can rank well.  The color choice of your website shouldn’t scare off your visitor, but rather should help direct them to achieve the goals that you have set.  Be sure that your colors mesh with the feelings of your company and brand and that same feeling is portrayed to the visitors of your site.