Everyone always says to make a good first impression, but that saying isn’t limited to face to face meetings. It also applies to the web. When someone visits your website what is their first impression of your company? Do they think your company was left behind in the Stone Age because your website looks old? Any company that is serious about doing business on the web needs to make sure that their web site represents the essence of their company.

Many companies have put up websites that look awful, but their actual company is really great. How does a company fix the disconnect? First, the website needs to be user friendly. When visitors come, the navigation needs to be clear and concise. This allows the visitor to navigate and find the information they want and need. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to figure out where to go on a website, and clicking on buttons that lead them in circles. It’s like a person walking into a revolving door to get into a building, but every attempt they make either keeps them spinning in the door or leads them back outside. A website needs to be like a welcoming committee at an event that tells a visitor where to go and how to get there.

In addition to knowing where to go and how to get there, visitors need to know that your company exists. Your company could have the best product or service in the world, but if no one knows how to find your website then it won’t be a benefit. Many companies put together picture pretty websites, but they have no keyword density on their pages. Every website should be built with SEO in mind. After all, it’s like having free leads sent to your company. If a company, puts good keyword rich content on their website, (without spamming) then they have a better opportunity to show in the organic search engine listings. Moreover, to complement their high organic rankings, a company can run a paid search campaign that directs visitors to their website. If a company’s site is easy to navigate and people know how to get there whether it be through paid search and/or organic listings a company is on the right track.

Another important factor that goes hand in hand with good navigation and being found is functionality. If a company’s site has good content and navigation, but there are dead links and certain pages of the site don’t work, then a user can get frustrated and leave. It’s frustrating to a visitor not to know how to navigate a site, but it’s even more frustrating to know where to go and not be able to get there.

When building a new website or revamping a current website, remember that your website is your digital business card. If it looks old and doesn’t have intuitive navigation people aren’t going to stay around long.

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.