Sometimes (actually, quite often) we talk to clients who lament the fact that the website they spent a lot of money to develop doesn’t show up in any search engine’s search results.

Surely the ‘professional’ web design company they hired has done their job? After all, the website is out there for all to see.

Unfortunately, not all websites are created equal. Too many web designers are really graphic designers who produce a nice, attractive page layout or template, but simply lack the technical knowledge to create an effective site. As they say, looks aren’t everything, babe!

Not all websites are designed with the goal of ranking in search engines; some are deliberately designed as ‘brochure’ sites, with traffic driven through direct marketing and promotion of the website address, domain name or URL.

While this is quite acceptable from a marketing standpoint, why not capitalize on the increasing search traffic from popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.?

By applying website and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you will maximize your investment in your website and drive better business results.

There are a number of key areas that need to be considered and successfully applied when developing a website that is optimized for search engine rankings or results:

– Meta tag

– content page

– Coding and technical structure

META-TAGS

Meta tags generally consist of the page title, keywords, and description, and are not visible to visitors. If you open your browser and click on >View>Source of the page, you can find the meta tags near the top of the page. What you are seeing is actually the HTML code that presents your web page in all its glory.

Over the years, the major search engines have placed different levels of importance on meta tags, and even today they have their own views on which tags are important or not. But without fail, everyone considers the ‘title’ of the page to be paramount. This is the phrase that appears at the top of your browser when you visit a site.

In many cases, the ‘keywords’ tag doesn’t matter much anymore and some search engines ignore it entirely. However, if you abuse this tag and add ‘keywords’ to it, Google may penalize you. It’s still worth adding this tag, just to satisfy the other engines.

The other main meta tag is the ‘description’ tag. This generates the phrase that appears in search engine results to describe your page. Not only should it include your keywords, but it should also be written in a way that search engines find relevant to the content on your page.

By ignoring this important tag, you can achieve great rankings and high search results, but not get visitors to click through to your site because the description doesn’t adequately describe the actual content of the page.

CONTENT PAGE OPTIMIZATION

While page content is not a ‘coded’ element, it is still one of the most critical aspects that will determine search engine results. Not only this, but poor content and structure will drive your visitors away from taking advantage of the limited time they spend on your web page.

It may seem pretty obvious that anyone can write a few paragraphs describing their company, product, or service. Without sounding pretentious, just because you can use Microsoft Word doesn’t make you an author!

Writing for the web is quite different from writing for other ‘real world’ applications. Paragraph structure and length, positioning of main themes and ideas, proper keyword inclusion, optimal keyword density, and overall page length are all elements that need to be carefully approached and executed. This is best left to a professional.

Many web design companies offer content management systems (CMS) that rely on the end user to add additional pages and content. While this may seem profitable, it is actually a false economy. Most end users have little or no experience developing marketing copy, let alone writing specialized copy for web pages.

Also, because the pages are created and completed by the user, meta tags are rarely added. When the user bravely ventures into adding meta tags, he usually has no real understanding of what constitutes a good tag from a bad one and limits the effectiveness of the page.

HTML CODING AND TECHNICAL STRUCTURE

Behind the scenes of a website, a lot of complex operations are performed to display the page in your browser. If you followed the suggestion in a previous paragraph and looked at the ‘page source’ of a web page, you will have seen the many lines of complex HTML code. But even if you can write some HTML and have a page miraculously appear in a browser, there are good and bad coding practices.

One of the basic measures of the success of a page is its loading time. From numerous usability tests done, the general rule of thumb is that if a page doesn’t load within 8 seconds, most visitors are likely to skip it.

Load time can be negatively affected by many things; Poor coding structure, excessive HTML, images that are too large, and not building the site according to the latest search engine recommendations and W3C standards. Also, slow loading pages are less favored by search engines.

Another important but often overlooked aspect is that search engines cannot index images, there is simply no text for them to recognize. This makes it important that ‘alt tags’ be used for all images, menu graphics and Flash files. This not only gives search engines some text to index, but also provides an ideal opportunity to add relevant keywords to your page.

And finally, a skilled web developer will pay close attention to the actual name of the URL page. This is an important element used by search engines to index pages and should be a key part of any website or search engine optimization (SEO) program.

You will notice that in the previous paragraph I used the term web developer and not web designer. In my opinion, and I’m sure I’ll be tarred and feathered by this, many web designers are simply graphic designers who can write HTML code.

Others are HTML coders who can use PhotoShop, with little to no real understanding of the intricacies of creating websites that are search engine friendly and properly structured for an optimal visitor experience. But then that’s just my opinion.