There are various methods that can be utilized to draw traffic to your website. You can use pay-per-click, advertise on forums, ezines and social network sites. However, the most effective and least expensive way to bring targeted visitors to your web site is through the search engines. In order to accomplish this, you must design your website properly. This is known as optimizing your website for the search engines.

Whether you are designing your site yourself, or having someone else do it for you, be sure that either you or they understand what is involved. It’s not incredibly difficult, it just requires knowledge of the subject. Below, are some basic tips for properly designing your website for the search engines.

1. Place Keywords in the Right Places: After you have done your research and uncovered the best keywords to target, you need to place them in the right spots. The right places include in your meta, H1 and title tags. You also want to use your targeted keywords in the headlines, throughout the copy and at the bottom of the page. But you must find the right balance. Too much is overkill and you will be penalized.

2. Use Similar Keywords: Having the same keyword appear over and over in your text is a red flag for the search engines, especially if similar words don’t also appear. For example if your website is about red robins and that is the keyword that you are attempting to be ranked for, then it would only be natural that words in the same “family” would appear like bird, blue jay, birds, etc. ( In an other post we talk about the ideal keyword content balance for your website pages )

3. Attractive Design: It is important to note and for you to understand, that you are not building a site just for the search engines, but also for human readers. You want your copy to flow nicely and for it to make sense. If your website is ranked well but doesn’t convert visitors, high rankings do you no good. You have probably visited a poorly created website that was ranked well, but that you would never consider spending money at because it was badly designed, had poor copy and was not created with the end user, (the consumer) in mind.

Designing and creating a website that is optimized properly for both the search engines and people is a fine art. It requires balance, knowledge and an understanding of what the search engines and consumers want. If you are planning on building your own site, make sure that you do your homework and learn about optimization and copywriting. If you don’t have the time or the unction to do so, consider working with a company that is well versed on both topics. It will save you loads of time, frustration and wasted effort.

If you need professional assistance consider either our website design services - for new websites - or get a a website makeover , in that case refer to our website redesign package when you call .

A poorly designed website can cost you money. It doesn’t matter how great your product is, because no one will stay around long enough to read about it, if your website looks unprofessional. Going online with your business can be extremely lucrative. There are millions of individuals out there looking to make purchases, however, there are just as many businesses waiting to sell to them. You must make sure that your website makes individuals want to buy from you instead of from your competitors.

Web savvy and inexperienced online buyers want to spend their money with companies that have a professional image. An unprofessional or ugly website gives the impression that your company is not trustworthy, and has an inferior product. Now, neither of these things may be true and you may get a few people to purchase from you in spite of the appearance of your website, but many more will not. You will likely be missing out on a good deal of revenue.

A good website will be attractive, well designed, provide good information and possess some type of call to action. It will compel individuals to do something. In most businesses’ cases, it will to make a purchase or join some type of list so that they can build a marketing base for the future.

Your website should also be “sticky.” This simply means that people should want to spend time there. A website that has good information, great colors, pictures and videos encourage people to spend more time at the site. The longer that they are at the website, the likelihood increases that they will make a purchase. A good website designer will understand this and incorporate these features into your site.

When developing your website, be sure to place much of the important information at the top of the website or above the fold. You won’t want to force your visitors to have to scroll down to the bottom of the page. They may never make it that far, which means you miss out on a chance to make a sale. Also, be sure that your visitors understand the purpose of your site. Do you want them to gather information, buy something or join your list? Make sure that this obvious and communicated early on, preferably above the fold.

Take a good, close look at your website and try to determine if its’ design turning off visitors. If you don’t trust your judgment have a friend, or someone with the proper knowledge to critique it for you.

A website that is clean, informative, attractively designed, purposeful and provides some type of call to action will increase the likelihood that a visitor will stop and spend time at your site. If you can get them to do that, you increase the chances that they will do the thing that you want them to do the most, pull out their wallets and spend some money!

Having a professional, online presence is absolutely necessary in order to compete in today’s marketplace. There are millions of potential customers, worldwide, that your business could be missing out on. A website is also important for and attaining retaining local customers as well. Many buyers expect businesses to have a web site.

Online marketing is often less expensive then offline advertising. While there are many different ways to advertise a brick and mortar business, i.e., television commercials, radio, newspapers and billboards, few of them are inexpensive. It generally takes a big budget to make a big impact and attract customers. Conversely, being online allows small companies to compete with bigger companies or to at least get a large enough ‘piece of the pie’ so that the additional sales make a big impact to their bottom line. With a nice website and some effective promotion, it is not incredibly difficult to gain enough business to generate large revenues for your company.

In our digital age, it is important for your company to have a professional, online presence. It is necessary to attract customers both locally and online. A well designed website will give your company a sense of professionalism and will allow individuals to make purchases from you without ever having to step foot in your store. Consumers enjoy the convenience of being able to shop when they want to and to be able to do so from the comfort of their own homes. Having a website gives them that option. Also, with today’s gas prices, saving your customer a trip to the store might be the difference between them purchasing from you or from someone closer to their home.

A website also allows you to reach customers from all over the world. Consequently, you could potentially double or triple your profits by simply being online. Your reach is much greater and the amount of money that is required to advertise to this vast audience is much less expensive then if you were offline. It would be very difficult market to individuals in China, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and other places around the world, unless you were a multi-national company with a big budget. However, online, you can advertise to these individuals either free, through search engine optimization and social networking or for much cheaper then you would be able to do offline, through Google Adwords, Yahoo or MSN paid advertising.

However, in order to capitalize off of your expanded reach that is made possible by being online, you must have a professional, high quality website. Consumers will not spend much time at your website, or make purchases from you if your company’s website looks shoddy, cheap or disorganized. Keep this mind. If you have the design skills to crank out a quality website, great, do it. If you do not, consider outsourcing these duties to a company that does. If you have a great product, and an effective marketing plan, if will eventually pay off big time.