Nothing is worse than having to build around a messy site. What I mean by messy is lengthy URLS with pointless characters and crazy dynamic URLs! So here are my tips on creating an SEO-friendly site:

1) Use static URLs when possible. This might not be possible with really large sites, but if your site has less than 50 pages and doesn’t require new pages to be created all the time, this is definitely the way to go. This is definitely the easiest way and best for SEO. The second best is using an htaccess redirect to use a name in the URL and pass it as a GET variable. Something like this:

http://www.tampacreations.com/portfolio

In this case, portfolio is being passed as a GET variable, and you should always check this against an array of acceptable values! Combine that htaccess code with the proper rewrite condition to tack on the www, and handle forward slashes at the end too. Would you like to see it? Here’s the code I’m using:

Options -Indexes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ index.php?page=$1 [L]

So that’s the second best option if you have to go with dynamic URLs and it works pretty well! I believe I’m using PHP, then, to set 404 status of not found domains.

2) Search Pages can be a nightmare! Search pages can be problematic because they’re dynamic by nature and can end up having lots of variables in them. I think the trick here is to have a few of them indexed (the simple ones) and list those in your sitemap. The other ones you can let Google figure out or just deny it access.

3) Watch out for capitalization! Capitalization counts in URLs (just not the domain), so if I were to have a page Portfolio.html and portfolio.html, those are two different pages! If you’re using dynamic URLs, this can become a big problem with duplicate content.

4) Multiple websites. Lot of e-commerce site owners have the mentality that duplicating their entire store 5 times and putting it on 5 different domains helps their SEO out. Probably not a good idea. What ends up happening is since most stores have a lot of products, the owners use the same descriptions, same images, everything, and all the sites end up having duplicated content issues! I happy to report that a client I worked with who had this issue across 4 domains, downsized to one domain, and has twice as much traffic now after doing so in about 12 months. It takes time, but it’s worth it. The only way you should keep 5 different stores is if all the stores are different! Different product titles, different descriptions for each page, keywords, product descriptions, shipping text, contact text, etc. etc. etc. Everything should be completely different if you want to rank well.

http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

Once you’ve got your fan page going, you can add a couple useful applications to it to increase the usefulness of your page.

1) Social RSS: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=23798139265

Social RSS is an application that allows fans to see your latest feeds on your page (and wall if you choose). There are many options and customizations, such as tags, placement, and more. Remember that you’ll need a blog to use this application, just plugin your RSS feed and you’re ready to go!

2) Static FBML: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878

Static FBML is an HTML editor that allows you to put HTML widgets directly on your fan page (or profile). If you want a big logo of your company or a call to action button that links to your website directly, this application will do just the trick.

Another Facebook Page trick is to use a customized URL. Once your fan page acquires 30 or more fans, head over to:

http://www.facebook.com/username/

Here you’ll be able to set a username for your Facebook page. This will make your page URL easier to remember, cleaner and better for SEO if you go that route. Get started and I’ll be sharing more helpful hints in the future.

Tampa Website Design, TampaCreations.com

The thing that makes Tampa Creations different from most other website development firms is that it offers a full range of web services, from website design all the way to social network marketing. This makes Tampa Creations a “web presence” provider, not just a website design firm. The benefit to businesses here is that one company handles the vertical integration of your online development and marketing, allowing each part to be connected and play a vital role in supporting the other.

Just how important is vertical marketing? Throughout years of working with clients, most clients don’t believe or don’t think about if they want to incorporate search engine optimization or website marketing techniques into their website in the future. Of course, many of those clients visit that possibility after they learn that traffic doesn’t come from nothing, you need optimization and internet marketing to drive the traffic to your website, after all, that’s one of the main benefits of having a website… free web traffic!

It’s important to look at your business and online strategy and decide if going after the web traffic is right for your model. If it is, having vertical integration allows your website to be built from the ground-up incorporating the best search engine optimization methods and even to start the marketing early on, kind of like priming an engine. If you don’t do this early on, it can become an overwhelming task to revisit and incorporate the right optimization, and even worse if the website has to be re-designed to allow it to rank properly. Don’t make these costly errors, put the additional small investment now into your website and design to prepare it for the future.

Clients can ignore form in two ways, either by not caring or by forcefully pressing designs that they want to be installed (and not necessarily what their market or business needs). Unfortunately, both of these can be detrimental to their website’s success. And when we talk about form and aesthetics, what we’re really getting at is how the website makes the consumer feel. It is the vibe that the website passes through to the consumer. This vibe can be any number of feelings… trust, prestige, low price, etc. That feeling helps the consumer to believe your message (function). Essentially, the look of your website becomes a warm-up for your visitor before the big game… the function and message. This warm-up happens instantaneously, right as the user see the website it is instantly judged and a vibe is sent.

Let’s put some examples to use. We’ll start with the vibe of the site since that it what the end goal here is.

• A bank wants to instill trust above all else in its visitors. A trustworthy design is not necessarily artistic or on the verge of being brand new (or what might be called a Web 2.0 design right now). It requires a sense of security and history, represented with many lines and lots of text. Smaller text (11 or 10 pixel) represents professionalism, and therefore further instills trust. A clean, simple color scheme to, again, reflect the bank’s professionalism. A simple, small logo near the top will do since a bank knows that its brand is big and does not need to be flaunted (because a larger logo would represent insecurity, passing an unwanted vibe to the visitor). Let’s look at some large bank websites:http://www.bankofamerica.com

  http://www.citibank.com

  http://www.wellsfargo.com

  http://www.suntrust.com

  http://www.wachovia.comSo you get the picture… essentially all these websites conform to most of the above description. They seem professional and knowledgable at first glance, which comes only from the design itself. Wachovia.com had the worst vibe of them to myself personally, and upon discovery, I pinpointed a couple things that cause it… One, the silver gradiented sidebar was a little too flashy, making it harder to concentrate on the text and form that lie on top… And Two, the lack of lines and separation (especially the content from background) make the text seem new and empty, something that doesn’t send messages of trust to the visitor.

  Of course, we can find far worse than Wachovia, however. Let’s look at a smaller bank with much less of a design budget…

  https://www.bankiowa.com/home/home

  Even the URL structure doesn’t make too much sense (…home/home), but on to the design… There seems to be quite a few too many colors used, especially colors with too high of saturation which typically send a vibe of youth (bold reds, blues, yellows, etc.). I like this example because the functionality of the website appears to be very good. It’s well organized, easy to read, etc. But the colors and overall design of the website don’t really produce a feeling of trustworthiness, or even community (if that’s what was intended). There’s very little text, which makes the bank seem new, and the spacing attributes to that as well. Let’s look at another example…

  http://www.thebankks.com/index.html

  I almost believed this was an agricultural site instead of a bank. Of course, they’re targeting their market which may be primarily agriculture, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do both effectively. The graphics, font changes, and especially the farming pictures send more of feeling of informative instead of trustworthy. Of course it’s possible to give off a vibe of trust while still maintaining a fix towards agriculture for your market…

  https://www.farmbureaubank.com/

  A good sense of trust when visiting the site. And if they wanted to learn a little more towards agriculture on the design, they could use some farming pictures in their slideshow, simple, yet effective. And finally…

  http://www.farmbank.net/

  Quite different from the typical banking website and I’m sure their priorities are in different places than most of the above banks. After all, why design to instill trust? So you can keep visitors confident that their money is safe (there by keeping your customers) and attracting new ones. My assumption is that this bank probably doesn’t have too much competition in their locations, and if they do, they would certainly begin losing potential customers that value online security.

• The next example is the last one since these comparisons are getting to be somewhat long. But were going to do something entirely different to step out of the box of what my be stereotyped as “good design.” Remember, a good design achieves its goals! We’re going to do a pool construction company now. Let’s say you and the wife decide on getting a built-in pool (you can move to Florida too, to play long if you need to).The pool construction company’s goals is to sell you a pool. Your goal is to find the right pool at the right price, that’s it, right? Kinda… you probably already have in your mind what the right price is, and that can’t be changed, but what can, is the right pool. The right pool to you is just a feeling. It’s a feeling from something you’ve read in a magazine, seen in a movie, or maybe even at your neighbors’. The point here is, is that you have an idea or a feeling of what you want, and you can describe it to the different construction companies, but it’s the company that can match that feeling with your price that will win the bid. So how do you as the construction company match that feeling?

  Well first it would take some research and experience to understand what it is most people want in their pool and what feelings they have when they describe it. A pool to most people is a place where they can relax and forget about the stresses of everyday life. To others, it may be entertainment, something that’s exciting and fun! So we have two pretty different vibes, but it’s still possible to include both of these into a design. Vibes that the website wouldn’t want to portray are feelings of stress and discomfort or just plain boring. Since people understand that these companies don’t spend great deals of money on their website, they won’t be necessarily needing a very professional design, and in fact, too professional of a design might turn off some visitors because that company will look like the expensive company. On the other hand, some visitors will be looking for just that – a trustworthy and reliable company that they don’t mind paying a little extra for. This is where knowing your market and what customers you want comes very handy! For the purposes of this, we’ll leave out professionalism and just show a couple examples on the two positives of what we’re looking for: relaxation and fun.

  http://www.signaturepools.com/

  http://www.palacepools.com/

  http://www.artesianpools.com/

  http://www.allstatepools.com/

  Now, although I may argue with having sounds play automatically on a website, there’s no doubt that these sites do a decent job of instilling relaxation and/or fun in the visitor from their designs. On the other hand, these ones don’t instill that feeling as well:

  http://www.swanpools.com/

  http://www.elitepoolbuilders.com/

  http://www.abovegroundpoolprofessionals.com/

  Keep in mind pictures are one of the greatest ways to instill a feeling in your visitor. Having an integrated slideshow of pictures can really help connect with that predefined feeling a visitor has. If you don’t have a slideshow, try to choose the most common of images that have the greatest impact of exactly what the visitor is looking for. The last website posted doesn’t have a very flattering picture of the above ground pool, but it at least shows what is offered so visitors know they are in the right spot. Unfortunately, some visitors require a bit more – they want to know that this is the pool company that will sell them they’re dream, not just their pool.

When looking into the design of a website, it’s critical that you think back to the overall goals of the website and work your way forward through the visitor and back to the design. This backwards process will ensure all the connections are in place for an effective design.