Website Optimization: The practice of making a websites contents and code, user and search engine friendly.

Many designers offer web site optimization as a separate service when designing for a client. SFWD optimizes the new sites we design as a standard service.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization:

SEO has been the topic of discussion for a long time. SEO has been given so much attention that sometimes we forget that we are not selling to a search engine but we are selling to humans.

Most of us have heard of SEO or "search engine optimization". Most of us also know that SEO firms are charging BIG bucks for this service!

In all fairness this service is a specialized, valuable and valid process in any web design project. But i think it important that we all understand more about this seemingly elusive skill.

In the early days of web site designing smart designers made sure a little section in the HTML code called the META Keywords tag, included the same keywords that a surfer might type in the query box while conducting a search for a subject, product or service on the Internet.

The keywords in the Meta tag are supposed to be relevant to the content in the web site to aid the searcher in finding what he or she is looking for. Eventually designers started abusing the system by putting non-relevant words in a given website in hopes of generating traffic their website that might not have otherwise visited.

Example: Lets say you had a web site selling, Men’s fine leather footwear. Properly you might add Meta keywords in the keyword tag like (Fine leather shoes, leather boots, men’s footwear,) or any other logical keywords that would assist the searcher in finding what they are actually looking for.

Then started the abuse, or spamming of the Meta keyword tag for lack of a better term. Designers trying to "stuff the ballot box" started being sneaky and adding non-relevant words to their keyword tags. Example: (fine leather shoes, men’s ties, sport coats, hosiery, apples, oranges, horse shoes, tweed suit jackets...) See the problem? The next thing you know your searches are returning web sites that have nothing to do with what you were looking for.

What's the point of the "information highway" if the information found has nothing to do with what you are inquiring to know?

Search engine overhaul:

Well the time was bound to come when search engine company's would have to make an adjustment. One of the things that google did was to start ignoring your keywords tag and began concentrating on how your page title and description tags match the content in your web pages.

It's not a cut and dry matter either. Google will penalize for over saturation of keyword phrases used in your content (actual text in the pages) if it doesn't make sense.

It is by no means an easy task to optimize for today's discriminating search engine's. It takes a fine balance of relevancy in your pages keywords, page title and Meta tag description to keep the google monster fed and satisfied.

To make things even more interesting it is an ongoing task to keep your site optimized for continued decent rankings because the search engines are continually tweaking their systems to make the time we spend searching efficient.

SFWD is committed to staying in tune with these changes, and this of course is of great value to our client's.

Conversion driven optimization: ( or CDO as we like to call it )

As we watch the competition grow in the web marketing world we see massive efforts and recources being spent on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as business owners do everything they can to get exposure for their web business.

Unfortunantly this is sometimes done at the expense of the most important element of your websites design.

1.Useability

2. Effectivness!

Shouldn'd a website be optimized in such a way as to convert its visitors to buy your services or products? I mean what is the point of a small business website if it isn't to sell your services or products?

This is the heart of SFWD's concept of website optimization.

We understand that potential customers are far too busy to spend a lot of time learning how to navigate your web site while simply trying to find out if your company offers the products or services they desire. Most visitors are left with a bad impression if they are forced to jump through hoops to contact you or get answers to their questions through your web site.

At the same time we understand that cutting edge design should be incorporated in a websites design to show your commitment to staying in the media main stream without saturating your layout with design that will make your web site invisible to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

We accomplish all of these goals with Straight Forward simplicity when designing a small business website aimed at producing solid results!

Let us help you Move Your Business Forward!

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