Website redesign is an opportunity to finally create an effective website. Most business and organizational websites aren’t optimized at all. An even smaller number start by doing keyword research and basing their site around their main keywords.
The problem is that in 2011 most business owners and organizational leaders know that they need to use keyword phrases on their website to draw traffic. What they don’t know is that those terms ideally should be part of their site structure. They are unaware that the keyword process is the first step to website redesign.
Typically, owners and leaders get a new web site built by someone with a great web design portfolio that they know, and then call on an internet marketer to optimize the site retroactively. While this will help their site, it’s effectiveness is limited compared to what can be done before the site is designed.
For an effective website you want to start the website redesign process by working with an search engine optimization (SEO) expert who will help you identify and research your most relevant and Google friendly keywords.The next step is to lay out the main navigation using those relevant keywords in the buttons, links, headers, file names and text of the site.
This step of laying out the keywords in the navigation of the site (the site structure) might be done with a marketing savvy web designer or might involve the SEO expert, the information designer/content expert and a web designer.
As the client, what you need to know is that:
- the keyword phrases need to be relevant to your business,
- researched to identify which have traffic and which don’t
- that the most relevant and Google-friendly terms become part of the site structure…ie. the main buttons and links on the site
Next time you have the opportunity to redesign your company website, seek out a company with an SEO expert and make sure they are familiar with this process. It will put you ahead of 90-95% of the business websites on Google and other search engines.
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Karen Nierlich is an internet marketing consultant with Full Orbit Web and Marketing in Albany, CA. She works with clients through out the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond create an effective website. She and her team are familiar with all aspects of website redesign including search engine optimization (SEO), programming, content creation, web design, information design and social media.
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