Web Design

These days, anyone can claim to be a web designer – your mom, your 14 year-old nephew, your dog. With so little regulation in the web design industry, new websites are launched every day that may never get any traffic or bring in sales. Most website designers are innocent enough – they don’t intentionally build lackluster websites, they just don’t know any better. There are also many designers out there who are capable of building absolutely gorgeous websites – but they don’t know the first thing about how to get them ranking in search engines.

Concerned that your site doesn’t measure up? Here are a few things to look for to determine if your web designer built your site in a way that attracts traffic and encourages sales.

1. Title Tags: Every page on your website has a title tag. You’ll generally find a page’s title tag at the very top of your browser (see image).  The title tag is perhaps the single most important factor search engines consider when determining rankings. Your title tag should be descriptive, using highly searched keywords and phrases.

It’s not enough for a title tag to simply read:

“Joe Smith, Lawyer”

For Google to find your site, the title tag needs to be specific and should generally lead with the most searchable keywords:

“L.A. Entertainment Lawyer Joe Smith | Copyright Infringement, Trademark Attorney Los Angeles”

2. Permalink Structure: Take a look your site’s URLs in the web address bar. A poorly optimized site generally has URLs that look something like this:

http://www.joesmith.com/blog/12nv09v9v/239#*&F/entertainment-lawyer/2$@(*4

There’s no reason to have all those extra characters in there. In fact, those extra characters are very detrimental to how this page ranks in Google. A good link structure would look something like this:

http://www.joesmith.com/how-to-find-an-entertainment-lawyer

3. Relevant, High Traffic Keywords:
We use Google’s Keyword Tool to make sure every page of your site is full of keywords related to your business that your potential clients and customers are searching for. Keywords help google understand what your site is about so it can determine how high it should appear in search engine results for particular phrases. If you have a site for an entertainment law practice in Los Angeles, you’ll want several variations on the phrase “Los Angeles entertainment attorney” strategically incorporated on all or most of the pages of your website.

4. Sitemap:
Does your website have a sitemap? A sitemap is like giving Google a table of contents for your site. What does a table of contents do for the reader? It makes reading easier. Anything that makes it easier for Google to read your site will help your search engine rankings. We include sitemaps on all of our client sites.

These are just a few of the factors we consider when we build your website.

We believe you shouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a well-optimized website. Your SEO-optimized website is included in our robust Professional Plan!