My Website Design and Management Philosophy

Remember when the internet became available for consumer use back in the early 1990's? That's only been 15-18 years ago. The internet has come a long way since then. What started out being a world-wide showcase for personal websites and personal philosophies has now turned into a daily business necessity, something that touches every aspect of our lives... an entity that is doubling in size every 3 months!

What once was a medium that was new and unexplored has now turned into a crowded, virtual marketplace that begs for your attention. So, how do you break out from the crowd and get noticed on the internet? Search Engine Optimization or SEO, for short. As a person or business that wants to get noticed on the web, SEO techniques properly used can achieve that goal.

From the time a website is conceived in the mind until it becomes reality on the web, SEO must be a part in every facet. Here are some web design and maintenance tips that I've found very helpful for being successful on the web:

1. Design a website that gives the user a good experience. The beginnings of a website must be planned out. First, select a domain name for your site that is close to what you're marketing. Then select a reputable, stable source to host your website. In developing your website, keep in mind what type of content users want to see and anything that makes their experience on your site more engaging, pleasant and productive.

2. Think about your user. Navigation and content structured smartly and targeted tightly around your product or service offering will attract a more valuable corner of the search engine market and generate higher conversion rates once your visitors arrive on your site. Provide all the information you can about your product or service. After all, that's why users come to your website, to find all the information they can.

3. Take advantage of SEO techniques. From utilizing keywords in meta tags and content to coding H1 titles and ALT tags, these are the tricks that can place your website higher up the Search Engine ladder. Other techniques include using other mediums such as Youtube for videos and Facebook for social media. They all have their place and they all help your website gain authority with the search engines.

4. SEO must be an ongoing effort. Once you make a few key changes to your site to help optimize it for your target search engine user, you are not done. These changes should be monitored, and plenty of time allowed to draw conclusions, modifications made, repeat. This is the reason why every website needs some type of analytics... a way to measure success and failure.

5. A website must never be thought of as "complete". It must continually change and evolve. Content needs to be changed and updated on a regular basis. A stagnant website showing little change in content will see fewer and fewer users and will eventually die.

6. Be patient and expect results slowly. Since the web is so crowded, it may take months for any SEO technique to take effect and gain results. So, be patient and don't expect results overnight.

Of course, there is a lot more to SEO that what has been mentioned here. And it doesn't matter whether you are a large company utilizing a Content Managed System or an individual wanting to begin a presence on the web, SEO should be considered the heartbeat of every website on the internet.

In summary, web design, management and SEO is a science that should be treated as such. In today's internet environment, it takes more than just an HTML programmer to get you the results you need. It takes someone experienced in not only web design, graphics and programming, but it takes a person knowledgeable of SEO and how to make it work for you.

Robert Hilliard
P.O. Box 2624
Lindale, Texas 75771
robert@hilliard.ws

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