SEO Website Design for Small Businesses

Without SEO Website Design, Your Website Doesn't Exist!

Why is SEO website design important? Some business owners may be thinking potential customers are going to come to their website because they have it written on their business cards or in an ad in the newspaper. The truth is: they are dead wrong, and prospective customers are not going to find their website unless it is search engine optimized.

If you're reading this, you probably already know that SEO website design is important. But you may be wondering what it is and how you can implement it so your website gets seen and you attract more customers to your business.

A SEO website designed site is easily accessible to the search engines so they can “crawl” through your site to find out what your website is all about. If you have a “flash” website, or if your content is posted as pdf documents, for instance, the search engines may not be able to access information on your site that potential visitors may find useful. For example, if you're an auto mechanic, and your website is full of articles that tell people how to change a flat tire, check their
oil, replace a fuse, and other helpful information, you want people to be able to find your website if they are looking for information on how to do any of these tasks. However, if you have posted these “how to” articles as pdf documents, the search engines may not see that and your site will not be found by the potential client.

Did you know that there are more than 200 factors that are used to determine your site's position in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? All of these factors must be taken into account when designing your website, or you risk losing business to your competitors.

There are a lot of web designers and DIY website builders that claim to offer built-in SEO features. However, what we have seen is that most brand-new “SEO-friendly” websites have between 200 – 750 SEO errors (AKA design flaws) that need to be fixed when the site goes live. We see roughly 500 – 1200 errors for sites that have been live for 3 – 5 years. Even worse, e-commerce sites typically have as many as 1,200 – 12,000 errors! These common seo mistakes prevent would-be customers from finding your site, and ultimately result in lost business.

Another costly mistake we see on many businesses’ websites is the failure to account for the social and local aspects of their site design. For example, they don't include social media links on all pages, or they forget to put critical contact information such as their location, phone number, and email address at the bottom of each page. You can't show up in a local search if the search engines don't know where your business is located!

Other common website design mistakes we see include the absence of title tags or alt tags on images, neglecting to optimize the site for speed of page loading, and not having a mobile version of the site. Search engines favor sites that are mobile-relevant when people do a search on their phones. Remember, if Yahoo, Bing or Google cannot find you, you don't exist online.

The goal of this book is to provide an understanding of what SEO Website Design is and how you can achieve excellent ranking with your website through some basic changes that we call SEO Website Design.