Understanding Search and Design

If you are entertaining the idea of launching a new Web site or having one redesigned, you need to understand the balance between “search and design” and how this affects your Internet presence. Your Web designer or Web developer should be able to help you achieve these goals.

The problem, however, is that many Web designers still cannot grasp the purity of Google’s laser-like approach to search. It is the purity of this search that connects Web sites to one another.

Let’s look at a case study of a public relations agency.

Design Matters
In the case of Virginia-based Rourk Public Relations, www.rourkpr.com, the challenge was to communicate with potential clients using just the right balance of text content and Web graphics. Using Google as a search engine benchmark during the design phase, a good Web site designer understands that Google uses text content to index or list a Web site in the appropriate category. Another factor is a Web site’s locality. Have you listed your address, city, state, zip and phone with area code in “text form” throughout your Web site? This helps Google determine regional factors as they apply to your search engine ranking. Usually the best place to position this is in the footer or bottom of your Web site.

Rourk Public Relations features a nice balance of graphics and text with ample white space for readability. The design is striking, yet clean and easy to read. A Web site need not fill every inch of white space for the sake of filling up the browser space. If you’re still not convinced, look at Google’s home page.

Content is King
Search engines love content. In the Rourk Public Relations’ web site there is a ‘Team’ section with short bios and pictures. David Rourk, the agency’s president, shared with me that one of his clients found his Web site when searching for the advertising agency Barker Campbell Farley & Mansfield. This search result was due to text within one of his team member’s biographies. Unfortunately, this competitor’s Web site was not found by the user, most likely due to the fact that their Web site is not correctly optimized for search engines.

Write meaningful, informative copy about your business. Write well-formed paragraphs that are error free. Google fine tunes its search algorithm daily. They have teams of coder-programmers who work to make Google 2nd to none in terms of pure search. So don’t write copy for search engines, write copy for your visitors. Talk about your company, your business, what you do.

Copywriters Can Increase Your Search Rankings
Writing great copy is no easy task, so it is well worth the investment to hire a good copywriter that will make your site sing and help elevate it to the first or second page of major search engine rankings. Rourk Public Relations has written copy for several of my Web clients with outstanding results. You may be the brains of your business, but you may not be a wordsmith. Hire a good copywriter. Competition on the Web is tough. You need to put your best foot forward if you want to tap into the billions of dollars that well designed and written Web sites are generating.

You have no doubt seen ads on the Web or in your email titled Top 10 Ranking Now or Drive Tons of Traffic to Your Web Site. Don’t be fooled. There are no short-cuts to driving traffic to your Web site. It takes a keen understanding of search engines through years of study and the correct design and text to get to the top.

About the Author
Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national companies as well as small to medium businesses throughout the United States. Rick can be reached at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net.