By Sam Roberts – Website Copywriter, Internet Researcher and Advertising Copywriter

Why design for your content?

I remember putting together my first website – when I was about 14 – and how long it took me to get the design just right. I planned it all carefully in my head, working out all the pages I thought a site should have (Main, About Me, Pictures and Links!). I even drew out a sitemap on paper, to make sure everything was perfect!
Then I painstakingly taught myself .html (this was back in the days before WYSIWYG editors were around), and drew out each .jpg from scratch. It took me several weeks, but eventually the site was finished. All I needed to do was to write the content to fill it. It was only then that I realised that I didn’t have a single thing I wanted to say.

I designed my second website when I was in High School, and it was a far more ambitious affair. I made a page for each of my friends, and filled it with things I knew would make them laugh. The home page was little more than a list of links, because I wanted people to be able to find their pages easily. The design flowed naturally from the content, and unlike my first website, this one was a huge success. Because I had written it with my audience in mind, rather than trying to fit the content around the design, it was more accessible, and people took the time to read it. As a result, the site became very popular, and people still talk about it now, even though the site has been offline for years.

Both of my sites were very basic, amateur efforts, but the principle applies equally no matter what size the site. Design is important, but content is king. The web is a communication medium – if you publish something online, you obviously have something you want to say, and you cannot afford to let your words be overshadowed by your flashy new website. You need to learn to design for your content.

Design to communicate

The most important part of your website is the content itself. You have something to say, and you must make sure you say it, or all your effort has been wasted. But there’s no point in just regurgitating a few paragraphs of marketing hype – web users are surprisingly savvy, and they can see through that in an instant; an instant in which they will have hit the back button and moved on down the list of search results.

You need to find out what people are looking for, and give it to them.

Do some research; think about which terms you would use to search if you wanted to buy your product, and then look them up. Have a look at who your competitors are, and what they are doing. Research on Wordtracker and see if there are any other keywords you could try.

Then use your imagination. Think about why people might be looking for your product and write for them. If your site advertises a skiing hotel in Switzerland, don’t just advertise for ‘hotels in Switzerland’, provide useful articles about skiing, and then point them to your hotel in the middle of a ski resort.

When you know what content you require, you need to write it. The key to this is that it must be written well – you want people to read it and find the information useful. There’s a lot of rubbish out there, and if people find a genuinely useful article they will remember it and come back for more. With that in mind, here are a few ideas for writing better content:

• Write
  clearly. Write succinctly. People get turned off by huge blocks of text, so keep it as short and sweet as possible.
• Don’t feel you have to explain every little thing, but don’t assume that your readers know everything that you do. If they did, they wouldn’t be reading your article.
• Use references to strengthen your arguments, and link to sources where people can get more information. Don’t be afraid to link to sites other than your own. It will only make people trust you more.
• Talk as yourself. It’s the web; you can and should be informal. People like feeling that they are listening to a real human being. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use correct spelling, punctuation and grammar.
• Don’t overuse colloquialisms – not everybody is from the same country as you, and it’s easy for things to get lost in translation.

Design for ease of use

People don’t like reading as much text on a screen as on a page. Therefore, you must make things easy for them. Design your website to complement and enhance the text, and be careful not to overwhelm it with fancy menus and images that distract your readers from the important stuff: your content.

Split the text into easily digestible chunks; use short paragraphs made up of short sentences. Give each topic its own separate page if it makes things easier to read. Five concise pages are better than one single sprawling mass of text.

Use bullet points and lists to make things simpler. Emphasise important things using header tags or bold to make them stand out. Basically, try to break things up as much as possible into smaller sections that people will be more inclined to read.

Design for accessibility

Not everybody who uses the web can see perfectly. Some are visually impaired; others may even be blind. Yet they are still quite capable of using the Internet, provided that web designers follow a few basic rules to make things easier for them.

• Fonts should be resizable – it is tempting to restrict fonts to a specific size in order to preserve your design, but it is important that you allow users to choose for themselves. There are a huge number of articles on the web about creating layouts that will respond dynamically to changes in text size.
• Many visually impaired people use screen-readers to navigate the web – one way in which you can improve their experience of your site is to make sure you use proper .html, improving the accuracy of the screen-reader.
• Don’t use images to as a source of information, but to reinforce the information given in the text. Ideally, your site should work just as well with images off. Try viewing your site with a text only browser, such as Lynx, to get an idea of how it will be seen by a screen-reader.
• Make sure you make good use of your image alt tags. Give a concise description of the image contents. If you include a lot of your site’s meta keywords, you will help your SEO too.

You need to make sure that everybody can access and view your content, and that it looks the same on everybody’s computer. That means testing. Get as many people as you can to test out your site in different browsers, different resolutions, and different platforms. Make sure it works in the same way in all of them.

Conclusion

As with my first site, if you emphasise design over content, your users will get bored and move on, and your site will sink back into anonymity. By following the suggestions in this article, your website will be rejuvenated, and your content will get a chance to shine. People will read what you have to say. If they like what they hear, they’ll come back again and again…

Graphic design is the use of color, light, balance, contrast, emphasis, proportion, proximity, repetition, texture and a plethora of other elements to create a work of digital art that is pleasing to the eye. Graphic design is about seamlessly molding image and text to convey a theme, message, or often advertise a product or service. Graphic design dates back to prehistoric times. With hieroglyphs and cave-dwelling designs that became some of the first written language. Although communication, not aestheticism, was the primary concern, one can still argue for the overall visual design of the prehistoric artists.

With the 1584 Gutenberg Printing Press, graphic design took on a whole new meaning. Now, text, coupled with visual appeal, could reach a wider audience than ever before. Although the use was – at first – primarily for Biblical and other important writings, the trend would soon spread to visual-appeal. Graphic design, as we know it, didn’t reach its boom until the computer era. With companies finding it increasingly necessary to have a corporate identity solution, visually-pleasing logo, and an online presence, graphic designers are definitely getting all the work they can handle.

Today, graphic design and website design are two separate, but closely related, entities. Most all websites offer some visual appeal – that is, they include graphical elements. When one understands this, they can really begin to grasp the widespread effect that graphic design can have. Creating something with aesthetic appeal is a laborious task, when one considers all the elements of graphic design, along with the viewing audience. Attempting to convey an emotion or theme is especially difficult. Special consideration to the following principles is necessary – mood, style, message, and hierarchy.
Moreover, one must consider the audience. Although anyone can view a website, logo, or corporate identity package, only a few are really in the ‘target audience.’ With graphic design’s worldwide appeal, designers have developed geographic markets in which to showcase their talents.

With Ireland’s technology boom, a widespread graphic design industry has developed. A Google.com search for "Irish Graphic Design" yields almost 2 million results, a true testament to this unparalleled growth. One of the front-runners in this burgeoning population of graphic design studios is Red Fly Studios. While Red Fly is a full-service firm offering web application development and design, their attention to graphic design detail is unmatched. Take a look through Red Fly’s portfolio, compare to other Irish design firms, and you’ll see that the company has a lot to offer.

So you want to get your online business up and running but there’s one little problem – you need a website! For any business, big or small, a professional website is important if you want to attract potential clients or customers and create a solid foundation for continued success. But many people have no idea how to go about the process. Luckily, it’s actually quite easy to get a functional, well designed and user-friendly website online in a reasonable amount of time. And depending on your particular situation and budget, there are several options available to make your business goals a reality.

The first option is to hire a designer. If you are willing to invest a good sum of money into the initial stages of developing your business, hiring a professional website designer or web design company should be something to seriously consider. The job will cost you thousands of dollars (if you hire a reputable designer) but all the pressure and work will be on someone else’s shoulders. Spending a lot of money right at the beginning of your venture may seem a little risky, but compared to other business endeavors the cost – and risk – are minimal. And the amount of money you have the potential to make after your site goes live will far outweigh the amount of money initially invested in its construction. Also, if you expect a professional job, hiring a professional is the best way to attain that objective.

A designer will consult with you regarding what you need in a website – a simple basic website, flash-based design, and ecommerce sites are the most common. You will also discuss form, functionality, color scheme, graphics, and other important points. Sometimes content can be obtained through your web designer as well, or you can fulfill your content needs after the basic website design is completed. In the end, hiring a web designer offers you a lot of flexibility and gives you the ability to fully customize your website in all aspects of its design.

Go it Alone

If you don’t have the money to spend on a good web designer or feel it’s unnecessary for your purposes, there’s no reason why you can’t create the website yourself. And this option applies to everyone – even if you know nothing about HTML or web design. Of course, if you do know a little bit of HTML – or are willing to put your nose to the grindstone and scour the Internet and your local library to learn HTML – you can certainly build a website from scratch. But nowadays there are other ways to make your own business website without struggling with HTML or a costly designer.

Website templates, for example, combine the professional design talents of an experienced web designer with the cost-effectiveness of going it alone. Templates are ready-made web pages that a designer or design company sells for a small sum – the cost is so low simply because the template can be resold over and over again. In addition, if you purchase a website template that won’t be resold after you buy it the cost will rise but still ends up being much more affordable than working with a designer one-on-one. The cost is kept relatively low because, although the template cannot be sold to another person, the design was already created and the buyer agrees
to purchase it “as is.”

When you visit a website selling templates you are given the freedom to browse through a wide selection of different styles of website designs. Once you find the perfect match for your business you simply purchase and download. All that’s left is to edit it using a simple HTML editor to add content, graphics – you name it. One such website template company I found that offers quality, reasonably priced templates is TemplateDogma (see the link in Resource Box).

The final option is to use an online website builder to do the job. This type of program holds your hand every step of the way so that you can build a website without knowing anything about computer languages or design techniques. Even if you use a WYSIWYG editor it is possible to get lost along the way, and as mentioned above, templates do require editing after you make the purchase. A website builder is the only option that essentially automates the entire process. You might not be able to customize every aspect of the site, as templates are usually part of the procedure, but adding content, pictures, charts and tables to the site is made entirely hassle-free.

As you can see, there are many different ways to build a website from the ground up. In the end, choose the option you think will lead you down the path toward online success and you’ll be happy with the results.

So to achieve success and to be on the top rank of the search engine results, work with the best web designing company Delhi with the help of its expertise and know how tools, you can definitely gain success. Web Design Delhi is the most important aspect of a company website. A visually appealing website is more likely to attract attention of a casual visitor than a scantily designed one. A good design may not always be heavy on graphics. It is more to do with the lay out and using the right color combinations. In fact, the color should be as per the theme of the website. Web site designing requires a lot of innovativeness and an artistic bend of mind. Some time one can accomplish much more by intelligently using certain effects like image rollover, image swapping, frames etc. A number of tools are now available to the designers and the list is ever increasing. There are specialized tools for creating various types of special effects. Website designing has now become a self-sufficient industry in India. There are a number of organizations who just do website designs and prepare templates. Anyone can choose these templates and then get their own website designed as per that design. This saves a lot of time as well as effort. The templates are accessible based on the graphics content, purpose of the sites, animation etc.

Web Design Delhi is the most imperative portion of a company website. A visually alluring website is more likely to attract interest of a casual visitor than poorly designed one. A good design may not always be important on graphics. It is more to do with the lay out and using the right color combinations. In fact, the color should be as per the subject of the website.

If you are like may others on the internet, then you would like to have a web site of your own. The problem is, you don’t know how to design a web site, and you can’t afford to pay a web site designer to design a new site for you. So how do you get around this problem? Actually it is very easy – and as always there are options! There are many talented web designers on the internet, and they will allow you to purchase a web site design from them for a very reasonable price. The designs available to you are as varied as the people that made them. There is literally something for everyone – a design for all tastes and all purposes – just waiting for you to come along and use it.

These pre written web sites are called web site templates, and some of them are extremely well done. Web site templates are usually created one of three ways – they are : Html, Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash. If you know how to edit html, a template can be a quick and easy way to turn your ideas into a new web site. I can already hear some of you saying "That’s no good to me, I can’t write html!". That’s ok! There is the photoshop style of web site template that you can try. Do you have a digital camera? Have you ever put a title on your photos? Have you edited your pictures or made a collage out of them? (multiple pictures joined into one..) If you have, then you can probably make your own web site using Adobe Photoshop – or a similar photo editing application. The photoshop templates do all the initial design work for you, you just have to fill in the text areas with whatever you want to say. It really isn’t that hard to do. The software will do most of the work, you just need the ‘content’ to fill in the provided spaces. Have a go at home using your own digital photos, and when you have made a couple of pages download a photoshop template and make a complete web site. Of course you will need someone to host your new site, but as most ISP’s include a small ‘home page’ area with every account, you can probably put your new site there to begin with. The next type of web site template uses Macromedia Flash to create it. Web site templates designed using Flash are usually animated and can have some quite advanced visual effects. The downside to using Flash templates is they are not really intended for novice web designers – the Flash software is quite complicated – but the results can be well worth the effort.

As a side note, search engines have a very poor understanding of Flash web sites, and if you want to create a commercial or business web site, then you would be better off using html or photoshop for your design.

The final option for designing a web site by template is to find a template that you like the look of, and have someone else turn it into your web site. By purchasing a web site template you will greatly reduce the cost of the design of you new web site – and as a bonus, you will know from the start what it will look like when it is finished

When you use a template to design a new web site please be aware that you are not the only person on the web that is using that template. There could be other web sites using the same design – but with the enormous number of web sites on the internet it is unlikely that you will ever find one of those sites. If you want to guarantee that your web site is completely
unique, then you need to design it yourself, of you will have to get it designed just for you. Good luck with your new web site!

Why hire a designer or a programmer?

You might ask this question yourself when there are 100’s of easy to build software on the internet. But building a website yourself and a professional designer makes a lot of difference. The designer put in years of expertise in building your website. He knows all the web standards as well as a professional look after it is done. Apart from that business owners don’t find time and patience in maintaining and promoting the site. Since the business person is occupied with this own business needs. What are the important aspects while choosing a website designer/programmer?

1) Check the credentials of the designer, is he reliable or will the designer will leave half way of your project. Check with the designer previous employer or clients. They could give you a good feedback on it.

2) Choose the designer carefully going through the previous work or portfolio. Don’t go ahead with the designer unless seen the designer portfolio. Viewing the portfolio you will get an idea what kind of quality and professionalism you can expect from him.

3) Next step after you are satisfied with the designer is asking for a proposal from him. Ask the designer is there any kind of terms and conditions before starting the project. If so make sure does that work for you too. Some designer may ask for a upfront for the project usually it is 25-40% of the entire cost of the project. Ask the designer what mode of payment he would prefer.

4) Once the terms and conditions are fixed then go ahead and ask for a prototype of the website.

5) Once the designer comes up with the prototype ask for revision unless you get satisfied and think this is what you where looking for.

6) Finalize the website and go ahead upload on to the server.

Follow these steps and increase your chances of successfully hiring a web designer/ web programmer who meets your needs and those of your project.

Today, a business website is not only a tool, it is a marketing essential. With many more customers starting their search for good local businesses online, you may be cheating yourself if you do no have a website, or if you have common detourants within your current website. In fact, some reports show that up to 75% of first time customers looking for a new business will indeed begin their search online first.

"But I have a website."

You may have a website, but is it drawing in the amount of business that you want? If you are getting visitors to your website, but they are just simply not converting to paying customers, then your website may actually be detouring customers away, rather then grabbing them in. Websites made on "do-it yourself" editors, Websites that were made during the "website boom," among others may have some common errors that drive your customers away.

Here are a few common mistakes found in none-productive websites:

1) Slow loading- One of the common mistakes website owners make us actually adding too much to their website. The more heavy graphic images and content that the customer has to download, the longer it will take for your website to load. If it takes too long, chances are the visitor will hit back without even seeing your website. We understand that you may have a lot to say or show about your business, but the proper way to do this is to split it all up into a few pages instead of one.

2) Outdated information- If your website was made several years ago, and you have not updated the content since, then chances are you will not get the most out of your websites. Your business changes over the years, so your website should change with it. Because, after all, would you hire a business if the only information you can find was post dated 2 or 3 years?

3) Unprofessional websites- This mistake is largely found in websites created during the "website boom" which took place around the start of the 21st century. Then, it was not uncommon to see websites with simple layouts, pictures that simply did not match the business, animated characters, etc. Plus, most of the technology we have today just simply was not available then. This is just not accepted anymore. If you open your website, and there are blinking or moving graphics that do not relate to our website (ex: an animated running dog breaks up your paragraphs, or a "new" sign blinks a few different colors) then chances are your customers are turning away.

4) No content- A website needs to tell as much as possible about your business. If your website only contains a few sentences, and then a "contact me for more information" link, then you will lose customers. The reason customers start their search online is so that they can find out as much information as possible, without having to go through the trouble of contacting businesses and asking.

5) No contact information- You would think providing your contact information would be a no-brainer. You would be surprised at how many companies accidentally leave this out. On the other hand, some only leave their address, which requires the customer to find the business in person in order to inquiry about their services or products. Make sure to leave either an email address or a phone number along with your address.

6) Javascripts- Javascript was a popular language during the website boom. Javascript is the language that controls things such as pop-ups ads, pop-ups messages, scrolling toolbars,
etc. When used correctly, javascript can add beneficial dynamic content to your site. However, when used wrong, it may make your site look unprofessional, load slow, or may cause errors that do not allow your website to load at all.

If your website has any of the common mistakes found above, then I assure you that you will benefit from a website redesign. The good news is: redesigns are usually a lot less painful, and less costly then the initial design was. A good design company can take your current website, and make it stunning in a very short period of time.

In web designing service provides different color combination to attract people.
Visualization is any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of man. As internet is a visual and psychological medium so color combination is very important in Web Design Delhi company e-Fuzion, on the internet we don’t deal with face to face selling. The interpretation of words, images, and diagram on your website has by far the greatest impact on your visitor and thus becomes the most communication and sales tool.

Another important factor in web designing is color combination. The background color of your website, the color of your header, the color of your text, headlines and sub-headlines etc. can all have a psychological impact on your visitors. Some of the common colors are given below that can invoke emotion in people. Web Design Delhi company e-Fuzion has become aware of the fact that overloading a website with images, irrelevant text or colors, is ineffective and unnecessary. Using web design themes that offer calming, informative, query solving designs are in demand. Basic colors or fonts are making a comeback. In addition, web designers use blank space in appropriate areas in order to place a focus on a particular topic, and allow a viewer to absorb the content without being bombarded by too much information. Have become aware of the fact that overloading a website with images, irrelevant text or colors, is ineffective and unnecessary. Using web design themes that offer calming, informative, query solving designs are in demand. Basic colors or fonts are making a comeback. In addition, web designers use blank space in appropriate areas in order to place a focus on a particular topic, and allow a viewer to absorb the content without being bombarded by too much information.

Web Design Delhi company e-Fuzion provides different colorful designs, which create a special stage among other web sites.

An additional benefit of website accessibility is an improved performance in search engines. The more accessible it is to search engines, the more accurately they can predict what the site’s about, and the higher your site will appear in the rankings.

Not all of the accessibility guidelines will help with your search engine rankings, but there are certainly numerous areas of overlap:

1. ALT descriptions assigned to images

Screen readers, used by many visually impaired web users to surf the web, can’t understand images. As such, to ensure accessibility an alternative description needs to be assigned to every image and the screen reader will read out this alternative, or ALT, description.

Like screen readers, search engines can’t understand images either and won’t take any meaning from them. Many search engines can now index ALT text though, so by assigning ALT text search engines will be able to understand all your images.

2. Text displayed through HTML, not images

Text embedded in images appears pixelated, blurry and often impossible to read for users utilising screen magnifiers. From an accessibility point of view this should therefore be avoided.

Search engines equally can’t read text embedded in images. Well, you can just give the image some ALT text, right? Unfortunately, there’s strong evidence to suggest search engines assign less importance to ALT text than they do to regular text. Why? Spammers. So many webmasters have been stuffing their ALT tags full of keywords and not using them to describe the image. Search engines have cottoned on to this form of spamming (as they eventually do every form of spamming) and have taken appropriate action.

3. Descriptive link text

Visually impaired web users can scan web pages by tabbing from link to link and listening to the content of the link text. As such, the link text in an accessible website must always be descriptive of its destination.

Search engines place a lot of importance on link text too. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say ‘click here’, search engines can’t gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, ‘widgets’ then search engines can easily guess what that page is about.

One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, ‘miserable failure’. So many people have linked to George Bush’s bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush’s bio appears top of the search rankings!

4. Website functions with JavaScript disabled

JavaScript is unsupported by about 9% of web users (source: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/November/javas.php), either because they’ve turned it off (for example to prevent pop-up adverts) or because their browser doesn’t support it. Many forms of JavaScript aren’t accessible to web users utilising screen readers.

Search engines can’t understand JavaScript either and will be unable to index any JavaScript-driven content. Perhaps more importantly, they’ll also be unable to follow JavaScript-driven links. You may really like the look of your dropdown menu but search engines won’t if they can’t access certain pages on your site because there aren’t any regular links pointing at them.

5. Alternatives to Flash-based content
provided

Flash, like JavaScript, isn’t accessible to many users, including those using screen readers. Equally, search engines can’t access Flash so be sure to provide equivalents.

6. Transcripts available for audio

Hearing impaired users obviously require written equivalents for audio content to be able to access it. Search engines too can’t access this medium, but transcripts provide them with a large amount of text for them to index.

7. Site map provided

Site maps can be a useful tool for visually impaired users as they provide a straightforward list of links to the main pages on the site, without any of the fluff in between.

Site maps are also great for search engines as search engines can instantly index your entire site when they arrive at the site map it. Next to each link you can also provide a short keyword-rich preview of the page. All links should, of course, be made through regular HTML and not through JavaScript (see 4. above).

8. Meaningful page title

When we arrive at web pages the first thing that appears, and the first thing that visually impaired users hear, is the page title. This latter group of web users don’t have the privilege of being able to quickly scan the page to see if it contains the information they’re after, so it’s essential that the page title effectively describes the page content.

If you know anything about search engine optimisation you’ll know that the page title is the most important attribute on the page. If it adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about.

9. Headings and sub-headings used

Visually impaired web users can scan web pages by tabbing from heading to heading, in addition to tabbing from link to link (see 3. above). As such, it’s important for accessibility to make sure that headings are correctly marked up by using h1, h2 etc.

Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings describe the content immediately below them. Make sure you use the heading tags properly and don’t abuse them, as the more text you have contained in heading tags, for example, the less importance search engines assign to them.

10. CSS used for layout

Screen readers can more effectively work through the HTML code of CSS-based sites as there’s a greater ratio of content to code. Websites using CSS for layout can also be made accessible to in-car browsers, WebTV and PDAs. Don’t underestimate the importance of this – in 2008 alone there’ll be an estimated 58 million PDAs sold worldwide (source: http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0603.htm).

Search engines also prefer CSS-based sites and are likely to score them higher in the search rankings because:

The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines
Important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document
There is a greater density of content compared to coding

Conclusion

With all this overlap between web accessibility and search engine optimisation there’s no excuses for not implementing basic accessibility on to your website. It’ll give you a higher search engine ranking and therefore more site visitors.

Creating a web site takes thought, planning and execution. Unfortunately, many designs are dead in the water before they are even published as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Whatever you do, avoid these critical mistakes.

Database Parameters in URL

Many web site designers don’t take into account the effect of database parameters in site URLs. A database parameter tells the server what should be loaded onto a particular page when a viewer tries to see it. In essence, the page is “dynamic” because it is being pulled together with each click. Robot programs that are used by search engines to index sites hate dynamic pages. Often, they will not even index the pages and the page of your site is not listed in the search engine.

Let’s look at an example using the Nomad Adventure Journals site. The home page URL is aptly, http://www.nomadjournals.com – a static page. In this URL, there are no parameters telling the server to load anything other than a static web page. All search engines will index this page without any problem.

Now, what if we changed the page to something dynamic. Let’s say we designed it to record the session identification [identify the viewer] and dynamically load the pictures on the page. We would have one parameter for the session identification and four parameters for the various pictures on the page. The URL for the home page might look something like:

http://www.nomadjournals.com/home/index.html?&DID=9&User_ID&CATID=15&ObjectGroup_ID=39

What a mess. A search engine robot is going to balk at indexing such pages. It simply can’t tell what is on the page. If you have parameters and session identifications in the URLs of your site pages, you are going to have a very difficult time getting into the search engine rankings. Obviously, that precludes you from getting any top rankings and free traffic.

Fixing The Problem

Fixing the problem often is lengthy and costly depending on the number of pages on your site. If you have over 100 products, a complete re-design may be the best answer. If you have a relatively small number of pages, there may be less brutish options.

Converting pages to static html is a definite solution for smaller sites. Essentially, one would take the page for each product and convert it into a static html page. The domain would then be converted to short sub-domain. If a user then clicked on the “buy” button for the product on the page, they would be sent to a dynamic database page. The viability of this solution is dependent upon the layout of the site. Some sites can be fixed, some simply cannot.

In Closing

The database parameter problem is surprisingly common with sites selling products. A majority of site designers do not understand search engine optimization and don’t realize the problem they are creating. If you intend to build a database driven site, make sure you bring in a search engine optimization specialist before it is created. Nobody wants to spend the money to design a site twice.