Thursday, 26 January, 12. Web Site Design

Transcription

1 Web Site Design

2 Not Just a Pretty Face Easy to update Responsive (mobile, tablet and web-friendly) Fast loading RSS enabled Connect to social channels

3 Easy to update To me, that means one platform, WordPress. Content management system, blog, website rolled into one. Need basic tech skills to set-up and customize.

4 Responsive Flexible layouts, images, media queries Site that will work on multiple devices, including mobile, tablet and web. You can now purchase responsive WordPress themes. No need to hard code a site.

5 Fast loading Provides a better user experience. Prevents anxious or impatient people from leaving the site. Improves your website visibility by fulfilling an important ranking factor for search engines.

6 RSS Enabled Content is automatically delivered to the user. New content is published and pushed thru RSS to content aggregators. RSS feeds can show on a search engine results page or SERP.

7 Connect to Social Website is your content hub. Everything social connects to it and it connects back to everything social. Today s web is mobile and social. Seamless connection to, from and around. Channels

8 Key Features Video player. Front and centre on the homepage. Tagline. Visitor should understand at-a-glance what the series is about and why it is unique. capture. Make it easy. Make it visible. Ask for the sign-up.

9 Key Features (con t) Main navigation at or near top of the page; descriptive (not funny titles). No more than 5 or 6 sections; drop-down menus. Some sort of a sidebar with easy visual access to other content and to social media channels.

10 Above the Fold Logo or visual ID Name of web series (may be part of visual ID) Tagline Main and sub-navigation Video player (or photo slider)

11 Above the Fold (con t) RSS and RSS (by ) subscription icon newsletter sign-up form Social media buttons or icons On-site search box Other call to action items

12 Below the Fold Sidebar content (tag and category links, blogroll) Content features (latest or most popular news; latest episodes) Social media widgets Footer information (subnavigation, privacy and copyright info)

13 Hiring a web designer You don t need to hire a web designer. Use WordPress then purchase a custom theme that is close to the look and function you want. If it needs to be tweaked hire a developer who knows CSS and PHP.

14 Design for people Sites with good usability tend to have several things in common. Clear and simple navigation system, a search function, strong support for the brand, and easily scannable content.

15 ...and for search engines Search engines (like people) want to see content that is well organized and downloads quickly. They also want fresh content... And properly optimized content.

16 Wireframe Wireframe the site before building. Organize content logically. Map how you think people will move through the site.

17 Navigation and layout Top (horizontal) navigation, side (vertical) navigation or both. Provides an overview of what the site has to offer and how it s organized. People are creatures of habit. Use classical layouts.

18 Add an sign-up Opt-in and above-thefold in the upper-right corner of the page. Simple (only basic info) or if you want to collect more info use a twostep process. Call to sign-up at end of blog posts.

19 Burn your RSS feed One of the first things you want to do is burn your feed to Feedburner (Google service) Option for people to receive your feed via e- mail. Tracks subscribers. Pings search engines when new content is added.

20 Enable social sharing Enable social sharing so that your content can be shared by visitors across various platform(s). Set-up social sharing using a plugin. Becoming seamless; between applications and platforms; sites and platforms.

21 Badges and boxes Facebook like box allows potential fans to like your Facebook page from your website. Twitter badge fulfils same function; displays your Twitter feed in real time Google+ has just made a badge available.

22 Domain Names Generally.com is still top of mind with consumers. For web series consider using a.tv domain. Or incorporate a domain into your brand name (for example, paper.li or delicio.us)

23 Web hosting Your geeky friend may be great but unless he s on call 24/7, say no to his offer. Stay away from GoDaddy and other cheap services. Fast, secure, good server up-time; preferably USbased.

24 Break Time!

25 Search

26 How we find stuff Search is the one area that producers either neglect or ignore. Doesn t have to be scary. Good web design and a good CMS platform make SEO task simpler.

27 URL factors Search engine friendly URLS Site structure; a strong permalink structure; lots of internal links anchored by keywordrich text Domain life span

28 On-page SEO factors Fast loading website. Freshness of pages, content and links. Frequency of updates. Keywords in URL, header, title, description meta tag, keyword meta tag, body copy and alt text.

29 Off-page factors Number and quality of links to your website from other sites. Social reputation and shares. Site metrics; site traffic; authoritative referrer; keyword searches used to find you

30 Site structure Look like a pyramid. No section should be more than twice as large as any other section. Your site should neither be too wide (too many main sections) nor too deep (too many sub-sections).

31 Site structure (con t) Organize around content. Your site structure should organize your content and logically group it into sections. You wouldn t expect to find your show episodes in your About section. Neither will the search engines.

32 Site structure (con t) Logically named. Each page on your website should have a unique URL. Each URL should describe the content of that page, yet it should be as short as possible. Include important keywords in your URL if possible.

33 Site structure (con t) Fluid. Pages should link to each other. And to your similar type sites, including your own social media channels.

34 Keywords First step in search engine optimization. Organic keywords are those keywords (and phrases) that appear naturally on your website and contribute to the search engine ranking of the page.

35 Keywords (con t) Two kinds: Head terms and long tail terms (or broad terms and narrow terms). Head terms are single words like TV or webisode ; long tail terms are multi-word phrases like TV series angel cast or webisodes for kids.

36 Keywords (con t) Long tail terms comprise 70% of all search queries. If you know your audience, you will probably have a general idea of what words and phrases they might use to search for your topic. The more closely you can target highly specific phrases that are being used by your audience, the better.

37 Keyword tools Free tools include Google Suggest, Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Wordstream s Free Keyword Tool and Wordtracker s Free Keyword Tool. Use Google AdWords to look for competitive keywords; popular with searchers but not as popular with content providers.

38 WordPress SEO plugin Highly recommend the WordPress SEO plugin by Joost de Valk. The best! Teaching tool. Can be a bit tricky to set-up. Refer to online video for instructions.

39 File names The URL (or file name) should contain a keyword. If you re using a CMS like WordPress, your file name will be automatically generated from the title of your page or post. You may have to edit the file name so that it is shorter and includes your chosen keyword.

40 Title tags One of the most important element on the page. Search engines use the text within the title tag to determine what the content of the page is about. Limit your title tag to 65 characters or less (search engines won t display more). Be mindful to create unique title tags for each page of your website.

41 Meta description tags Meta description tags summarize what your web page content is about and are displayed in BOLD as part of the information people see on a search engine results page. Write a brief yet informative description about your content, including the keywords used in the title tag.

42 Meta keyword tags Although most search engines ignore this tag, some still use it in their ranking algorithms (Bing,Yahoo!). Keywords and phrases contained in your meta keywords tag work in tandem with the meta description tag to describe the content of your Webpage. Generate a short list of no more than 10 keywords or phrases to add.

43 Header tags Main topics and ideas can be placed within header tags. They alter the format of the text in the browser and tell the search engines that these keywords and phrases are important. Header tags are arranged in preset levels of importance from <H1> to <H6>.

44 Body copy There is no hard and fast rule regarding keyword density (number of times a keyword is repeated within a section of copy) although two to three times for a short page and three to four times for a long page seems about right. Bold/strong and italic/emphasis tags seem to carry some weight and should be used to emphasize the targeted term at least once.

45 Images One of the easiest ways to optimize content for search. Search engines can t see images. Therefore you must use <alt> image tags to describe your images. Important that image files have real names as well as a title (words).

46 Don t forget to... Improve your site s load time. Optimize your cache. Several good plugins available. Add an XML sitemap. Sitemaps tell Google what pages are on your website and offer an easy way for the search bots to crawl and index your site.

47 Optimize your blog Couple of tweaks you need to make in WordPress to optimize your blog for search. Update your permalink structure to make your URL search-engine friendly.

48 Important of links Links give search engine spiders a trail to follow to find and index your pages. Votes for your site and factor into search engine algorithms, which determine where you appear in the SERPs.

49 Link popularity Link popularity is determined by the number and quality of websites that link to you (also known as back links). A link from a high-quality website (for example, The New York Times) is a vote for you and your content. At the moment, link popularity is still an important ranking factor.

50 Social popularity Social reputation and social share now factor into your search results. These include likes Google +1 and YouTube thumbs up votes. Factored into Google s latest Panda upgrade. Visit my blog for more on this...

51 Editorial coverage One of the best ways to build links to your site is by having a good story to tell and by getting editorial coverage in both traditional (online) media and nontraditional (online) media (for example, blogs).

52 Questions?