Vancouver Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Professional

Whether you’re an industry professional or an up-and-coming web guru, there are fundamental ways to improve your websites performance.  This brief and informative guide will talk you through each technique in order to improve the speed, navigation, and click through rates of your website.

1. Reduce bulky content.Flash based imagery can look nice and improve the aesthetics of your website, but these types of content always increase the load time of your website.  Some older browsers can be incompatible with newer flash.  This is a hassle for potential clients with slower Internet connections or those who might be viewing your website from a mobile phone. If you’re not careful, your potential clients will leave before your site has time to load.

   Make it a best practice to only include the bare minimum amount of high-resolution imagery or flash based content.  Think about the gain you’ll get from extra flash or imagery.  Is the gain worth the risks?  If the answer is no, then it’s not worth adding extra flash or imagery.

   It’s easy to optimize imagery for web use.  Programs like Photoshop or Dreamweaver always include an option to export images in a web friendly format.  These formats reduce the number of colours with limited impact on the quality of the image.

   Limiting text on your site will give it a streamlined look and make browsing easier.  You probably have a lot to say, but writing concisely is a virtue.  Don’t go into too much detail on your site’s landing page.  This is the first thing that clients will see and you don’t want your site to look cluttered.  You can always go into greater detail later in your specific sections.

2. Navigation is critical.Main panel navigation is the hub where users move throughout your website.  A good navigation bar will increase click through rates.  It should always remain fixed in one place across your site.  Main panel navigation oftentimes will either be vertical links or horizontal links directly under the page banner.  Avoid using bulky flash or java-script drop-down menus.  These can be tricky for some users to use and can behave unpredictably in different browsers.
   What do you want to convey? No one likes going in circles.

   Think about each section of your website and analyze how many clicks it would take to get there.  Look for any potential loops your clients might fall prey to?  Some important sections to include should be: Home, About us, and Contact.  Make sure these sections are easy to find and stand out.  Include a search form near the main panel navigation.  If you’re not using a content management system that has searching build in, you can use Google search for free [http://blog.jayesh.com.np/2008/06/how-can-i-embed-google-search-box-in-my-web-site/].

3. What you see is what you get.Take the time and learn clean HTML coding.  If you’d like to improve your websites performance, learning basic HTML is a must.  WYSIWYG strands for “what you see is what you get,” except you’ll usually get more code than you asked for.  WYSIWYG editors often include redundant and extraneous tags that slow down your website and increase load time.  WYSIWYG can make your site look different depending on the browser your clients are using.

   Many content management tools like WordPress and Movable Type allow users to edit content without looking at code.  This is great for writing quick blogs or bulletins, but avoid using a WYSIWYG when designing the core of your website. There are many free online guides to learn HTML, check out W3schools.com.

By using these three basic rules to improve your websites performance you can make access to your content easier and faster.  Learning these techniques will benefit you for life and is easy and fast