Building Findable web sites

I didn’t make that up, it’s actually a book so I can’t take credit the title. But it was a good book and it re-enforced much of what I feel and what I propose to my clients. The idea behind the book is accessibility and how to build it in to your overall web design. By accessibility I mean two things, proper code and really good content.

First, let’s look at the code. You many know that good ‘search engine positive code’ is important, but I think few really understand how important. Think about it. What do most new site owners think about when they picture their site? What it is going to look like and what functions they want. “I want it to look like this” and “I want it to do that”. Rarely do they think of what goes on behind the pretty picture. Most know nothing about it or how it has an overall effect on the success they achieve with the search engines. And that is important to the success of the project itself. When they shop for a designer all they want to see is the portfolio. Proper code is an essential part of your on-page optimization and includes things like the order of your content, header tag hierarchy, and special needs accessibility.

When you design web site code to follow the basic accessibility rules you will automatically build a very search engine friendly site. This includes all the small things, header tags, link titles, link text, alt tags, text navigation, placing your main content first. These are the things that quite often get missed. Or, if you use a WYSIWYG editor, they don't get done not at all. These things not only look good to the search engines but are for TTYs and auto readers and other devices used by those with special needs.

Why does this work? The search engines send out “bots” to crawl the web and gather information. Because there are a zillion web pages, when they reach a page, they need to get the info and get out quickly and move on. Anything that will speed the reading and indexing of a site will gain points with the search engines. So, the bottom line is accessibility. The same rules that increase accessibility for people also work for the “bots” and they love it.

Next is content. Your site content is the next most vital part of the project. Properly laced with key words, it has to be quality writing, relevant information, and user friendly. General rule for the search engines, a web page should contain more content than code. Web content that is well written, has value and is meaningful works like gravity. It brings traffic to your web site design and holds them there. When a user finds something they think is cool and exciting on the web they tend to spread the word. This is a human nature that good advertising is built around; everyone wants to be the first to bring exciting new things to their friends. If the site offers nothing to hold their attention that user is gone.

The search engines use the content to decide what your site is about and where it will show in searches. They also judge (and that is the word to use) the quality of the writing, keyword / phrases, titles, tags and headers. They look at who you link to and more importantly, who is linking back to you. And, the quality of their site can have an effect on your ranking. So don’t build links for links sake, content counts!

So to sum up, a good web design is a blend of code and content where they reinforce each other with the goal of accessibility. And accessibility helps everything from sales to the search engines.


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By Chris Kaminski. Asheville web design company Lone Bird Studio provides web design Asheville NC services, SEO, search engine optimization. One of the top web designers in Asheville for custom website design.

Content That Brings People in to a Website

Web content that is well written, has value and is meaningful works like gravity. It brings traffic to your web site design and holds them there. When a user finds something they think is cool and exciting on the web they tend to spread the word. This is a human nature that good advertising is built around: everyone wants to be the first to bring exciting new things to their friends. If the site offers nothing to hold their attention that user is gone.

Think about how you shop. Say you are looking for a TV and start with a general Google search. The first thing you see is the search results. This is the first chance to grab attention and is why you need a properly designed domain name and search description. You have questions about TVs, like who has the best picture, best service record, how do I hook it up, do I need special wiring or equipment, HD or not to HD, etc.

You go through the list. The first site just has a list of where you can get TVs; nothing useful there. The next site is just a catalog with pictures and 'buy now' buttons; nothing helpful there. Next you come across a site that catches your attention. It has catchy graphics but a simple to follow layout. Besides the normal online store the site offers product and user reviews. There are links to "how to" articles answering the above questions. The site provides links to other web sites that have more useful information. All this quality content has eased some of your stress, answered your questions, given you choices and made you feel like this company wants to help you.

Human nature number two: since you found everything you need at that site: they sell TVs and you are comfortable with this company, you order the TV from them.

Now a few days go by and the TV arrives. The first thing you do is go right back to the web site to find guidance with the set up procedure. Because your experience with this web site was so positive you tell all your friends. You also go back to the site and post your own review. You are so excited you even mention the site, with a link, on your personal blog.

Everything that happened was due to great content and meeting the three goals of findability: help people find your site, help people find what they are looking for within your site, and encourage repeat traffic. All these goals were met because of quality content.

Let’s look at how this was achieved through content.

1- Keywords and phrases located in the articles and reviews created search engine results.

2- You were able to find what you needed through links in the reviews and articles.

3- You returned to the site multiple times to read more articles.

4- You created more useful content by posting your reviews.

5- You were so pleased with your experience that you do not hesitate to recommend the site.

Not only did the web site's findability improve your experience by including relevant and well produced content, it actually caused you to add to that findability by adding your review. This is how great content works.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

The Google Canonical Problem

Did you know that Google sees www.lonebird.com and lonebird.com as two different sites?

This is called the Google Canonical Problem, and it will not only have a negative affect on your hit count and your page rank but can get you dinged for duplicate content. This is really important to you SEO content people. This is also another spot for me to reinforce something I feel very strongly: your SEO and code writer need to be joined at the hip.

So what is canonicalization? According to Google it is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to the home pages. Here is a better example: take lonebird.com, www.lonebird.com, www.lonebird.com/index.html, lonebird.com/home.asp. To most of us these are the same. But technically they are four different URLs. In theory, during a search a web server could return completely different content for all four. When Google “canonicalizes” a URL, they try to pick the best representative from that set.

Now that we know what canonicalization is the next question should be, how is your website indexed and how can you tell? Simple. Go to Google and type "site:your-domain.com" in the search bar. What you should see is a list of all the pages Google has indexed. Now type in "site:www.your-domain.com". Do the search results show the same number of pages? If not, then you may have a problem.

So how do we get Google to pick the URL we want and what do we do with the listings that are already out there? The best first step starts with the site itself. Be consistent with your internal links. Be consistent across the entire site. Don’t make half of the links go to http://sitename.com/ and the other half go to http://www.sitename.com/. Pick the URL you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

Next, be consistent with listing the site. When listing and indexing the site be sure to use the same URL.

Now, the overall best solution depends on whether your site is hosted on a Linux or Microsoft server.

For those on Linux the answer is to use mod_rewrite. What is that? It is an Apache module which will automatically map all requests to a single and consistent URL. Basically you add a short script to the htaccess.txt file located in the server root:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^expression-web-tutorials\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.expression-web-tutorials.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The htaccess.txt file allows you to send instructions to the server on the fly. Obviously you need knowledge of Apache, php and you need server access. Most of you will need to ask your code writer or site host to help you with this.

If you are on a Microsoft host the process is similar. Windows uses IIS (Internet Information Services) and like Apache it uses modules to extend its instruction set. These are called ISAPI filters (Internet Services Application Interface). An ISAPI filter can be used to rewrite URLs just like mod_rewrite.

You can write your own ISAPI filter but it can be a little complicated. Your best bet is to search online for a pre written one. Though there are free ones the better examples are paid. Again you will need a little knowledge and you need server access so you may need the help of your site host or developer.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.