SEO - Avoid Too Many Visuals
Written by:
Edmund
Article Overview: Should you have a fanciful site with many photographs and less text? A right mix will be good as photographs provide you with the ability to add in ALT tags that would add on to your SEO Ranking. However too little text will make it difficult for Search Engine spiders to see your website as a content site.
 |
Free Download - Chasing Google's Ranking Algorithm By Edmund
|
SEO - Avoid Too Many Visuals
You have probably noticed there is a trend to add less photographs rather than more with websites. This is because it is now common knowledge that many search engine spiders read photographs as blank space. This is why it is so important to add a photographic caption beneath your website so that the spiders have something to index.
It is always a good idea to add images and photographs to your site to give it visual appeal. As you are a publisher, you might want to think about magazines that you like, and mimic the layout and look of those. Try and think of each web site page as a page in a glossy advertorial and you will get the idea of what people find the most attractive.
When it comes to images, less is usually more, not only for aesthetic reasons, but also because certain types of images can cause your web site to act sluggish. A slow site can be perceived as a dysfunctional one and dysfunction of all kinds is read as bad SEO by the search engines. Two main graphic types take forever to load - Java and Javascript. If you hire a designer request that he or she avoid these applications.
Also having a very large image is not always the best choice for your website. One great thing about web pages is that the smaller the .jpg, the better it often looks. Also thanks to such tools as Adobe PhotoShop, it is easier than ever to improve the resolution and appearance of a badly taken photograph so that you can still use it on your site.
You can hire a graphic designer or you can add simple .jpg images by yourself. Remember that as a rule of thumb, the more graphics and images that you have on your site, the longer it is going to take to load. This is just going to frustrate your customer and perhaps have them move onto a similar site that isn't as "heavy" for their browser to deal with. Over time this type of aversion to a site can affect its page rankings.
Related Articles
Add Power to your Presentation through Effective Use of Visuals
Tips for Marketing Your Business Online
Presentation Tips for Success
What Do People See In Your Marketing?
7 Deadly Sins—Don't Kill Your Business with These Marketing Material Mistakes
Article Tags:
graphic designer,
photographs,
search engine spiders,
search engines
Related Forum Posts
Re: Search Engine Friendly Web Development
- I would like to add some more things in search engine friendly web development.
1. PPC campaign
2. Viral marketing
3. Social Media Marketing
Avoid flash in website and other use CSS files to shows the content style.
Re: Exotic Tea Shop Website for Review
- Hi David,
- Background is nice and fitting, but I don't like the header. The title completely blends in with the background?
- About Us shouldn't be second from the left on the navigation bar. People read from left to right. The commercial intent is to buy, the online store should probably be second.
- Online Tea Store... too many choices without supplementary information. No description of product choice. oz and pricing should be stylized separately from the name of the product.
- Online Tea Store.... Visuals is definitely very important in raising commercial intent. Someone who comes to the site through SEO is searching for exotic teas and not particulars. Meaning they're browsing. Text is not enough for a browsing shopper.
- World of Tea... the information can be organized a bit better. Again, visuals. Some of this info belongs to online tea store. I'm not too sure on the name.
- Tea & Treasure... not sure on this name either... mainly because you have "World of Tea" next to it. Navigation should be transparent in conveying information to the users. Why not call it "Find Us" or "Visit Us"?
- Email newseletter.... "occasional updates" containing what exactly?
Again, my humble opinion. Hope you find it useful!
Re: 365 Foolish Mistakes Smart Managers Make
- [quote="litekepr":2v18lglp]This morning's Google Alert held a pleasant surprise.
WORTH MENTIONING
A List of New Books Compiled by
The Management and Government Information Center (MAGIC)
Chinn Park Regional Library
703-792-4880Summer 2007
Indicates titles relating to the FISH Philosophy
365 Foolish Mistakes Smart Managers Make Every Day: How and Why to Avoid Them by Shri L. Henkel, 2006
interesting. Is anyone else here familiar with the FISH philosphy?
i[/quote:2v18lglp]
Congrats on the mention of your book! Hopefully it will drive up sales!
For myself, I don't really care for their acronym... MAGIC. Gives people the subtle impression that good things happen at the snap of a finger instead of lots of hard work!
7 Top Blog Design Tips
- Most blog platforms come with some basic blog designs. They may call them templates or themes or something similar, and usually they are not bad although some customisation is pretty common. I often see some common mistakes, and hopefully you will be able to avoid them.
1. Include an about page
Make it prominent and make it truly about you, not some resume-like page.If people find your blog and like what you have to say, they are going to want to know something about you.
2. Have contact information visible
An email or maybe even a phone number should be included. Your email can be displayed as a graphic to prevent spammers from harvesting it easily. I would suggest using an address that has your domain at the end to be more professional. e.g tyrone @ internetbusinesspath.com, rather than tyrone @ gmail.com.
Visible contact information will make you seem more real and although people may occasionally contact you, it will be far less often than you might think.
3. Include a picture of yourself
Blogs are personal, even business blogs, and people who visit yours will want to know what you look like. It’s also easier to built trust if your picture is visible. Though, you don’t absolutely need a picture, but it’s strongly recommended. Sometimes people might think you are hiding something if you don’t have one.
4. Show a top posts or articles page
Some of your blog posts are going to be much more popular than others (you may be surprised which ones they are). I call these your pillar articlesDon’t bury your pillar articles, your most popular blog posts. Highlight them somehow. You might for example have a top posts section in the titlebar or sidebar.
I have a most top articles section and I list my most popular posts based on the ones that are read the most. Other people do it slightly differently. For example, Brian Clark at copyblogger.com has a “Popular Articles” in his sidebar and under that he lists his most popular blog posts. Yaro Starak, on his blog Entrepreneurs-Journey, calls his most popular blog posts “Popular Articles” and lists them at the very top.Somehow or another highlight them. You might do something as simple as create a category called “most popular” and include popular blog posts in that category.
5. Don’t have a blog banner that is too big!
The banner is the top portion of your blog that goes across the top. It might have a picture of you there, the name of the blog, perhaps some graphic — they vary quite a bit.You don’t want your banner to be big. No one should need to scroll down to see your content. People decide really quickly when they first reach a Web Site, and that includes blogs, whether to read or to leave.
6. Create a visually appealing blog
Avoid bright colors. Stick to reasonable fonts like Times New Roman and Arial. Have someone with a good eye look at your blog, preferably a graphic designer. Everytime I start a blog and I’ve started dozens for myself, for friends, and for clients, I always get a graphic designer to at least look at it after I am done.
The problem is that it might look OK to you or me, probably neither having a particularly good eye nor appropriate training, but it still might look really ugly to others. Having a graphic designer take a quick look at it is good insurance.
7. Keep it simple silly!
Some blogs are just so busy: they have one, two, sometimes three sidebars just crammed full of all kinds of stuff. With some of it you wonder why is it there. What purpose does this serve? Now in my opinion calendars are a prime offender. What good is a calendar there? Some people like them, but to me they serve no purpose.
Empty space in a blog is not only allowable, but it’s a good thing. It helps focus eyes on what is important, which is your content and hopefully the few things you choose to put in your sidebar.
Most blogs start with a basic template which is then customised over time. These tips will hopefully help you that with customisation and help you avoid common mistakes with blog design.
Tyrone Shum
Blog Tipster
Recommended Article for You
close
Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.
Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva.
Over
$50,000 raised and counting -
Please keep sharing! Learn more.