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This is part 1 of a 3 post series meant to help you identify some areas to focus on when choosing a web designer who also understands SEO. Keeping these ideas in mind during the building process may help you to get the most out of your designer’s “on-the-clock” hours.

Aesthetic appeal is subjective, but the objectives of your website should be a fully conscious, coordinated effort. If you build with search in mind, it will be much easier to get qualified traffic in effective queries rather than trying to retrofit a built and indexed website with an SEO campaign. Obviously the ladder is still very plausible but in terms of business, may cost you more dollars than sense.

The following are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a designer for a new website. (Note: For the purpose of this discussion we’ll assume that content is not up to the designer.)

Choose a web designer that understands how to build for the search user.

Collaborate with your designer about search accessibility. How should your pages look when brought up in search results? When you have determined what you want to show your visitors, think about how you will leverage your knowledge of your audience for your presentation.

Cohesion

Although it can easily fall into the category of usability, retention makes a high ranking worthwhile. Yes they clicked on your listing, but are they in the right place? Make sure that your description, title, and page message are consistent. Show the searcher what they expect to see. They followed the link, so naturally they are interested in the topic you provided for them. Be predictable and carry that subject into the actual page. Showing something unrelated or disconnected from the subject you brought them in with will almost always get a back button response.

Presence

What visual and navigational queues can you use to say; “This is the right place to find the most exclusive handmade soaps in Paris,” or, “We are the authority in small business consulting,” or, “Look no further for definitive restaurant ratings in greater Tokyo?”

Are the title and descriptions for each page relevant to the page’s context? How do they introduce each page? Make sure your web designer understands where you need to place emphasis for groupings of themes and specific subjects. (Themes: e.g. wrenches, hammers, saws) (Specific Subjects: e.g. Wrench Model 11a, Wrench Model 11b)

Landing Pages

How will the structure of your website contribute to what a search user sees first? How can you impact them most effectively if given only a few moments of their time? Where will you lead them after they have absorbed a concept? Think of landing pages that grab attention and introduce users to other areas of your site. Sketch out a diagram of your key concepts and structure each one to become a core component of your site. Are there certain concepts that need to be understood before a sale/signup/conversion can be made?

Seek Working Examples

Using the a site search (site:example.com) in Google is a great way to evaluate your competition’s understanding of search user awareness. Can you tell what they are trying to be found for? Start a brainstorming session where you identify the core components of your website and compile a list of topics for each main component. This structural grouping of components should help your designer understand how you intend to build out the site and ultimately provide a basis for the wire frame they were hired to build.

Manage Scope Creep

Having a clear understanding of what you intend to achieve with the site will help you to determine the scope of the project. An accurate scope of your own project paired with your awareness of the search user during the development stage may help you qualify a designer better able to execute your vision the first time around.

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Quick Reference:

How to choose a web designer that also understands SEO

Part 1: Choose a web designer that understands how to build for the search user.
Part 2: Choose a web designer that understands usability.
Part 3: Choose a web designer who understands the crawl.

I found an interesting query the other day. Someone was searching on the expression “can you lose backlinks?” You don’t find much discussion about losing backlinks in the SEO community but it certainly can and does happen. Here are a few examples of how backlinks vanish:

1. Your linking partner goes offline
2. Your linking partner ceases to exist
3. Your linking partner revises content and “cleans house”
4. Your linking partner replaces HTML links with Javascript links, or embeds “rel=’nofollow’”
5. Your linking partner is filtered, penalized, or banned for violating search engine guidelines
6. You change your page location without implementing a 301-redirect or asking that your partner update your links
7. Your linking partner sells his domain
8. You buy a domain naively thinking you’ll inherit all those links pointing to it
9. You stop paying for your rented link
10. Your linking partner’s page is dropped from the search index

Your linking partner goes offline – Sometimes a Web site goes down long enough that its pages are dropped from search indexes before the problem is resolved. This kind of link loss usually corrects itself once the site comes back online.

Your linking partner ceases to exist – Bad karma, dudes. You wonder why you’re no longer getting referrals from example.com and when you check it out you find a domainer’s park page there. Sometimes, people just let their domains expire and they never renew them.

Your linking partner revises content and “cleans house” – It happens to the best of us. Even major news sites redesign their URLs from time to time. This sucks when content goes behind a subscription-only interface, or when archives are created and content is buried deep in uncrawlable muck.

Your linking partner replaces HTML links with Javascript links, or embeds “rel=’nofollow’” – Every now and then some Web site operators listen to bad SEO advice and they start trying to hoard PageRank. You don’t need their stinking links anyway.

Your linking partner is filtered, penalized, or banned for violating search engine guidelines – If you’ve been getting links from these kinds of sites, you deserve to lose your link credits.

You change your page location without implementing a 301-redirect or asking that your partner update your links – Happens all the time. Don’t feel bad about it. Just update your 301-redirect list. And if you got the links by asking for them, maybe asking for an update will be okay. Be warned: I got tired of updating “partner” links years ago. One guy kept moving his site. Guys like me — we don’t need to link out to someone who keeps changing his URLs.

Your linking partner sells his domain – Bad luck, dude. Oh well, on to the next link.

You buy a domain naively thinking you’ll inherit all those links pointing to it – That’s what you get for paying attention to bad SEO advice. Maybe you’ll get to keep the link credit, and maybe not.

You stop paying for your rented link – It’s a business, and there’s always a downside to any business relationship.

Your linking partner’s page is dropped from the search index – This could just be a temporary thing. It happens all the time to lots of good little sites. Just be patient. It will be recrawled. And if you think you still have reason to agonize, just be glad you’re not the poor slob whose site just vanished from the SERPs.

I just love the word “authority”. It has become one of the most meaningless buzzwords in the SEO jargon. People talk about “authority sites”, “authority links”, authority-whatever. But no one really knows what authority is. It’s just something we all want because everyone else is talking about it. I mean, if people are talking about it, it must be real, right? Just ask the Chupacabra, Sasquatch, Yeti, and space aliens (both Greys and Blues).

Every major search engine that designates trusted sites does implicitly confer some sort of authority upon those sites: they are used to determine which other sites to crawl, which other sites to rank, and which other sites to trust. But does just being trusted mean you have some sort of authority, or is there more in the search engines’ eyes than mere trust when they deem some sites to be authoritative?

Do search engines, in fact, deem any sites to be authoritative? Almost every SEO would immediately say “yes” and unquestionably they would all be demonstrably wrong simply for lack of proof. After all, just because you read about authority on SEO blogs and forums doesn’t mean anyone in the industry knows what it is or should be.

The bottom line is that you have to stop fussing over what you think search engines consider to be “authoritative” and just define your own rules of authority that have nothing to do with search engine optimization. You’ll find that you achieve your SEO goals more quickly and efficiently if you stop quacking like a duck just because you hear other people quacking.

Micro sites are often abused by search engine optimizers for the sole purpose of creating false authority. If you’re going to create micro sites, however, you might as well get some value out of them. Every micro site should potentially draw traffic (in fact, I know from long experience in working with micro sites that they easily draw traffic) that can be redirected to a primary site.

Here is how you do it:

1. Commit to making each micro site distinctive, unique, and helpful
2. Categorize your primary Web site’s content by topics needing support
3. Create copy for each topic with the goal of populating one or more micro sites about that topic
4. Have your micro sites link out to relevant sites that you don’t control

Be the helpful resource. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking all the useful content should be on your site. That’s just not the way to succeed in the long term with micro sites. Micro sites need to have their own brand value. If they don’t have value, where are they supposed to get the value you want them to pass to your primary site?

Be distinctive. Spammers use the same templates over and over again. If you’ve set yourself the goal of creating 20 micro sites, you can surely find or create 20 templates that don’t look like resized jeans drawn off the clearance rack at a discount store. Stop being cheap. Stop looking for short cuts. Do it right once and you won’t have to do it again.

Be unique. If you cannot think of 20 distinct topics, you don’t need 20 micro sites. That isn’t to say that your micro sites cannot talk about the same subject matter in general. If you want 20 Mesothelioma micro sites, however, then each site needs to say something unique — and the more unique things each site says, the better.

Categorize your content. All too often people who build links just look for links to the home page. If you want search engines to crawl and promote your deeper content, use your micro sites to link to the deeper content. They can link to the home page too, but promote that valuable deep content on your primary site. If you cannot subdivide your primary content into categories, you don’t need micro sites.

Write original copy for each topic. Okay, everyone wants to just spit the micro sites out of some spammy script that grabs RSS feeds and stuff. Stop and think about this. You’ve been blathering on about “quality links” for years. Here you are giving yourself links — do they meet your minimum standard of “quality”? If you’re going to invest time, effort, and money into creating micro sites, make them real sites that have some value.

Link to other sites. Asking SEOs to link to other sites is like asking sharks to stop eating fish. It goes against their nature. Forget about PageRank. Don’t link to your competitors. Just find useful, informative sites that don’t rank well in your competitive queries and point some useful, helpful links at them.

The outbound links on a site MAY just be the one factor that helps a search engine decide the site is useful to people. Outbound links are not the anathema that many people in the SEO community make them out to be. When you link out correctly, you reap benefits and rewards you could never have imagined (or achieved). Those outbound links should feel like gold to you.

In fact, if you really want value to pass from your micro sites to your primary site, you need to treat each and every link as if it’s precious and rare. Make yourself earn those links. Create them with all the love and devotion you would if you were a complete and total fan of your own primary site. If you cannot work up that kind of passion for your primary site, you don’t need any micro sites.