Do you ever wonder why your Website is nowhere to be found on Google, Yahoo! or MSN?
If the answer is Yes then you must read on. Your problem could be the way your website design firm designed your site.
Although many website design firms tout their design, marketing and search engine marketing expertise one look at the code behind their clients’ sites tells a very different story: Messy, bloated HTML, 404 errors, re-directs, too many graphics, content hiding behind forms; lack of alt attributes and on, and on. In other words, the web site’s are not “built to code” and that results in the following problems for online businesses:
Problem # 1.
Search engine spiders have a harder time crawling a website that isn’t built to the standards laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium.
Problem # 2.
Visually impaired users, who use screen readers to “read” a web site’s content to them, can’t take advantage of the site’s offerings.
Problem # 3.
Mobile device users can’t see the site on their mobile phones (itouch, blackberries etc.)
Problem # 4.
Government agencies require that all vendors and service providers’ websites be ADA (American Disability Act) compliant. If your website doesn’t conform, they won’t do business with you until the problems are fixed.
Problem # 5.
Large companies, such as Target and Circuit City, have had lawsuits filed against them for “failing to provide access to the blind and in not doing so violated the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the California Disabled Person’s Act.”
What can you do?
Unfortunately most businesses are unaware of the problems non-standards-based design can cause until it’s too late. So to help all you business owners out there who are struggling to make their website produce results, here’s three questions you need to ask your current website design firm or a potential new one. If they can’t answer these questions in detail, take my advice: run like the wind and find a firm that can.
Q: What do you know about web standards?
A: Web standards are a set of guiding principals used by professional website design firms and developers. Think of them as a set of rules that have been accepted by the professional web community as “best practices”. The community has chosen to adhere to the standards and recommendations set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C.)
The standards incorporate accessibility laws and guidelines, the latest technologies; HTML and CSS code standards and browser compatibility. By employing a website design firm that provides standards-based design, you can be confident your site will display properly in different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari) and keeps up with changes in website design and search engine technology.
Q: Is my Website accessible to visually impaired visitors and mobile device users (itouch, iphone, blackberries etc.)?
A: There are many different users on the Web. Many have disabilities such as visual impairment that may make it difficult or impossible for them to view the many websites available. This special segment of people depend on the use of a visual readers to interact with your site (visual readers or screen readers literally read your web site’s content to people with visual disabilities so they can purchase your products or services).
This is especially true for the huge number of affluent baby-boomers who face the disabilities associated with age – their online usage is set to explode over the next few years so making it easy for them to purchase your goods and services makes sense.
Accessibility is also critical for mcommerce or mobile marketing. More and more people are using mobile media to search the Internet to research and buy goods or services. If those people can’t view and interact with your website, they’ll move on to a competitor. In fact, the Yahoo! Search Engine recently announced its search engine technology will be moving toward a Web standard’s based model in the near future.
Q: Do you understand how search engine spiders crawl and index websites?
A: Crawler-based search engines, or spiders, literally “crawl” the Web looking for content. They’re able to do this because of the way pages on the Internet link to other pages by way of hyperlinks. The search engines use this linking system in much the same way as human users. For example, when the Google Search Engine sends its “spider” (fondly known as GoogleBot) to “crawl” the Web it follows links from page to page indexing the content it finds along the way. The information is then stored in a huge database somewhere at Google.
Later, when someone enters a particular word or phrase into the search box, Google scans its database for possible matches. It then displays pages that contain, or relate to the word or phrase in an order it considers most relevant. It stands to reason then, that the easier your website is for the search engines to crawl, the more likely it will rank well in the search engine results.
If you’d like to check for problems with your site, start with this simple HTML Validator Tool provided free of charge by the W3C.
Need help bring your website design “up to code?” Call us toll-free at 877-944-9444 or send us an email
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This is a great article for evangelizing the use of web standards; however, you have an error as caught by one of my colleagues.
You write:
“350 billion people depend on the use of a visual readers to interact with your site (visual readers or screen readers literally read your website’s content to people with visual disabilities so they can purchase your products or services).”
How can there be 350 billion people in that demographic when the current population of planet Earth is only 6.7 billion?
I would correct that fact as the bad editing of this article is diminishing its credibility and is in turn dimnishing my (and anyone else’s) credibility who sharing it….
Posted: Wednesday Mar 26, 2008There aren’t 350 billion people on the face of the earth. More like 7 billion. I’m assuming that billion is a typo, and you meant 350 million, which is still a huge and unbelievable number (almost the population of the US of A ).
Posted: Wednesday Mar 26, 2008You’re both right. It’s a combination of sloppy writing (me) and even sloppier editing. The numbers should read “more than 500 million worldwide” and that’s including all disabilities. In the US the numbers run around 30 million or so. Still a big number with lot’s of spending power. I’ve removed the figures in the article but my point still stands. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. :) Julia
Posted: Thursday Mar 27, 2008