First, what are search engine friendly web design and search engine optimization? Let's start here:

Search engines are a major source of traffic to most websites, but many website owners have discovered, simply having a website does not ensure that people can find it in the search engines.
v How to get exposure, visibility and interested people to your website

How to get visitors to a website can be a mystery to most people, particularly when they are let down by low visitor turnout from search engines, or when it doesn't happen at all. Unfortunately, the days of "If you build it, they will come" are over.

That's where search engine friendly web design comes in. Websites have to be built to rank well in search engines, and to rank well for the terms your potential customers will use to find what you have to offer. It doesn't "just happen" -- and it's no help if your website ranks as number 2,000,001.

Unfortunately, search engine friendly design is not intrinsically a part of "web design" -- in fact, it's unknown to most web designers. Search engine friendly web design versus "The Invisible Web"

There is actually something called the "invisible web" -- websites that cannot be read at all by search engines. Unfortunately, this includes some databases and shopping carts, exactly the kinds of pages that need to be found online. So non-search-engine-friendly websites are not an option for most companies.

Help your customers to find you

The interesting effect of search engine friendly web design is that it enables people looking for what you have to offer to find your website.

As obvious as that sounds, what is happening is that, rather than you pushing your message out randomly to the world at large, potential customers are actually finding you. Search engine friendly design means creating pages that will help them do just that.

This includes building your website from the ground up to help search engines identify what you are offering. It also includes crafting the portion of the pages that show up as search engine listings -- the metatags.

What it does not include is weird tricks and methods that can cause your pages to be penalized, such as white text on a white background. Caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware.

A word about meta tags. "Meta tags" are the titles and descriptions you see in search engine listings. While meta tags are needed to encourage people to click on your link, the time when meta tags could dramatically boost a page's ranking is long past. That is, meta tags cannot rescue a poorly constructed website.

Search Engine Friendly Web Design is not an afterthought

Websites must be created from the ground up to be search engine friendly. But trying to make an existing website search engine friendly can be difficult, and can cost you more than if it was properly designed in the first place. The work of designing for search engines should be done while planning the other two major factors of websites -- design and marketing.

Your web pages will be carefully crafted to be search engine friendly, melding these elements with the marketing aspects of the website into an intrinsic whole.

If you're needlessly losing visitors -- and potential customers -- because you're not ranked well in the search engines, we believe that our Search Engine Optimization services will contribute to your company's increased exposure and growth.