The internet is huge. Google alone lists over 3 billion pages, looking at one each second of the day would take you over 99 years to view them all! There are many web design firms in Northern Virginia, but how many can actually design a website. The design element is so important and so often overlooked. If you intended to send out brochures to your customers, or potential customers, and the brochure was poor quality what type of image will this reflect on your business…….a poor website will do exactly the same.

When designing a website the most important task to remember is color coordination. Ideally, you should strive for a maximum of three main colors, with variations and tints of these. By using more you run the risk of non-matching colors and ultimately less easy on the eye for visitors.

Next comes navigation. Color coordination and Navigation are the top main priorities. If your site isn’t easy to navigate, people will not stay around to delve deeper. Once your site is designed ask some friends or family to test it out. The easier your website is to navigate, the longer people will stay.

Accessibility is a key issue that has been highlighted recently with a $20,000 fine imposed on a Northern Virginia website for not ensuring people with disabilities and sight impairments could use the website. These rulings are few and far between (for now) but to help always use ALT tags on images (helping to describe your image), plus use text-based links where possible. For further information, you can check http://www.w3.org

You have your site ready, it’s full of content, great design, and ready to hit the superhighway – now how will people find you. This is where SEO comes into play (Search Engine Optimisation). Optimizing your site for the main search engines can help bring free targeted traffic to your website.

The main and basic rules of SEO are:

1. A good Title tag, e.g for USA Marketing Pros – being a marketing company based in Northern Virginia and covering the entire DC area – our Title tag is “Marketing Agency Northern Virginia & DC”. Using your main keywords for your title tag can instantly bring good results.
   
   
2. Make sure your keywords appear within your website. The % of times it appears has started to have less of an impact, but the general rule is your keywords should make up around 5% of your copy.
   
   
3. Request Linkbacks. Make requests for other sites to link to you from the day your website is launched. Search Engines, particularly Google, base a large portion of their listings based on the number of websites linking to you – plus their popularity and themed relationship to the content of your site.
   
   
4. Be patient. It can quite easily take a year or so to achieve a good placement in Google for a popular phrase – but considerably less time in other search engines e.g. Bing and Yahoo. By sticking to these basic principles and ensuring your site is pleasant on the eye, easy to navigate, and optimized for search engine visits you should be able to claim your stake in the World Wide Web.

USA Marketing Pros
701 12th St S
Arlington, VA, 22202
202-888-5895