Your content should be organized as well. Too much content can be overwhelming and sound fluffed up with useless content, while too little of content can leave the user confused with no understanding of who you are and what message you are trying to convey. Some people will provide limited content to entice the reader to fill out a form to inquire more information. In limited situations this is ok, however be careful to not mislead the user or put irrelevant content that leads to your landing page. Let us go back to the basic of high quality, professional website design by reviewing a few basic key components.

• Company Name and Logo- First of all the user will want to know who you are, so it is important to make this clear on every page. It is always important to have your name and logo one each page to remind the user who you are and to embed the brand into their thinking as they navigate through your products and services.
• Home Page Link – Have you ever come across a website that has completely horrible navigation? One good sign of horrible navigation is the inability to find your way back to the home page. The only page that should not have link back to the home page is the home page. Make sure you check for broken links and incorrect HTML.
• Search and Site Map- If your website contains a large amount of information and a ton of pages, sometimes it is nice to include a Search Feature within the website. This allows your user to quickly find what they wanted to learn about your company.  Sometimes just a search feature alone can make or break a sale. Always keep the user in mind; they will remember this when viewing through your services.

 Google usually sets the precedent when it comes to being user friendly. According to Google Standards, it is important to offer a site map to your users with links that at least point to the important parts of your website and avoid broken links.  To learn more about great quality web design read more about Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Cross Browser Compatibility

There are many (hundreds) of browsers to chose from when performing a search online. It is important to test your website to see if it is visible or viewable in multiple browsers. Ideally, it is good for a website to be updated to be compatible with all of the popular or widely accepted web browsers. Popular Website browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Netscape. Because so many people do not have the latest versions of each popular browser it is also good to ensure that your website is visible in browsers as well as the older versions. You have to also consider if the website is compatible on Macs, PC’s, Linux Box’s, etc. It is important to keep your html “good and clean” by validating your HTML and CSS and then test it in each individual browser to guarantee the page is compatible. The W3 Consortium has great online tools and validates that can guide you through the validation of your code. Specifying your encoding is also a great way to help browsers render the text on your page. Browsers are constantly improving and many people will continue to upgrade to the latest versions. It is still important to be visible to multiple browsers to ensure your website is available to all the potential viewers. Just because technology is improving does not mean everyone is constantly keeping update with the latest versions.

Websites Designed for Speed

The world we live in is always running at a fast pace. When you think of your website, think of the impatient driver who cut you off or ran the red-light this morning. Do you think they will wait 5 minutes for your page to load before they leave your website? In general a website should take no longer then 10 or 11 seconds to load. Website design and speed go hand in hand. Optimizing Website Speed has a lot to do with the optimizing images, graphics, and media files.  Reducing the size of images is a great way to help the page load faster; however you do not want to sacrifice too much image quality. It is important to define the height and width in your image attributes which can help speed up the loading of the page. Although it is highly advised to not include flash, you may also want to include other forms of media on your website such as flash or videos. For flash, Google finds embedded URL’s in flash files and index the content but Google continues to revise and improve the way the index flash files. To learn more about how Google indexes Flash files you can go to Google’s Webmaster Central under Flash and Other Rich Media Files.

Basic Conclusion

Visibility and speed are both very important factors to consider for your businesses website design. Truly optimizing your code and image files can play a big role in your visibility online. It is important to reach your targeted audience and leave a good genuine impression on them as to what your business is about. Fast loading pages that are compatible browsers can help you gain more traffic and increase the awareness through a professional presentation of your business.

First, start by defining your business in a few sentences. If you are creating profiles on the top social media sites you want to have a consistent description of your business. Evaluate what categories or industries you most likely fall under. This is the beginning of developing your personal online brand. Develop a list of 10 to 20 descriptive keywords that you can consistently use to describe your business and that match up with your websites content. You have to think of yourself as a client who is searching for your service information online. If you were the customer what keywords would you type in a search engine to find your products and services? If you offer more than one service it is important to develop a list of keywords relevant to each service.  This may seem simple however it takes a lot of planning and developing to determine what keywords are most beneficial to use. You have to consider what keywords your competitors are using, what the monthly search rate is for your keywords (Are the words to broad? Do you have a chance to rank well for these words?), if you keywords not searched often enough, etc. It is important to find the appropriate keywords most suitable for your business that you have a chance of ranking high for and optimizing those words throughout you’re online marketing campaign.   

Thorough descriptions, professional design, relevant content, optimized keywords, targeted niche audience, these are all important factors to evaluate for your online brand and must all remain consistent across the board. If you are in the beginning of you’re developing your Business Website then you are better off finding a website business that focuses on Website Development, Website Design, and Online Marketing. Choosing one business to help develop all three categories will be best for your online branding to stay consistent. Luckily, Magic Logix focuses in great depth on Online Branding and can truly bring Success to your website through online marketing. To learn more about our Corporate Branding Services visit Magic Logix Branding Services Page to fully optimize your website for online marketing and branding. When you find great value in your business you should also find great value in your website and online brand.

1. Most Updated Version

   Magento was developed to be “search engine friendly” however, there is basic knowledge that must be applied for proper implementation. The most current release is 1.2.1. It is important to first get the most current updated version and then enable Server URL rewrites.

2. “Enable” Server URL Rewrites
   You can find this setting under System—-Configuration—-Web—-Search Engines Optimization. Now that you are on this setting you can also Add Store Code to URLs under the URL Options
3. “Secure” or “Un- Secure”

   Under secure or unsecure you can find the base URL and set the preferred domain. This will allow you to choose between www and non-www. Now you can set the preferred one without changing the redirect from www to non-www or vice versa. Now you can create a 310 redirect through .htaccess with mode_rewrite. This will also prevent Magneto from adding the SID query to your URLs. Be sure that the Base URL matches the redirect. Add the index.php to the root when editing the .htaccess file.
   Around line 119:
   RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9} /index.php HTTP/
   RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.mydomain.com/ [R=301,L]
   Or, when your Magento install is not in the root but in the sub-directoryhttp://www.mydomain.com/magento/:
   RewriteBase /magento/ RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9} /magento/index.php HTTP/
   RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.mydomain.com/magento/ [R=301,L]

4. Changing the Default Title

   The Magento Install “Default” Title is always going to be “Magento Commerce”. To increase your traffic it is first important to understand that Search engines put more weight on words that are closer to the page title. The closer your words are to the title the more likely people will read them and will more likely click on your page. This is designed to benefit the user so that they will find the best results that are most relevant to their searches. First of all you should remove the default title “Magento Commerce”. To remove the default title go to; Configuration— Design— HTML Head. Choose a relevant descriptive title for your website. This title will be used for several non-content pages without custom title, e.g. “Contact Us” and the “Popular Search Terms”, and more. You can also use the “Title Suffix” to add your store name to all the page titles, categories, and products. It is a better idea to keep the Prefix empty, for the reasons mentioned above. Also keep “Default Description” and “Default Keywords” empty. For a non-production environment, to prevent indexing of the site, it may be useful to set “Default Robots” to “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” but for all other applications make sure it is set to “INDEX, FOLLOW”. Now we are optimizing the of your web-store pages it is a good idea to add the new canonical tag. You can install the Canonical URL’s for Magento Module to add them to your head and improve your Magento SEO. For some reason Magento turns non-set meta robots into a meta tag in this style:

   This can result in some very strange behavior in the search engines, so we’ll remove it. To remove this empty Meta’s from your code install the Yoast MetaRobots Module.

5. Utilizing Magento’s CMS for SEO

   The CMS is a great management tool for your business which also allows you to make content revisions. It is important for SEO to especially update content on landing pages with call to actions. Optimizing your content and engaging the customer can sometimes make or break the sale. Now that up optimized the content you can pick a SEF URL Identifier and page title (keep in mind the points under 1.2). Go to the Meta Data tab to write a description for each CMS page that you actually want to rank with. The keywords are not that important so you can keep the keywords empty. The description is all about relevance. The more relevant the more people will not only click on the page but also stay within the website. It is important to state what’s in the page they’re clicking on and that the information grabs their attention. If you don’t use the Meta description, the search engine will find the keyword searched for in your document, and automatically pick a string around that, which gives you a bolded word or two in the results page.

6. Descriptive Categories

   It is important to disable the “use categories path for product URL’s” as No! Although Magento gives you the ability to add the name of categories to the path for each product URL it often creates duplicate content which is not good for SEO. To disable this go to System— Configuration—Catalog —Search Engine Optimization— and set “Use categories path for product URL’s to “no”. Now you can change the details for each category by going to Catalog—Manage Categories. The most important fields to complete are Meta Description, Page Title, and URL Key. With Meta Description it is important to put an attractive description here; Keep in mind that people will see the description in the result listings of search engines. With Page Title it is important keep this empty to use the category name including parents categories. When you customize it, the title will be exactly like your input, without the parent category. Last but not least, with the URL Key you should try to keep a short but keyword rich URL. Removing stop words like “the”, “and”, “for” etc. is usually a good idea. Also note that you can set this only for all store views, for a multi-language store you should keep it language independent. For each store view you can specify the Name, Description, Page Title and Meta data. This is a great feature for multi- language stores.

7. Optimizing Product Pages

   You can set the Meta Information for the “Default Values” and for each “Store View”. Note that for the “Meta Title”, this will overwrite the complete page title, including categories but except title prefix/suffix, and not just the product name.
   An important aspect of SEO is optimizing your images. Speed is a very important part of SEO. The faster you page loads the better the experience for the user and the more likely they will stick around to buy your products. In the end, optimizing your images is both good for your sales as well as your customers. It is also important to write relevant alt tags for images and properly name your image files. This can also help increase traffic from the Image search queries such as “Google Images.” This is also important proper alt descriptions for the users that are unable to view your image.
   By default the images will be renamed to the product title, the same for titles and alt tags. With some extra effort you can set the titles and alt tags for each product image. To change the default you can set the titles and alt tags for each individual product by going to “Images” of the Product Information where you can then set the label for each product image. This will allow you to update the alt and title tag and you can do this for each specified Store View as well.

8. Optimizing Magento Templates:

   It is important to optimize the Blank Template for Magento. The default Magento themes do not have a great SEO benefit for example, the “Default Theme”, “Blue Skin” and “Modern Theme”. They don’t do a very good job in the use of headings which means it is important to customize these themes to be properly suited for SEO. By default the logo is an <h1>, which should only be on the front page for proper web development standards. On all other pages it should be no more than an <h3>. The most important thing is to get the title of the content in an <h1> tag, e.g. for a category page should it be the category name and for a product the product name. It is important to clean up the overall usage of headings. First, get rid of the header usage in the side columns, or make the text relevant to the shop by including keywords. It is not a good idea to add “static” and keyword less titles with an <h4> instead, it would be better to change all the <h4> tags in <div class="head"> to <strong> tags. Last but not least it is important to optimize your content, at the category pages put the product names in a <h3> and the category name in a <h1>. On product pages, you should put the product name in an <h1>.

9. Proper Code

   Because the templates do not contain clean optimized code, it would be beneficial to move the JavaScript and CSS to an external file. This way a user can cache the files on the first load and search engines will not waste time downloading them. Aiming for speed is very important for gaining more traffic. It is vital for the shop to load quickly. Here are a few ways in which you can increase the speed of your Magento install. First, enable caching. Go to System— Cache Management and enable all caching features. Second, it is important to have a good host and server configuration. With MySQL and PHP opcode cache you can improve the speed of Magento significantly.It is important to limit the number of external files. For each file you make people download, their browser has to create another connection to the web server. It is good for SEO to reduce the number of external files and combine several external files in to one. By default Magento already combine the majority of JavaScript files into one file except for style sheets. By the default template there are 6 style sheets. All of the content style sheets can be combined into one except for the print.css file. It is good to compress and cache both your java script and style sheet files.

10. Eliminating Duplicate Content

    Once you have optimized the basic configuration and content updates for SEO you may be left with extra duplicate content. For example the following is a demonstration of duplicate content…
    domain.com/product.html
    domain.com/category1/product.html
    domain.com/catalog/product/view/id/1/
    domain.com/catalog/product/view/id/1/category/1/
    One problem is that the pages are like the product review pages with almost the same content. Another problem is that the categories get a load of duplicate content with layered navigation and the sorting options. This means that a product may be available on 4 pages at least next to the page where it should be available. The key is to get rid of duplicate content pools but still allow them to be spidered but not indexed by fixing the sorting options and layered navigation for categories. The Yoast Robots Meta Module will prevent indexing from occurring for all of the non content pages. Now the search engine will follow all links on these pages but it won’t show those pages in the index. It is now important to “No follow” all unnecessary links. It is important to stop linking to your login, checkout, RSS feeds, Layered Navigation, or any other non-content page existing on your site.

If you want to suggest the preferred version of the URL for each page you can install the Canonical URL’s for Magento Module to help search engines understand the duplicate content of your pages.

11. The Importance of Sitemaps

    Site maps allow an easier understanding of where your content is for both search engines as well as users. To create sitemap in Magento Simply go to Catalog—Google Sitemap—Add Sitemap—Chose a File Name—Chose Path and Store View—Press Save and Generate. Put Sitemap:http://domain.com/sitemap.xml in your robots.txt file. Make sure you update your site map as you update your inventory.

The content management application allows the content manager or administrator to manage the creation, modification, and removal of content from a website without needing the expertise of a Web Developer or the Webmaster. Changes in multimedia content can be made in no time at all. Whether it is photos, video, flash design or music, an administrator can update your website to respond to changing needs as the business expands, grows or relocates. A content delivery application uses and compiles the new information to update the website. The features of the content delivery application may vary, but most include Web-based publishing, format management, revision control, indexing, search, and retrieval and etc.  Search and Indexing allows data to be retrieved quickly and precisely in accordance to the keywords that were entered into a search query. This can save users valuable time and ensure the information they were trying to find will be delivered to them accurately. CMS Software may enable newsletters, picture galleries, podcasting, ecommerce applications, blogs, etc. No matter what industry there is always a solution with Open Source.

 A CMS is not only valuable for convenience, but also encourages frequent changes in content. Changing content allows business to compete for high ranked keywords on search engines. Adding a blog to a website is also a great marketing tool to keep content fresh and up to date.  It also keeps your current customers coming back for more. With a CMS businesses can set account managers to be in charge of a specific block of information in order to protect the company’s privacy as well by allocated secure, private information to the proper employees. With Open Source a business can add Custom CMS Development to deploy proper integration and Data Consolidation. If you administrate through a proper web development company they will be able to facilitate proper CMS Testing and Usability. Whether you choice Joomla’s powerful online applications, Drupals Enterprise Software, or any other CMS application software, it is always important to find a website development company that will ensure the security of your data through secure online systems. Do not hesitate to experience a Content Management System developed just for business. You can Visit http://www.magiclogix.com/services/cms  to learn more about customizable content management systems developed just for your needs.

At first impressions, Magento Mobile doesn’t sound like a big deal; after all, most ecommerce websites are already viewable within mobile browsers. The key lies in the depth of integration which aims to provide a branded, native storefront application, and even uses a mobile payments library to provide a seamless and fast checkout experience from a mobile device thanks to PayPal. What we’re talking about here isn’t just a re-theme of a merchant website with mobile browser detection, rather a complete transformation in the user interaction unlike any others before.

You’ll be able to easily manage multiple devices with a single installation including but not limited to iPad, iPhone and Android devices. With so many mobile devices each possessing its own unique set of features, Magento aims to provide cost-efficient extensibility for each device and will use its Magento Connect community to allow the development of relevant features on an individual level for business and customer needs. More importantly, PayPal’s mobile payments library will tackle the biggest barriers in mobile commerce, ease of use and security.

North Face, one of the world’s largest outdoor products companies, is a big believer and is already using the new mobile platform. We’re hoping to get our hands on it soon so that we can start to implement custom solutions for our own clients, stay tuned for further announcements as we get ready to add this service to our arsenal. Expect full mobile commerce channel integration with a Magento store catalog, checkout, inventory, reporting and much more at a low cost of ownership.
For more information, please go to: http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/mobile

1. Tracking Results and Transactions

• Through Google analytics you can track your total revenue, conversion rate, average order value, product performance, transactions, visits to purchase, days to purchase and more. It is important to track your performance online in order to understand which forms of marketing are most effective. Take advantage of online tools that can help you track your results more effectively. It is also helpful if your ecommerce web designer can Integrate Ecommerce and CMS to allow for better catalog and data management.

  2. Ecommerce Community

• Learn from others by joining ecommerce networking groups such as Practical Ecommerce. This is an online community with blogs, articles, webinars, podcasts and more. It is good to learn from other people and share helpful tips. This is a good way to gain insight but also to build your reputation and trust in an online community and promote your business by contributing something of value. Other ways to get involved are through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Blog Marketing. Any way you can promote your products through giving back to a community will really play a large role in improving brand awareness.  Through social networks you can offer coupons and discounts to your dedicated fans and loyal shoppers. It is a great platform to connect with potential customers.

3.  Ensure the Security of your Ecommerce Site

• The main concern of online shoppers is that people don’t trust a website enough to give out their valuable and personal information. Security is a big part of online stores and must be evident to the buyer that the site is secure. The World Wide Consortium (w3c) has an Electronic Ecommerce Interest Group which sets standards and best practices for ecommerce websites to ensure the security of the buyer’s information. It is always important to include a Privacy Policy to inform users how their information will be used and who it will be distributed to. This is a good way to build the confidence of the buyer and hold the merchant accountable to the privacy of each buyer.

What is the Alt Attribute? The alt attribute is the “alternative text” for your images that allows text to appear if a user is viewing your website on a browser that does not support that image. It provides additional or “alternative” information about the picture. The text can also serve the purpose of allowing those with disabilities the chance to read a description if they are unable to see your image appear. The alt attribute serves the purpose of describing the picture or image, if the image is unable to appear.

Alt Attribute Standards of W3C and Google Guidelines

Although you may not be familiar with HTML or XHTML markup languages, it is still in your best interest to gain a better understanding of the importance of validation. If you website code is validated, you are ensuring that your website meets the necessary standards and high quality.  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the worldwide accepted Web Standard led by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe. With Search Engine Optimization small alterations to your code in Meta tags, headings, content, titles, and etc will go a long way for your websites success. On example of the importance of Validation in regards to SEO is the alt attribute.  With any image file you have within your code, w3c requires you to include the alt attribute to each image. With the alt attribute you can present an “alternative” description for your image content where you can place descriptive keywords which will be acknowledged by search engines.  It would not be wise to pack the description with multiple keywords. Keep your description brief but accurate. Google is pretty straight forward about the Google Webmaster Guidelines for Alt Text categorizing that as “keyword Stuffing.” Here is a great video of Matt Cutts describing Alt Text that briefly describes the proper use of Alt Attribute according to Google Image standards.

Conclusion and Best Practices

1.  Brief Descriptive Alt Attribute Description- You can optimize the image file name with a short brief descriptive text as well as the alternative text
2. Alt Text for Image Links- If images are used as a link you can help search engines have a better idea of where you are linking your website. Consider “Image Links” to be similar to anchor links in regards to proper keywords and descriptions for indexing. This applies for images with or without links.
3. Do Not Abuse- Do not abuse the alt attribute to stuff a large amount of Keywords in the image description. Remember that Google is all about what is best for the user. Stuffing keywords will not benefit a user who is not able to view your image in their browser in any way. 
4.  Google Image Search- When you optimize your image file names as well as your alternative text you will be optimizing your images for Google Image Search.

Now that you know how to properly use the Alt Attribute, have fun describing your images. Remember that your websites validation and code plays a large role in Search Engine Optimization. If you have a business and want to properly develop your website in order to rank well for your keywords you want to create your website with professional web development strategy.

• Design (The First Impression)- Compelling visual design is an important attention grabber for your viewers. It is the First Impression, as you may call it, that the website will receive. Remember, the website is the online company Identity and plays a valuable role in your marketing and branding campaigns. A Crisp, Fresh, Professional Design can go a long way. You can optimize your website by changing colors, fonts, images, rearranging content, adding logos, action items, etc.
• Functionality  and Usability (For the benefit of the User)-Functionality is a way to keep your customers returning to your site. Functionality of your website is not only for your benefit but for the customers. For example, some websites have a “search” feature on the homepage that allow your customers to quickly find what they specifically want to inquire more information on. How easy is it to navigate through your site? Navigation is very important in the usability of your website. It needs to be simple, yet effective for your customers to find what they are looking for, in the fastest way possible. Technology should be a tool that is used to make things simpler, faster, and more efficient. People greatly appreciate when you save them time. By designing a website for the viewers needs you are staying true to your branding message of “Customer Focus” as well as utilizing technology to build trust and authenticity for your brand.
• Interactivity (Engaging Customers)- A prime example of keeping customers engaged is by Adding a Blog, News Feed, or Multimedia Page to your website.  This allows you to gain trust from your visitors and communicates the message that you are not afraid to offer company information and helpful resources. Remember online marketing is successful by giving, not only receiving. Be interesting and provide people with information that has value and substance.  Be proactive with your customers and keep them fully engaged in who you are and what you have to offer.
• Content (Too Much is Too Little)-  It is vital to keep your content simple and to the point. Fluffy and wordy descriptions can be a turn off for people. If you go with too much content then people may feel that you are trying to oversell your products and exaggerate your services. Prioritize your information in a structure that is relevant. What message do you want people to grasp? What text should be BOLD? Keep it simple to the point. A good message can be short and still be accurate.

There are many factors to consider when optimizing your website for Search Engines to consider and the standards are constantly improving. There is on site being the front and backend code and off site which is normally referred to as Organic SEO. Google recently announced that page speed is an important factor for page rank and it all comes down to one thing Usability for the user. In PPC Google added page load time to its determination of quality score. So whether it is Organic or Paid Search, the speed of your website matters.

Website Speed is Very Important. So the new Question is…What Can I do to Increase my Website’s Speed?

 Recently Hassan Bawab, CEO of Magic Logix presented a few ways to improve speed of a website to help your page rank and SEO. Here are a few of his highlighted factors.

Images and CSS

Make sure to Removed Unused CSS. It is important that all your style sheets are light weight and written with few calls. Be sure to simplify class names and dived them into sheets relevant to site structure.  For images it is important to optimize them for the web. Saving the appropriate image files as JPGs or PNGs. Make sure you use the appropriate file compressions otherwise your files may be excessively large slowing down the loading time of each page.  

• Serve Scaled Images, Optimized Images and Specified image dimensions
• Combine external CSS
• Remove Unused CSS
• Avoid bad requests or broken Links
• Minify CSS

JavaScript’s

• Minify HTML and JavaScript 
• Combine external JavaScript
• Defer loading of JavaScript

Caching and Compression

• Leverage browser caching-Setting an expiry date or a maximum age in the HTTP headers for static resources instructs the browser to load previously downloaded resources from local disk rather than over the network.
• Leverage Proxy Caching-Setting an expiry date or a maximum age in the HTTP headers for static resources instructs the browser to load previously downloaded resources from local disk rather than over the network
• Enable Compression (gzip)

DNS

• Minimize HTTP redirects (cut out RTTs)
• Serve static content from a cookieless domain -Serving static resources from a cookieless domain.
• Minimize DNS lookups -Reducing the number of unique hostnames from which resources are served cuts down on the number of DNS resolutions that the browser has to make, and therefore, RTT delays.

For more information about how Magic Logix can assist your business, take a more in depth look at our services in Website Design, Website Development, and Online Marketing.