Small Business Design Resources

Quick Tip: Keep Your Website’s Main Content “Above the Fold”

In website design the term “above the fold” is referring to content on your website that the user sees first without needing to scroll. Keeping your most important content above the fold of your website, gives you a better chance to get your point across as soon as the user enters your website.

Quick Tip: Use an ALT tag for your website images

For search engines an image is just a block that they cannot read. So to help search engines recognize images on your business website you have to include an ALT tag in the HTML code. To check if an image has an ALT tag just hover your mouse over an image and if you see text appear next to your pointer, then there’s an ALT tag associated with that image.

Here’s a sample HTML code for an image that includes an ALT tag:

<img src=”image.jpg” alt=”image description goes here”>

Go ahead and mouse over on the image to the right to see the ALT tag in action.

Quick Tip: Add your business to local search listings

Get your business seen by local searchers! Some listings are free and some have a fee.

Now you can see how your business is listed in popular search engines all from one place. Take a look at www.getlisted.org and make sure you take the time to add your business information to at least the free listing services.

Adding your business to local listings increases chances for people who are looking for your products and/or services in your area to find you faster.

Quick Tip: Use hyphens in your URL structure

All pages on your website should have a clean URL structures to make it easier for people to read. For example:

wrong:

http://www.example.com/index.asp?_prod138272=isp9872=498260

correct:

http://www.example.com/products/hats

Google recommends that you separate two or more words with a punctuation instead of squishing them together and use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) between them. For example do:

http://www.example.com/products/red-hat

instead of

http://www.example.com/products/redhat

or instead of

http://www.example.com/products/red_hat

Quick Tip: Use a Custom Domain Name for Your Blog

When setting up your blog you want to be sure to buy a domain name and a hosting account. Having a blog on a subdomain on one of the free blogging platforms such as wordpress.com or blogger.com (yourblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogspot.com) gives all the search engine benefits to that blogging platform. All the hard work that you’re doing in creating great content for your visitors doesn’t help your website ranking for your business if you don’t have your own custom domain.