Some Webmasters build their websites for their visitors. Some build them for the search engines. Once you’ve gone to the trouble to build a website for both of these very important clients, its time to up your game and tweak your website as if a critical editor were going to peruse every inch of it looking for mistakes and improvements.
Both DMOZ and Yahoo have a group of human editors who check out websites for acceptability into their directories. Each has different requirements. This is a good place to start. Did you know, for instance, that you must have either a full address or telephone number on your website, otherwise it will be rejected by DMOZ? After paying $299 to Yahoo, there is no guarantee that a website will appear in their directory as this is simply a fee to review the website.
Before submitting to either of these directories make sure your website is optimized for your visitors and the search engines. Go a step further and make sure the look and feel of the web design is pleasing and correlates to your audience. For instance, if you have a conservative financial site, you wouldn’t want to use a gaming template as this wouldn’t be appropriate for the audience you wish to attract. Also, make sure your navigation system is obvious to your visitors and a critical editor who is in a hurry to find the flaw as he or she moves through your website.
It may be helpful to sign up with one of the many web design message boards out their since many offer free website reviews after you’ve made a minimum amount of posts. From these message boards you will receive valuable feedback as to what is working and what’s not working on your website. Ask the other members to give you fearlessly critical critiques of your website, otherwise you may not learn much from those being too polite.
The most important aspect, though, of building a website is to never stop working on it and improving it. Check out the websites statistics such as unique visitors and page views to see who is coming to your website, how long they are staying and where they are going. These stats will tell you if your web design is working or not. If not, then take some educated guesses based on your stats to improve your site and test, test, test.
If you keep it in your head that each website you’re building needs to pass the eyes of a critical editor, then you can’t help but build a quality site. Generally speaking, quality sites attract and retain visitors and do well in the search engine rankings. This is what its all about, right?
You neglect to mention that you can’t optimize a site just for IE. Many editors use something more secure, like Firefox or Safari (and others). Many turn off images and block popup windows. You have to make you site viewable to powersurfers.
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