What makes a New York Web design company any different from other Web design companies? That’s easy Competition. Just look at how many design firms there are out there and you will see what I mean! In the city or outside, someone seeking high quality Web design in New York faces hundreds of choices in an area of just a few city blocks. Now that’s competition!

If you are not from the area it can be difficult to envision. This might help Imagine typing “New York web design” into Google’s search box and getting hundreds of pages with thousands of links of returns. Instead of clicking on those links however, you’re walking into hundreds of offices; each offering their own unique flavor of Web design.

Sure, the competition is crazy but there is a good side. It makes those who really want to shine, work that much harder. They know anyone seeking design services has thousands of choices so they have to keep their ideas fresh and talent at its peak.

With that said, I offer some inside advice from a successful New York Web design firm. Let’s focus our attention on Website usability. This has the unfortunate distinction of being both the most important yet generally least considered aspect of design all too often and the Website owners suffer for the oversights.

First off, most people do not really read a Web page at first glance; they scan it to see if there is something worth actually reading. You need to get their attention right away and keep it. Here’s how…

1.) Jump in with your most powerful content right off the bat. Grab their attention immediately and keep it. Never save the best for last unless you have something nearly as good to lead the reader there.

2.) Make sure your functional areas are consistent, as much as possible, throughout your site. This is especially true of the navigation links (top, left, right, etc.) search fields, logins, and anything else needing user interaction. The more at ease your visitor feels working through the site, the more likely he or she is to stay for a while and go even deeper.

3.) Embed a link to your homepage within your company logo. This is expected by just about every site visitor who has been on the Web for any length of time. It’s a safety net many users rely and to deny it could result in major inconvenience to your visitors.

4.) Add a search box in an easy to find, consistent location. And be certain it searches ONLY within your Website. Having a search feature that offers to “Search The Web” gives your visitors an invitation to leave your site. Why would you want that?

Secondly, people are not the only ones who visit your site. Search Engines do too. At least you should hope they do. So how do you make a website search engine friendly? It’s easier than you might think. There’s a lot more to it than using keywords in your meta tags. The days when you could just add keywords to your site’s head tags are over. The following are the three (3) things you absolutely need to do if you want your site at the top of Google.

1.) Use keywords as anchor text (the visible clickable words) in your links throughout your page’s content. This is huge! Allow me to demonstrate how powerful this one element can be.

Go to Google and run a search for “Click Here” (no quotes.) Now try to pay special attention to two things… First, there are more than 1.6 billion other (competing) pages. Second, the number 1 match is a link to an Adobe Acrobat Reader download page.

Ready for a surprise? The term Click Here is not anywhere on the page text or META tags. The page is number one, out of 1.6 Billion pages, because thousands of Web pages supplying a link to Acrobat “Click Here” as their anchor text of choice. Amazing, isn’t it? This is the best news every for your site! This is like a magic bullet that works every single time. And it’s so easy. This leads us to our next tip

2.) If you deem that SEO is a priority for your site, create a unique page for each of your main keywords. Just be sure to link the anchor text from each page to the page that has that specific keyword as its focus.

Industry Advice: If you are a blog specialist or Web designer by trade, offering SEO as part of your services is a natural fit that can double the value of your work, or more. With so many good SEO products available to help you get professional results with minimal effort, you can usually rely on reputation as a good indicator of potential success. For example, eBay, Motorola and Lexmark all stake their online success on a tool you can get for $250 at http://www.iBusinessPR0M0TER.com.

3.) Relevant anchor text should also be at the top of your mind when you are requesting inbound links from other sites. This is what Google uses as its strongest measurement to gage the quality of your pages.

This is how you can build your brand using your own words. Getting visitors there is only half the battle, keeping them is a whole different ballgame. Now, similar to tip number 2, you want to request specific keywords be used in the anchor text leading to your pages from other sites. And be sure to request each link to the most appropriate page. Just linking to the homepage doesn’t cut it anymore.

And be warned, a lot of Website design professionals will sign up for reciprocal linking services to get quick inbound links. But I advise against it. It’s a quick and dirty way to get inbound links and it is likely to hurt you. Google hates it and it’s so easy for them to track, because it is simply an inbound link and an outbound link that match.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to set up link partners manually, consider the concept of here way linking like the service offered at http://www.3WayLinker.com.

It’s very simple and really pretty ingenious. Here’s how it works Site 1 links to Site 2. Site 2″ links to Site 3. And Site 3 links to Site 1 forming an indirect chain of 1 way links.

That’s it for the time being. Best of luck!