As a web project manager for the past nine years, I have seen many different fads and trends come and go. It seemed like on an almost daily basis something new pops up that is going to change the industry only to disappear two or three weeks later. In my early career I built sites using regular old HTML and I’ve come a long way since, now building almost primarily on the WordPress platform.

With everything I’ve seen, some things have persisted to be tried and true in working with clients to develop websites. The keys for me, items that I always focus on, are search engine optimization, converting visitors into whatever you want them to be, and conforming to web standards. Sure, there are many other very important things to focus on, but these three items have always been important to me; from the past eight years through the foreseeable future, every project will include work on these items.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ever-changing game, but even in it there are some things that are very consistent. Title tags will always be important in ranking for your keyword. The text used in URL will likely always be important. Ensuring that people link to you will always be important. I’ve been focusing on these aspects for years and it’ll likely never change. Now though, there are many other things to focus on, such as long-tail opportunities, keyword research, social media, blogging, and more!

No matter the industry or business you are in, conversions are always a focused. Whether you want to convert someone walking into your front door into a paying customer or someone visiting your web site into a frequent commenter, you must always be thinking about your desired outcome when designing and building a web site. We have been doing this since we started building web sites. Bloggers often want to create an active community, e-commerce sites want to convert visitors and customers, and media sites want visitors to stick around and read other content. When designing a site, keep your end goal in mind, and developed your user interface around that goal.

You must always focus on web standards when building a web site. Web standards compliance ensures that your website will show up consistently across the multitude of web browsers that exist. The added bonus of a focus on web standards includes the fact that your website will load faster. A faster loading website combined with the standards compliant code is like candy for the search engines and they reward you for this by improving your rankings in the search results.

Internet fads come and go on a daily basis by there are some things that will likely never go away. Search engine optimization, conversions, and web standards compliance are three things that will be with us for a very long time. A strong focus on these three things during any project will help ensure a positive outcome.

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