The Great Debate: Graphics VS Content

I have recently been  involved in a pretty heated discussion on one of my LinkedIn groups about how many graphics and how much content is ideal on  a website.  Now as a disclaimer to start off, my opinion is that this is subjective to each individual website, so all following comments are more of “blanket statements” than specifics.

Let’s start with the content.  I believe that content is “king” on the web.  You have to create great compelling content to make your site “sticky”.  With that being said, you should always start with a great navigation and then fill those important pages with enough content to keep your viewers on your site, and ultimately to convert (whether that is a sale, request for quote, contacting you , etc.).  The search engines also need this content to agree with what you are telling them your site is about in the meta tags.  Make sure your site content is themed so that the search engines can crawl through it with ease and feel that it is important to be on the web (this is what gets you ranked higher).

Now about the graphics.  I love a great looking site like most people, but you have to be sure that these graphics complement your site and the content that is within it.  Please do not build your site with lots of “pretty” graphics and then try to add content around it.  And by all means do not use your graphics for text (no matter what it is, especially the navigation).  If you embed your text in a graphic, the search engines will never see it.  You can imagine what that will do to your rankings.  So, my feelings on graphics are that they need to be on your site to make it attractive and help make the viewers experience  better than your competitior.

In a perfect world you will have the perfect blend of graphics and content.  I believe that this can be achieved if you work with a company that breaks these elements apart and then blends them together at the end of your site build.  As a last word:  All of this will make the SEO work on your site a lot easier.

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