Top website design sites in Ghana

Website design and web application development in Ghana is still in its infant stages. Why am I saying this? Just google “website design ghana” and find out the top ranked sites which are not necessarily the leading web development firms in Ghana. Most of these sites up to date still use html tables for layout purposes in this modern day of HTML/CSS with advancement towards HTML5/CSS3.

And not so surprisingly, these same “top ranked” websites use all sort of means and unethical ways to get to the top. Of course Google does well to penalize those who abuse the SEO rules but remember it’s a machine and therefore can be tricked, as most of these websites have succeeded in doing so. I took the time and pain to find out how and why these websites ranked high and below are my findings.

Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is considered as an unethical way of boosting a website’s search ranking. While it is a black hat tactic for search engine optimization, it is not considered to be a good technique for search engine ranking and visibility. But surprisingly most of the these websites (with our findings above) use this tactic.

It is quite interesting how some of these websites employ keyword stuffing to their advantage using all sort of means.

• 1. Keyword stuffing in content
  For example consider the phrase below
  “…web design for ghana is a service dedicated to providing businesses with the best and most affordable web design solutions for Ghana. Web Design for Ghana services are designed for small and medium sized businesses and enterprises in Ghana. Solutions include domain name registration, Web hosting, Ecommerce Web hosting, Web design, Custom Graphic design, online marketing and email solutions. Web design for GHANA is brought to you by…”.The above sentences convey a meaning which can be summarized by just one sentence but for the sake of the keyword “web design ghana” it is stuffed in an eccentric way.
• 2. Keyword stuffing using hidden elements
  Others too had clear and concise contents yet ranked higher, the reason? They had hidden elements with keywords in them. So cunningly was this directed that the site visitor is unaware of the situation. The element is given a height of 1 and the color of the text in this element is set to the color of the background. In our findings, most used white colored text against a white background. For example, consider what’s below
  “ Ghana Premier Website designers, Web Design, Developers , E-commerce, Websites, Graphics, Software, Developments, Government, Accra, Tema, Takoradi, Kumasi, West Africa and internet business models, web application, redesign, multimedia, productions, branding, online, course, digital, advertising, graphic design, consulting, flash development and video, production development... “.
• 3. Keyword stuffing in attributes;alt,titles and summary
  Though this depends on the context of how its been used, and the opinion of the person using it. It was quiet evident that some of these were merely abuse usage to increase their chances of SERP visibility. Especially for me was a notable one which used html tables for its layout and yet had the summary attributes for those tables set for the targeted keywords.
  Besides it had an increasing number of it that at a point I almost lost track of the counts. Funny enough on this particular website’s page they advice to get your website to the top if you consult them for SEO services without using outdated and unethical means.
  For example, consider the html table below;

  Header Table
  sidebar Table	content Table
  Footer Table

  With the source code for the html table below.
  
  

  Header Table
  sidebar Table	content Table
  Footer Table

   

In conclusion, there are finer and professional ways of getting seo visibility and it will be the topic of another blog discussion to come. Share your thoughts or drop a comment to show some of the unethical ways people are using. Thanks.