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How
To Design A Search Engine Friendly Website
There
are many websites that fail to target their required traffic,
even if they've had some search engine optimisation work done.
One of the main causes for this is simply because the website
isn't search engine friendly. This is a basic essential that
needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at
the outset - think of it as the foundation to establishing
your search engine optimisation strategy.
This
article aims to highlight the areas a web designer should
think about and incorporate into their design for maximum
search engine effectiveness:
1.
Search Engine Friendly Pages
It
is important that when you design your website you not only
bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also
what the requirements are for search engines. Best way to
approach this is to remember that search engines don't really
care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash
movies are, or how snazzy your javascript is. Instead search
engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you
want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be
nice and easy to read. Now from this I don't mean adding ‘comment'
tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to
ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in,
i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only
some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag,
are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines
don't like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to
get to the core areas that can help you page's ranking. Therefore
careful planning and positioning of your page elements is
required.
TIPS:
- If you're using table for laying out your page then make
them simple and not too complex. - Avoid using frames. - If
you need javascripts for navigation purposes, then use smaller
scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different
file. - Think twice on how to use graphics - make them relevant
to your content and use the Alt tag for all images. - Position
the main content of the page before the images, or at least
with the images nested between the text.
2.
Keywords
Having
good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider
when designing a website/webpage.
One
of the best tools for this is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com),
which allows you to identify good competitive keywords for
your pages.
In
general the range of keywords associated to your pages can
be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence
of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 10-15
keywords. You can always export the results to Excel and try
out other competitive keywords if the ones you selected initially
do not produce any noticeable benefits.
TOP
TIP: Wordtracker offer a one day subscription to their
service from which you can squeeze nearly 2 ? days worth of
use! Here's how - Sign-up for the service on the evening of
Day 1 (the service will be available almost immediately so
you can start searching for your competitive keywords straight
away). You will also be able to use the service for the whole
of Day 2 and strangely for the whole of Day 3! Enough time
to get some good keywords for a lot of pages!
3.
Content
Many
search engines look at the main body of the page and identify
keywords and phrases that are used within the text.
TIP:
Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page
within the main body of the page. Always try and ensure that
the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they
appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using
the ‘heading' tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are
used as hyperlinks.
4.
Page Title
This
is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and
needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected.
Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly
page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which
describes the page content. To keep within the limits of many
search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn't
exceed nine.
5.
Page Description
Another
important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description.
This is the text found under the META Description tag and
is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is
a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when
writing the description, which should be short (not more than
20-25 words) and sells your page before the user has even
opened it!
6.
Graphics
We've
covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasising the
importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s).
Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing
to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they
shouldn't overpower the textual content of your page. As a
general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio
(70 text/30 images).
7.
Site Map
A
Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all
your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site
Map tools available on the web that'll create your site map
instantly.
8.
Navigation Links
Navigation
links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy.
There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate
through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar
is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash,
etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation
then it's always a good idea to implement simple text based
hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page
on your website.
Following
the basic suggestions above will help lay the foundation to
apply further good search engine optimisation advice which
will make the difference in your overall search engine ranking.
This
finer area of SEO is beyond the realm of this document and
will require further investment based on individual needs.
Arif
Hanid Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing. Professionals
in bespoke Internet Developement and Marketing.
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