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.
arif_hanid@ambleton.com
www.ambleton.co.uk
|
|
|
Not Ranking High Enough On Search Engines? Here?s Some Help!
Search engines are frugal things. (Froogle, too, haha! Sorry, lame joke) They take many, many things into consideration when ranking your pages. Below are some things you should do to be sure you're ranked as high as possible.KeywordsGo for keyphrases, not single keywords. Unless you want to spend the next 3 months trying to break into the first page for a single keyword, focus on keyphrases. Besides, most searchers search for two or more words. Single keywords just don't provide the targeted results searchers are looking for.Focus on the k...(related: Seo)
The Reality Of Search Engine Submissions
Over the last few months, search engine submissions have changed dramatically. Now is the time to analyze the way we're submitting our Web pages and to rethink our submission strategies.Regretfully, I still see people paying big bucks to search engine submission services who will submit their pages to thousands of search engines for one "low price." What they aren't told is that the act of "submitting" their pages has nothing to do with top search engine rankings. Even taking a step back, submitting doesn't guarantee indexing.Fact: The majority of traffic to your site will come from the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! search engine, and MSN. Therefore, submitting to "thousands" of search engines really isn't doing your site any good.Let's take a serious look at the reality of search engine submissions. Do we nee...(related: Seo)
Search Engine Musical Chairs
News broke this week that Yahoo has purchased the Inktomi search engine for around US$235 million. This is an interesting development in the search engine industry that may impact greatly on exactly where sites get their traffic from. Another new development in the past few weeks is the change to the HotBot service but first, I'd like to look at the ramifications of the Yahoo/Inktomi deal.Here's a bit of background information on how the Yahoo and Inktomi search engines work. I'm sure everyone knows Yahoo but not everyone may be completely aware of how their search engine works. Yahoo is a directory. This means that it is a categorised list of sites that are listed by human editors. Getting listed in the Yahoo directory requires a yearly payment for commercial sites. You can get list...(related: Seo)
What All Top Google Websites Have In Common
While it is okay to admire and envy all those sites enjoy top ranking with leading search engines like Google, it is much more important to study these sites closely. You will definitely end up learning a lot that will prove to be very useful in helping you take your own site to the top of Google rankings. Topping the search engines will mean huge volumes of traffic on a daily basis without you having to do anything. Healthy traffic, a...(related: Seo)
Buzzwords Vs Effective Seo Keywords
Ever see a website that seems to speak a foreign language...in English? We encounter many SEO client websites that rely on buzzwords in the page copy to get the word out about their product. The problem lies with visitors who may not be familiar with those terms. This means optimizing with buzzwords may not be the best way to gain traffic...(related: Seo)
How To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings
When people think of search engine optimization, they immediately think of time consuming very tedious tasks that are way beyond their capabilities. That might be true if they put no time and effort into it. I do agree that improving search engine rankings in competitive niche markets require a good deal of knowledge and expertise. It's TIME to learn the basics of how to improve your search engine rankings. There is huge need for search engine optimization experts, but most websites don't find themselves in a very competitive niche market. Many websites can achieve top rankings by applying my optimization basics. All you have to do is put in t...(related: Seo)
Commonly Seo Terms And Jargon Used By Search Engine Gurus
What does all this SEO jargon mean.Have you ever been left scratching your head, wondering what the Search Engine Optimizers SEO's or Gurus are talking about.You are not the only one.There are so many terms used on the Internet that you almost need a degree just to understand what the experts are saying.I thought you might like to be enlightened on some of the more commonly used terms.I have divided my SEO Dictionary into two sections, Search Engine and Web site related termsThe More common Search Engine terms include,Algorithm. This is the formula used by Search Engines that determines how any web page will rank ...(related: Seo)
Diy Seo - Part 2 Tags N Things
Part 2 Tips 4 tagsMeta tags are the descriptive tags used by website designers to explain to the search engines exactly what your website is all about. They look like this,title Put title of your page here, include important keyword...(related: Seo)
Find Best Keywords For Your Site
Keyword optimisation is probably the most important thing that you want to concentrate on with regards to search engine optimisation (SEO). Unfortunately, not many people know this, or do enough to optimise their sites' keywords. Before I knew the importance of keyword optimisation, I used to pluck any keywords that seemed relevant to my site, insert them into my title tag and meta tags, then submitted my site to the search engines. And then wondered why I didn't really get much traffic.Well, now I've learnt something: make sure you don't rush, and you have to do your d...(related: Seo)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 | You can send your articles and get links. Contact Webmaster | All Rights Reserved.
| Seo