Search Engine Friendly Web Design
Search Engine Friendly Web Design
A search-engine friendly web design is just as important as targeting the right keywords. One of the first rules of SEO is not to design your website in a way that prevents it from being properly indexed or "crawled".
A rigid design layout, overuse of web technologies, and a poorly-designed navigation are a few of the common pitfalls you’ll find with poor-ranking websites.
Web Design for the Search Engines
Navigation Menus:
If the navigation menus of your website can't be crawled, you could be preventing the search engines from "seeing" many areas of your website. As a result, you could be losing out on search engine rankings for your target keywords.
Flash-based menus and JavaScript jump menus either prevent or hinder the search engine spider from properly indexing your site, especially if they are your only means of navigation. Ideally, you should have a menu that is text-based, with every link containing the keywords you want to target for the destination page.
Having text-based links at the footer of every page, using the same targeted keywords principle, also works.
Sitemaps:
Sitemaps can be a great help in getting your website indexed because it gives a search engine access to every webpage on your site. Adding a link to the sitemap on every webpage ensures easy access to the sitemap from wherever a search engine spider enters your website.
Page Layout:
A good HTML coding structure is the foundation for building an optimized web design. This means having a page layout that allows the spiders go to through the webpage and quickly establish what your site is about without getting bogged down with code.
The areas between the tags and the tags are the two most important for a webpage. Information placed in these areas can make a big difference in your search engine rankings and the level of "friendliness" of your website.
Because search engine spiders read code from left to right, and top to bottom, it's important to have the following as close to the top of the page as possible:
• A page title, short description about the page using the appropriate targeted keywords.
• Your navigational menu or other navigational aids like breadcrumbs. Having a paragraph or two of relevant content appear before the menu is even better.
Placing this information close to the top provides the search engine spiders with text that matches the page title and links pointing to the page in question.
Splash Pages:
Nothing can be worse for a website trying to improve itself than having a splash page for a home page. Reducing your most important page to an entry point with little or no relevant content greatly reduces your chances of ranking well.
If for some reason a splash pages is necessary, there are some things you can do to make it more search-engine friendly:
• Add a paragraph or two of highly relevant content so that the spider can index it, and determine that this the home page of your site.
• Add a text menu to the footer or a link to your sitemap so that the spider can access the rest of your website.
Web Design Technologies
Flash Design:
At an SEO conference some years ago, a Google engineer confirmed they were able to index content from Flash movies. However, he added indexing this content didn't add anything useful to their index of the Web.
If you have a Flash-only site, or have pages that are Flash-heavy, consider designing a HTML version of your website, or webpage, or redesign your website so that elements of HTML and Flash are incorporated on the same page.
Designed correctly, this will give your website an interactive, multimedia feel in addition to being indexable.
JavaScript:
Javascript coding may be necessary for certain page features. To a search engine spider, however, this is all clutter it pretty much ignores. Still, it must trudge through this code before reaching the real content. Many spiders have timeouts or maximum character counts associated with them. If they must go through too much irrelevant coding, they'll abandon their spidering and leave the site.
The solution: move the Javascript code to the bottom of the page.
Summary:
Creating or redesigning a website to be search-engine friendly is not difficult, but it can be time-consuming. Although a basic understanding of how search engines work would be beneficial, this checklist of things to look for provides a good basis to help you evaluate your website and make changes where necessary.
Search Engine Friendly Web Design - To learn more about this author, visit Pasquale Spadafora's Website.
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Regardless of the type of website, search engines play an important role in generating and maximizing the incoming web traffic. Unfortunately, many websites rank poorly (or don't rank at all) because they failed to take into account how search engines index a website.
A search-engine friendly web design is just as important as targeting the right keywords. One of the first rules of SEO is not to design your website in a way that prevents it from being properly indexed or "crawled".
A rigid design layout, overuse of web technologies, and a poorly-designed navigation are a few of the common pitfalls you’ll find with poor-ranking websites.
Web Design for the Search Engines
Navigation Menus:
If the navigation menus of your website can't be crawled, you could be preventing the search engines from "seeing" many areas of your website. As a result, you could be losing out on search engine rankings for your target keywords.
Flash-based menus and JavaScript jump menus either prevent or hinder the search engine spider from properly indexing your site, especially if they are your only means of navigation. Ideally, you should have a menu that is text-based, with every link containing the keywords you want to target for the destination page.
Having text-based links at the footer of every page, using the same targeted keywords principle, also works.
Sitemaps:
Sitemaps can be a great help in getting your website indexed because it gives a search engine access to every webpage on your site. Adding a link to the sitemap on every webpage ensures easy access to the sitemap from wherever a search engine spider enters your website.
Page Layout:
A good HTML coding structure is the foundation for building an optimized web design. This means having a page layout that allows the spiders go to through the webpage and quickly establish what your site is about without getting bogged down with code.
The areas between the tags and the tags are the two most important for a webpage. Information placed in these areas can make a big difference in your search engine rankings and the level of "friendliness" of your website.
Because search engine spiders read code from left to right, and top to bottom, it's important to have the following as close to the top of the page as possible:
• A page title, short description about the page using the appropriate targeted keywords.
• Your navigational menu or other navigational aids like breadcrumbs. Having a paragraph or two of relevant content appear before the menu is even better.
Placing this information close to the top provides the search engine spiders with text that matches the page title and links pointing to the page in question.
Splash Pages:
Nothing can be worse for a website trying to improve itself than having a splash page for a home page. Reducing your most important page to an entry point with little or no relevant content greatly reduces your chances of ranking well.
If for some reason a splash pages is necessary, there are some things you can do to make it more search-engine friendly:
• Add a paragraph or two of highly relevant content so that the spider can index it, and determine that this the home page of your site.
• Add a text menu to the footer or a link to your sitemap so that the spider can access the rest of your website.
Web Design Technologies
Flash Design:
At an SEO conference some years ago, a Google engineer confirmed they were able to index content from Flash movies. However, he added indexing this content didn't add anything useful to their index of the Web.
If you have a Flash-only site, or have pages that are Flash-heavy, consider designing a HTML version of your website, or webpage, or redesign your website so that elements of HTML and Flash are incorporated on the same page.
Designed correctly, this will give your website an interactive, multimedia feel in addition to being indexable.
JavaScript:
Javascript coding may be necessary for certain page features. To a search engine spider, however, this is all clutter it pretty much ignores. Still, it must trudge through this code before reaching the real content. Many spiders have timeouts or maximum character counts associated with them. If they must go through too much irrelevant coding, they'll abandon their spidering and leave the site.
The solution: move the Javascript code to the bottom of the page.
Summary:
Creating or redesigning a website to be search-engine friendly is not difficult, but it can be time-consuming. Although a basic understanding of how search engines work would be beneficial, this checklist of things to look for provides a good basis to help you evaluate your website and make changes where necessary.
Search Engine Friendly Web Design - To learn more about this author, visit Pasquale Spadafora's Website.
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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