Web design and SEO web design are two very different concepts. With the technology available today, anyone can build a website and upload it onto the internet in a couple of hours. But all websites are not created equal. A good SEO designed website will consist of:
- Proper HTML coding
- Keyword-rich file names
- Keyword-rich content
- Appropriate page length and width
- Robots.txt file for good search engine spidering
- Keyword-rich heading and alt text tags
- Sitemaps
- Custom error page
- An attractive visual design
- User friendly and search engine friendly navigation
- Appropriate use of style sheets and javascript
- Cross browser compliance
- W3C compliance
Successful websites must satisfy two audiences – primarily the user and then the search engines. Therefore the site design must be easy for users to navigate while allowing search engines to fully crawl the site. Hinder either and they will both leave without a second thought.
There are also web design techniques that we recommend be avoided. They include:
- Frames
- Flash animation
- Small or fancy fonts
- Music – if you must include music or an audio file, let the user play it as an option
- Splash page
- Horizontal scrolling
- Excessive animated images
- Excessive javascripting
These web design tactics may look high-tech, fun, or visually interesting, but they are bad news for search engine optimisation. Search engine spiders can’t read through frames, flash animation, music, video, or pictures so while they take up a lot of space on the page, they won’t tell the search engines what your site is about. If the search engines can’t figure out what the page is about, it may not be indexed.
You also don’t want anything in your web design that makes users do extra work. Don’t make them click through a splash page before getting to your actual homepage. Don’t make them scroll from side to side to read your text. People simply don’t have the time or patience to go through a poorly designed website. Make it simple for users to find exactly what they came for.
Don’t do anything in your web design that annoys or frustrates your users. There is nothing more disconcerting than clicking onto a web page only to have music blasting through your speakers. Users will hit their back button immediately to quiet the sound. Maybe they are at work and don’t want their employers knowing they’re on the web. These are all issues you need to consider before designing your website.
The best way to design a website you want to achieve high relevancy in the search engines is to keep it simple! Simple text-based navigation, instead of buttons, provides internal linking within your site and tells the search engines what your other pages are about. Your site should be 80% content, 10% navigation and 10% images. Consider hiring a professional SEO web design consulting firm to achieve this balance and get your site ranked at the top!
Follow Us On: