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 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.
About the author:
Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing. Experts in
all areas of Internet Marketing, inc. SEO and Web Design.
arif_hanid@ambleton.com www.ambleton.co.uk
