SEO Friendly Website Design

You may not realize it, but some of the advanced design techniques that you use for your website, such as Flash, or heavy use of frames may actually be hurting your SEO rankings. When designing a website, it is important to make informed decisions about each design element in order to optimize the site for search engine rankings. By learning which tools can negatively impact your rankings, as well as which are designed to improve them, your website will have a better chance at ranking high with the major search engines.

First, there are some design elements that should be avoided:

1. Flash – Search engine spiders don’t ‘like’ flash files. There are no textual elements in flash i.e. the spiders can’t scan, read them or have any way of understanding what the pages or the site are all about nearly as well as they do with html pages. Google and the other search engines are working on understanding flash better but the technology is not ready yet. Many new designers make the mistake of relying heavily on flash files because they ‘look’ great but in reality, all of that great content, including your key words, will be useless if they only appear in a flash file. If you feel that you must include flash on your site, be sure to limit the amount and to include textual representations of your content as well. Also, try not to rely on images as navigation. Text is much better from an SEO standpoint.
2. Frames – Frames are another design element that is largely ignored by spiders. Like flash, if you feel you must use frames, keep them to a minimum and find another way to represent important information in text form.
3. Images with Text – Search engine spiders will not index text that is included in images, so it is imperative that your images be text free. It is a better idea to use “alt” tags which serve as descriptive text that tells the spiders what the image is or represents; or use CSS to display text behind an image.

Second, there are some design elements that must be included in your website design in order to optimize for SEO.

1. Keywords – it is critical that you include relevant and unique keywords directly in the content of your website. Spend a fair amount of time researching your keywords by utilizing one of the popular free tools available on the Internet. Be sure to include your keywords in your domain name, title tags and headings. Spiders love to crawl these areas!!
2. Site Maps – Site maps do much more than help users navigate your site; they also help search engines index your site. Search engines use the information contained within a site map to know how fresh your content is, how often you update the site and what areas are especially relevant. Be sure to include a site map on your site.
3. Keyword Rich Content – it isn’t enough to have good keywords, you must also use them throughout your website. Avoid simply ‘stuffing’ keywords into your text – this makes content that is difficult to read; also this will be flagged by the search engines and site penalties is the price you will pay.   Instead, rely on keyword density tools to analyze your keyword use. If you’re unsure about this, look for an SEO company that has a good working relationship with a content provider. This will ensure that you get well written, relevant content, and that your keywords are all at the proper density.  In brief, is you are writing for people, not spiders, your content will be keyword rich and not keyword-stuffed; the SEO therefore, will take care of itself.

Follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines … everything you need to know in terms of do’s and don’ts regarding website structure to be SEO Friendly is right there … it’s free!

If you need help or don’t have the time to generate great SEO results through SEO Friendly elements, contact us for a no obligation initial consultation.