Services in search engine optimisation today, focus primarily on taking an existing website and adding content and links that will make it more attractive to web crawlers and new users. However, this strategy can be incredibly time consuming and depending on the format of the content, might require more changes than the original website took to build.
In the end, you might end up with something that looks a ham-handed hodgepodge of unnatural and clunky content that ruins the image of your site.
So why not just shape the original web design around SEO? The designer should focus each element of the website around how optimised it is, as it’s added to the design.
Below are some ideas to keep in mind when constructing each page on your site.
Make Sure Your Content Can Be Indexed
Many algorithms can’t recognise content that’s uses certain programming languages. Google won’t index text generated by or contained in the following:
* Java Applets
* Flash based content
* Content embedded in pictures
* Content on your site that’s held on another server or domain
A good way to get around this is to include some of the embedded or unreadable content in the alt text attribute. This will give a general description of the image, which can be rendered. This is the text you see when you’re waiting for an image to load.
You can place the directories for content you don’t want indexed (for whatever reason) in the robots.txt file on Webmaster Tools.
The Structure of Your Website Should Be Simple and Logical
Making the content easy to find and naturally intuitive, is a simply key to sound web design SEO. Any company knows that they should make their physical location to be easily navigable (except for bureaucratic buildings, of course) so why forget that principle when constructing your website?
A could rule for the structure is to keep it wide and shallow. The most important content should be kept near the front of the directory. Titles are the best area to keep keywords in as they make the content that follows seem like it’s part of that category, rather than just a single keyword instance.
Normalise Your URLs
This involves making all the URLs on your domain consistent and standardised. This helps avoid duplicate content, which wastes content value, when web crawlers index the various instances of the same page repeatedly.
It’s a lot easier if this is done during website development.
Don’t Add Features That Greatly Affect The Page Load Time
Loading time is a prominent ranking factor and Google will even penalise sites that take too long. Even if that weren’t the case, visitors to your site probably won’t appreciate having to sit around waiting for their page to load either. They may lose interest and go somewhere else.
Avoid using too many flash animations, large pictures or self-launching embedded videos.
Keywords are The Foundation of Good SEO Web Design
A firm principle of any SEO strategy is to shape the website around the relevant keywords that bring visitors there. It’s elementary, really. The best keywords vary from market to market.
Stay away from keywords that are too broad as they are quite heavily dominated by more powerful websites. If they’re too specific though, you won’t get any traffic unless they’re specifically looking for your site.
Be warned though, Google doesn’t take unethical keyword use lightly. Make sure any keywords you use are: relevant, natural and moderate. They should also apply in general to the page, domain and company as a whole.