| Targeted to: Beginners |
Read: 605 times |
SEO-India.net uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when
being promoted on the search engines. From a basic 3 page
brochure site to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically
generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design
aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO
campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration
when building or updating your web site.
1. Size
Matters.
The size of a web site can have a huge impact on
search engine rankings. Search engines love content, so if you
have only a few pages to your site and your competitors have
dozens, it's difficult to see a top page ranking for your
site. In some cases it may be difficult to present several
pages of information about your business or products, so you
may need to think about adding free resources for visitors. It
will help in broadening the scope of your web site (which
search engines like) as well as keep visitors on your site
longer, possibly resulting in more sales.
2.
Graphics-Based Web Sites.
While web sites that offer the
visitor a more aesthetically-pleasing experience may seem like
the best choice for someone searching for your product, they
are the most difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots
cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see
may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned anything
from point #1, small amounts of content will not result in top
rankings. If you really must offer the visitor a
graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider creating an
html-based side of your site that is also available to
visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on the
search engines and your new found visitors will also have the
option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your
site.
3. Dynamic Web Pages.
If most of your web site
is generated by a large database (such as a large book dealer
with stock that is changing by the minute) you may find that
some of your pages do not get indexed by major search engines.
If you look at the URL of these pages they can be extremely
long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along
with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters.
Since these pages are automatically generated by the database
as needed, the search engines have a tough time keeping them
up to date and relevant for search engine users.
One
way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine
friendly site map listing all your static pages just to let
them know that you do have permanent content on your site. If
search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages
within a good internal linking system, this may also lead to
the pages getting indexed. The link popularity of your site
may carry more weight in this case as well, so if you can't
offer as much static content as your competition, make sure
you have an aggressive link campaign on the go.
4.
Proper Use of HTML.
There is quite a bit of sub-par web
design software out there. Word processors usually have a way
to create HTML documents which can be easily uploaded to a
site via ftp. However, in many cases the code that the search
engine robots see is mostly lines and lines of font and
position formatting, not relevant content. The more
efficiently written web sites usually achieve higher rankings.
Our choice for web design software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry standard. It also makes using CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut
down on the amount of text formatting in HTML code.
Hand-coding HTML to design sites is also a good method if you
are proficient enough.
There are some no brainers too:
Web sites with abnormal amounts of hyperlinks, bold or
italicized text, improper use of heading, alt, or comment tags
can also expect to see low rankings.
5. Choosing a
Domain Name.
The golden rule to web development of any kind
is to keep your visitors in mind above all else - even search
engine optimization. When choosing a domain name, one should
pick either your business name (if you have a high-profile
business name such as Chapters or Coca-Cola) or a brief
description of your products. Domain names can always help
with search engine optimization, as it is another area of your
web site that important keywords can appear. Forget about
long-winded domains such as
www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com as no one will ever
remember it and it will be hard to print on business cards or
in ads.
If you need to change your domain name for any
reason you obviously don't want to lose existing rankings. An
easy way to do this, and one that is currently supported by
most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you to
keep your existing rankings for your old domain name, while
forwarding visitors to your new web site instantly.
6.
Using Frames.
Don't use frames. Frames are a thing of the
90's (and in the Internet world that is eons ago) and are not
even supported by some search engines. The search engines that
are able to index your site through frames will most likely
frown upon them. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by
using frames can usually be done with the help of PHP includes
or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Some browsers are not
frames-compatible, so there is the danger of some visitors not
being able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual
pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthly
scripts being written.
7. Update Your
Information.
Not only does information printed two or three
years ago look badly on your organization when it is read by a
visitor, it is also looked down upon by search engines. Web
sites that continuously update and grow their web sites
usually experience higher rankings than stagnant sites. When
the trick to SEO is offering visitors the most relevant
information, you can bet that the age of web pages is taken
into consideration by search engines. Consider creating a
section of your site devoted to news within your organization,
or have a constantly updated resources area.
Many
shortfalls of web sites can easily be attributed to designers
who just don't keep the user or search engines in mind. Search
engine algorithms are quickly improving to try and list the
most user-friendly sites higher, given that the content and
link popularity are there to back it up. So first and
foremost, know your target market and make your web site work
for them before focusing on search engine optimization. If you
build it (properly), they will come.
To build a Search Engine friendly Website with an
appealing Web Design, contact
us.
|
