SEO 101: The basics of Website Design

When designing a new website it is important to include the components that will allow the site to gain momentum within the search engines once it has been indexed by the spiders and robots. (Keep in mind that spider or robots refer to the search engine programs that crawl through a website and mark the content that can be extracted and read by the search engine). 

One buzz word that is thrown around by designers and programmers is "site architecture." Basically site architecture is the layout of the pages of a website and should be in a format that is easy to read and follow. Using logical pages that guide a visitor from the home page to other pages on the site, the architectural elements of the code should be easy to navigate. (This means that page frames are out.) Including a site map in the design of the pages allows the spiders to quickly index the entire site and draw out the relevant content that will be on file with the search directories.  No matter how many pages are being added to the site the map page is one of the most important elements of internet marketing and is very often overlooked by people that feel it is not necessary to break down their site. However this is a mistake that can cost the website brownie points when it's time to go live with the launch of the new site.

Within the source code of the HTML are Meta Tags that allow the programmer to add a series of keywords invisibly to the site. Although the search engines allow programmers to include keywords in the code the rule of thumb is to limit the keywords to no more than 20. Stuffing the site with keywords will only get the site into trouble and may get it banned from the more popular search engines. Along with the tagging of keywords Meta tags also allow for unique page titles to added to the site. About 10 years ago the pioneers of SEO realized that instead of marking their pages "home," "about," and "contact" they could actually say something that distinguished a website from every other page on the web. Using the Meta tags to create a unique title for each page and add a description allows the site owner to put up a sentence or just a few words that can be indexed and remembered by the search engines. Keeping in mind that the wording of the Meta tags should reflect the keywords that are used in the written portion (the content) of the website, programmers that are building a website can ensure that the relevance of the content is aligned with the offerings of the company. This brings me to the next point I want to make.

Because the search engines look for content that is the same as what a person making an inquiry is asking for, it is important to keep everything on the site relevant to the work that is being promoted by the keywords. Choosing the right words to say makes an impact on what the search engines will naturally link back to the website and return in the results of a search. With the philosophy that more is better some people overload their site with text that rambles on and goes nowhere. Keeping the content of the site to no more than 500 words per page will help to narrow the results and make the site easier to find. Using between 300 and 400 written words is the optimal amount that can help the spiders to index a site, but again the relevant content that relates to the offering of services, products or information is the most important thing to consider when writing for the web. Using the keywords naturally within the page content is also considered vital to the success of a website. However keywords must be limited to only a two or three uses per page. Any more than three uses of the keywords and the search engines might think that the site is being stuffed and drop the site down in the rankings instead of moving it up.

Finally, I want to address photos, pictures and Flash animation. If used in moderation each of these can aid in the promotion of the website to the search directories, but to make them stand out they must have a written description in the coding of the site. As the spider and robot programs are reading text only they do not see pictures and only note an image file is in use. Without a description that can be indexed pictures have no meaning in optimization and are lost. Likewise animation that is attractive and clever is not marked and sites that built entirely in Flash can only be tagged on their homepage. Therefore animation is not a preferred source for building a website. If you are looking for an animation it is best to embed it into an HTML coded site and tag the file so that it can be indexed for search optimization.

With these basic tips for building a website that is optimized for the web you can start making an impression on the search engines, but there is a whole lot more that still needs to be done in the way of online marketing before any website will reach the top page of a search result.

Until next time,