It’s important for a website to both look great visually and look great to a search engine. With search engine optimization (SEO) in mind during the development or redesign of a website, this can drastically improve the likely-hood of your website being found within search engine results. Optimum design can literally make or break your website to become an online success or just another static brochure style website that no one is able to find in order to pick up and read, just laying there collecting dust (ok you’re right not in a literal since, but you get the point). With search engine optimization principles built into the website design your site will be more visible to search engines, which in turn allows your website to be more accessible to web users. There are many different items to take into consideration when planning the design of your company’s website. Take a look at some of these tips when attempting to create a website with search engines in mind.
• Use page titles effectively. When search engine spiders look for quality websites, one of the first details they look at are your website’s page titles. Page titles are a great way to insert keywords you want to rank highly for and can be used inform a search engine what each page of your website is about. Take advantage of this by having titles that make sense and inform. It is important not to simply stuff your title with keywords, but instead to provide relevancy to the page it is describing while weaving in your keywords into the title in an elegant and pleasing fashion.
• Take advantage of page descriptions. A search engine will also look at a page description to further decide if a certain page is worthy. Many people do not take advantage of this easy way to tell search engines about a website. If you do not provide a description of each page of your website, the search engines will automatically populate one for you from the content within the page of your site. It is important to write your own unique description for each page that includes a relevant call to action, because this snippet of information will also be displayed within search engine results and can be used to encourage web users to take action and click on your site’s link to visit your website.
• Emphasize important text. If you are looking to take note of specific text, it is a great idea to use attributes to do so. This can include bolding and underlining important text. It is important to use caution when doing this. You do not want a search engine to penalize you for over-using these tools.
• Use W3 Validation. It is important to make sure that there are no errors in the coding of your website. By using W3 validation, you can find errors on throughout your website. If you fix these errors, search engines will be better able to crawl each page of your site and be able to better index them to appear within search engine results.
• Have a sitemap. A sitemap helps to organize a website’s pages. By updating a sitemap, you will easily let a search engine know about all the pages on your site you would like them to index so that they can appear within the search engine results. If you are constantly updating content and adding pages, it is important to make sure a sitemap reflects these changes. Many people do not take advantage of sitemaps and the benefits of having one.
• Interlink content and keywords. It is a good idea to link various keywords throughout the website to a different page with relevant keyword-driven content. This will make pages look more attractive to search engines as well as will provide an ease of navigation for your websites visitors.
Are you considering improving your website’s web design so that it is more search engine friendly? Follow these tips when changing the design of your website so that more people can find your company online. With search engines in the forefront of your mind during the website design process, you can increase your web presence and bring in more sales.
