How Web Design Can Affect
Search Engine Rankings
By John Metzler
© 2004 All rights reserved
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 esthetically-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 inventory 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, since it is another area of your web site in which important
keywords can appear. Forget about long-winded domains such as www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com.
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 lengthy scripts being written.
7. Update your information
Not only does information printed two or three years ago reflect
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.
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