A well designed site is often one that leads to effective search engine optimization. Genuine SEO can be achieved by a solid website design that is simple to navigate. By making your site rich with content yet easily accessible, you not only provide simple navigation for your visitors, but also the search engine spiders looking to index your site. This approach is one that could lead to long term success at search engine marketing. Instead of trying to buy your way to the top of the rankings and trick the complicated search engine algorithms, you should create your pages with relative keywords and quality links. When the spiders come crawling, they will usually reward the sites with good content and easy navigation.
Understanding the Spiders
Search engine spiders or robots, are programs designed to explore the web and visit website pages. These programs automatically read text and click their way through links to view all the pages on a site. A search engine spider usually collects information on titles and metadata and then combs the text on the page via its source code. Most robots function like earlier web browsers, meaning they generally do not absorb frames, Flash content or dynamic scripting, all the more reason to keep your design simple.
Drop-down boxes, web forms and other dynamic creations cannot be comprehended by a search engine spider. The best way to ensure a visit is to use static pages constructed in HTML. If a dynamic script such as ASP is required, there are a few ways to keep your pages attractive. One method is to use the rewrite capabilities of your server to transform complex URLs into simple ones. If you must use Flash to make your pages more vibrant, use it sparingly rather than building an entire page with it. Don’t let this technology get in the way of the search engine robots or your visitors.
Building an SEO-friendly site is fairly easy for anyone with minimal development skills. Your main focus is to eliminate all the flashy content and stick with a simple, solid architecture. Search engine spiders have no trouble comprehending text and have a thing for text links, more commonly known as anchortext. When keeping your visitors in mind, the design process gets much easier. Building for the search engines will increase your visibility on the web and help to bring new prospects in.
The most important you thing need to know about SEO is that search engines are attracted to the text on your website. The more you stay on topic with a decent amount of relative links and keywords, the better the robots will be able to digest it. After getting the information, it is delivered to a database and eventually translated into what you get in the search engine results.
Once your site has been designed, be sure to test it out for validation. Check behind yourself to ensure that no programming errors exist as this will keep your pages from being indexed. By designing with clean code and quality content, you can increase your chances of ranking higher and generating targeted traffic.