What do web design, coding and SEO have in common? Actually quite a lot!
How your site is designed and coded can have a large impact on your Search Engine Optimisation. Get it wrong and it could mean the difference between a successful website with lots of site visitors or a site that languishes in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and is never found.
So where do you start? Below are a number of pointers for successful SEO.
Design
Content. A well designed site will accommodate areas for text. This way your keyword phrases (the phrases you want to be found for in the search engines) can be incorporated into the content on your site. Your website needs to be current and updated to ensure you maintain your place in the search engines. Adding fresh content on a regular basis can be achieved through the use of blog or CMS.
Intelligent use of images. Ensure all of the images on your site are optimised by using ‘alt’ tags. They should also be resized and compressed. Make sure you do not compromise the picture quality by over optimising. This way your images will have aesthetic appeal as well as doing a job for you in terms of SEO.
Social media. Although social media is seen as a way of promoting your brand it can also be helpful in link building. Not only is social media a good way to demonstrate to potential customers that your company has a voice but social networks like Twitter and Facebook helps towards your SEO. By publishing links to your site and blog entries (some of which will hopefully be shared by your followers and fans) on Twitter et al you are effectively building links into your site and improving your SEO.
Coding
Standards. Your site should be coded to the highest web standards and comply with W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards.
Simplified coding. Streamline your site’s coding by moving style and Javascript to external files. Include only essential code, don’t dilute (and therefore weaken) your site’s content.
Keyword placement. It’s not only important to identify your keyword phrases but to position them correctly in the Title, Meta description tag, navigation, breadcrumb trail, H1 – H6 (heading) tags, bullet points, ‘Alt’ text, Title attribute on links, website copy, internal links, footer links, URL’s and file names.
Correct set-up of Title and Meta Description tags. Ensure your Title and Meta Description tag contain researched keywords and phrases and are limited to the following number of characters (Google: 69 characters (including spaces) for Title; 156 Characters (including spaces) for Meta Description), (Yahoo: 72 characters (including spaces) for a Title. (PDF’s up to 75 characters); 161 characters (including spaces) for Meta Description) and (Bing: 69 characters (including spaces) for a Title Tag; 185 characters (including spaces) for Meta Description).
Link navigation text. Make finding information and linking from one page of your site to another as easy and as quick as possible. Build keywords into your navigation text links and add title tags to each link.
URLs and filenames. A ‘clean’ SEO friendly URL like http://www.site.co.uk/products/pc-software is easier for the search engines to understand, whereas its dynamic form, http://www.site.co.uk/products.php/item1?=27781 can potentially cause SEO problems and prevent you from getting good rankings. Include your keywords in the URL and use dashes rather than hyphens to separate words. Although Google has no individual preferences (meaning you won’t be penalised for either dashes or underscores), dashes are more preferable as Google “sees” each hyphenated word as an individual word.
Internal page links. Incorporate links within your page content where appropriate. If this is done correctly you should be using your keyword phrases to link to the sub pages on your site.
Minimising file size. Keep your file sizes to a minimum, your site will load faster. Web usability studies continue to show that a page’s download speed is very important. After 10 seconds waiting for your site to appear, your customer will have lost interest in your page, and may click off your site to go elsewhere.
Avoiding duplicate content. Tell the search engines your preferred domain i.e. the one that you would liked used to index your site’s pages. Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL e.g. http://www.yoursite.co.uk and http://yoursite.co.uk. The preferred domain is the version that you want used in the search results. Place the code below in your domain root’s .htaccess file (your server may require different mod_rewrite rules) to point to your preferred domain.
Code:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.co.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
Sitemaps. There are two different types of sitemaps: HTML and XML. Each type serves its own purpose. An HTML sitemap is used to provide site visitors with an overview of the a websites structure with links to all pages on the site. XML sitemaps are specifically created for the search engines and are a tool to make it easier for search engines to crawl your site. A sitemap gives pointers to the search engines on which of your pages you consider to have the highest priority and how often it is updated.
Following some or all of the above tips will help your website in the search engines and improve your SEO.
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