How to Design your Site Keeping SEO in Mind?

Your website needs to be designed keeping SEO in mind, this is critical and considered best practise. If you make your website Google friendly you are following guidelines that other search engines use as well. When search engine spiders crawl over your site (ie : Google) they'll not only look at your images or scripts, but mainly your website content, navigation structure, heading tags, meta tags etc.

Points to consider : 

1. Domain (Website address)

It is useful having a keyword in your domain, this can help search results. However, Google have search algorithms that check to see how relevant a persons search is to the websites that load. Don't give to much weight to domain names based on keywords. They are important but SEO wins the bout here. Google places websites based on the relevancy of the keyword search to the content of a site and how popular the site is seen (Good quality back links.)

2. URL

There are many sites out there that have URL's in this formation :

http://www.website.com/?pageid=14

This means nothing to a persons search on Google, lets use the keyword "Website design" as an example search. Your website url will hold more weight and relevance in search results if it looks like this.

http://www.website.com/website-design/

Website users relate to this. It makes sense!

3. Use of Flash

Everyone loves website animation right? Ask that question to a person or company that implements SEO. The answer would be a firm no. Search engines such as Google can not find information in flash files. Google looks at code and references this. A company can spend a lot of money on a flash site. It will look good and will appeal to many a person. But it is money not well spent. Flash should be used in elements to compliment the information that is there. However now days, JQUERY offers movement and adds life to a website. Many websites turn to JQUERY now days instead of flash.

4. Alternative Text on Images

A website without images is a boring website. You will loose potential clients. Images are critical. People are visual and relate to images before text. Search engines look at code, they cannot see what an image is. This is were ALT Text comes into play. ALT text in your image code tells Search engines what the image is about. So it is important to name the image correctly along with a description of what the image is about. This approach can direct more traffic to your website site.

5. Heading Tags

Headings are important in a website page. Your eye is drawn there straight away. If you see the keyword you searched for in the heading of an article you are inclined to read further. If it is not there you automatically think the article is not what you are looking for. Websites should also have pages designed around a keyword and that keyword or phrase should be in the heading. It should also appear in the website content a few times and these should be bold. Sub headings are just as important. These type of headings need to have keywords relating to the main heading.

6. Website Navigation

Think about your website in a logical manner. It needs to be simple and helpful. People should find information within 3 clicks. Anything longer than this, you will loose business.

8. Content/Text/Information

The success of website is known by the traffic it generates, and for generating high traffic, you require good content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The ‘O' in SEO stands for optimization - and optimizing your website's content is key to attracting potential customers to your site.