Listed below are some proven tips from experts on SEO friendly website designing. A web designer should pay close attention to these so as to come up with a nice search engine friendly website:
No Left-Side Menu
You must strictly avoid creating menu towards the left-hand side of a website. In case, this is unavoidable, look for an alternative way. For instance, you may put some text with very rich keywords right at the top. These may even be placed above the left-hand menu. This means this text will make for the first thing to be read by search engines.
Headlines
Search engines rate headlines as more important than the rest of the web page. To exploit this benefit, it is important to integrate keywords within the page headline. As the header tag (h1) is quite large in size, you must format it to make it smaller.
Page Specifications
Each website page must comprise of the following:
Title
Description tags
Both title and description tags must comprise of good keywords that precisely describe content of page. Make sure the number of words for each title must be restricted to 9 or less. On the other hand, the description should have only 20 words or less. This will help adhere to the rules defined by most search engines.
Avoid Flash
Flash should be strictly avoided for web pages wherever possible. Flash cannot be read by the search engines. Hence this will lead to slow page loading time making visitors leave your site. In case, using Flash is unavoidable, simply make it smaller. For instance, a flash header. You need to leave rest of the area of your site for content embedded with appropriate keywords in right number.
Use of Graphics
Make sure you think twice on the way you use graphics. You need to focus on making them relevant to your content. Also make use of an alt tag combined with relevant keywords to help search engines to read. Remember that search engines cannot read graphics. This is easy for visitors as they can have something to read while waiting for graphics to load.
Links are Important
Of course, links are very important for your web page. However, strictly avoid use of only images to link out. Text links are the best option to link out to crucial content on web site. Spiders may follow image links but hold a strong preference for text links.
No Frames
You must avoid using frames. Remember that some search engines are unable to spider web pages with frames. Other search engines that are capable of doing so may face problems spidering pages. Sometimes they remain unsuccessful in indexing the web page.
No Complex Tables
You must strictly avoid using tables that are too complex especially when laying out your web page. These should be kept really simple for spiders. Some search engines may find it quite difficult to navigate through to the other pages on website due to to complex navigation bar.
Efforts to Reduce Page Size
You may use external Java Script files or Cascading Style Sheets to decrease size of page. This will speed up the download time. Using these files will also facilitate spider to index web page at a faster pace. This technique is very important for enhancing ranking on search engines.
Standard HTML
Many advanced and popular software like Dreamweaver, Front Page, WYSIWYG editor, Front Page, etc. tend to add useless scripting codes. These codes will enlarge the page more than required and even make it harder for Google spiders to crawl. The software may even add codes that are very difficult to be read by search engines deterring the spider to index the page or the entire website. If unavoidable, try using these software in conjunction with deep understanding of html. This will help you avoid or delete unnecessary scripting codes manually.
Hope the above listed tips will help you design and host a SEO friendly website for your business. Good luck!