When you are on the internet as often as I am, you come across a number
of websites straight out of the mid ninety's and some that you know
someone just thought one day "I'm going to build my own site". Now
Obviously search engines do not look at the "prettiness" of websites
otherwise the first page would be filled with fancy flash sites and
cookie cutter sites.
The question is how important is web design for your SEO?
When
you are building a website, or picking a designer for your website you
should make sure that the designer keeps their code clean. What do I
mean by this you ask? Well, take the time and look at the code, you
want nice clean coding. Do not let them fill your site with font tags
and a bunch of java script. This day and age a good webmaster should
know that CSS will make your code neat and tidy for the search engines
as they crawl through, as well you can often time link your java script
from a separate file on your server. Most importantly, do not fill your
code with spam. Use your alt tags wisely, do not describe the picture
in the code use that in your visible text. Use only viable meta tags,
there is a lot of them out there, but they have been devalued and could
hurt you more than help you.
The next biggest mistake I find on
websites is navigation, or the lack there of. You work really hard to
get your site to the first page with great SEO techniques, then you
have no one staying on your site because they are having trouble
finding their way around your site. When you think of SEO, you think of
getting top page results, but they do not call it internet marketing
for nothing (marketing being the operative word). Remember you are
trying to provide the best product and the best price, but if they
can't find their way to that product, all is lost. The importance of
navigation as far as SEO goes, is text links. Do not hide your
navigation in java, flash or CSS only, be sure you have some text links
on your page. I generally add any text links near the bottom of the
page especially if you have a top navigation, it allows your visitors a
place to go once they reach the bottom.
Last but never least is
consistency. Your web page should have a common theme throughout. You
want your visitors to recognize your site the whole way through. Web
site's are not homes, do not decorate differently on each page. You do
not want your visitor thinking they have left your site and then moving
on to a competitors site. Another good rule of thumb is when you are
adding external links on your site, use the target tag. This allows for
the external link to opened in a different window and tab which makes
it easier for the potential client to wander back in your direction and
hopefully purchase that product or service that you are offering.
Clean,
easy to navigate sites will draw in more potential revenue, help you on
the search engines with top page results and could even get advertisers
to want to be on your site. SEO always starts with design, think ahead
and you will save valuable time and money!
