How to design a SEO-friendly website?

Website designing in today’s terms demands a meticulously created content in it. The role of a website designer cannot be merely restricted to attracting viewers with animated graphics and luring phrases; it also demands the inclusion of critical components necessary for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO-friendly websites should meet the following criteria.

Quality Content

The content includes the keyword/phrase, the text and the links. The keyword is the main component of the body of the website. The search engine spiders recognize the content of a website through these keywords. There should be a good number of keywords repeated in every page of your website. Care should be taken to include the keywords in the beginning of the paragraphs, especially in the first and last paragraphs.

Layout

A SEO-friendly website should have an appropriate layout to attract the search engines as well as the viewers. It is always better to keep all the navigation tools on the left hand side of the page, so that the search engine crawlers can segregate the inner contents and links from the navigation tools and identify them easily.

Sitemap

It is a good idea to include a sitemap or index for websites that have more than ten pages in it. Sitemap will guide the search engines appropriately to different segments of your website, even if it is crowed with contents.

Javascripts and Flash

Avoid using Javascript codes. These are not identified by the search engines. Similar is the case with Flash images. Try not to use them in your website. If they are very much necessary in your website, you may include them but don’t give those pages for search engine optimization. In situations where they have to be given for SEO, modify them by adding appropriate Meta tags and contents to them.

Frames and dynamic URLs

The search engine crawlers are hostile to frames and dynamic URLs. Avoid using them if possible in your website. However, in some websites, frames are found to be very essential. In such cases give them the ‘no frame’ tag in the frameset.

Tables

Just as the case with frames, tables also do not find much relevance in SEO. They are not recognized by the search engines. Why to create unnecessary blocks in your website if they are not helping the websites anyway?

Image

Everybody will accept the fact that images improve the quality of the website, except the SEO experts. Images not only delay the search process, but also pose as a hindrance to the effective traffic of the website. Moreover, a website with a lot of flash and other types of pictures and animations takes a long time to get downloaded, and so are likely to be ignored by the busy viewers. Add images only if they are very much essential and relevant to the contents of the website. In such cases, split the image into different sections and add keywords in them using alt tags appropriately. This will improve the SEO of your website.

To conclude, a website designing must be carried out in such a manner that it satisfies the demands of both the user and the search engine spiders. You cannot ignore either of them.