Being indexed by Search Engines is easy… Getting your web page up in the SERP (search engine results page) of Google can sometimes be a little harder. In this article I touch on the three most important things to remember when designing your website for search engines.
<b>Choose you keywords right</b>
Keywords are words, or combinations of words, that people use when searching for a website. In order for people to find your website though, your website must show up in the SERP. If those keywords appear in your website then your site should appear somewhere in the results. When people search using Google, Google uses a ranking system to show the order of the results. One of the things Google takes in to account is keyword relevance, therefore keyword optimization is important. Placing your keywords in the meta-tags is not enough. Placing keywords in a strategic way with in your website’s content is vital. It is important for the text to still to make sense for visitors to your website. Repeating your keywords over and over again does not help at all, or using text the same color as the background. The best thing to do is have a seat, research your keywords and take your time writing your content so that it makes sense to anyone reading your website and incorporating as many keywords as possible in to the content.
<b>Valuable incoming links are important</b>
All links help. Some links are just more valuable then others. Links that are more important in Google are pages with higher PR (Page Rank) and pages that are relevant. For an example a website with a PR 5 and is unrelated to your website is actually less valuable that a link from a website with a PR 4 that is related to your website. It is important to build your incoming links slowly. It is most important to create links to your website from valuable websites other than a whole bunch of links from websites that are just filled with links or they are link farms.
<b>Page Layout</b>
In order for the search engines to see the text on your website it has to be able to find it. If you have text that is contained within a table which is then contained in another table, it is possible that the crawler or spider may not find it. To avoid this, it is best to avoid using tables at all. In many cases this is not practical. Try putting the most important text outside the table or at least not placing it in table in tables, use just one table. If the crawler cannot find the content then it can’t use it to evaluate where your listing should appear in the SERP. To give your self the best possible chance, avoid this mistake.
<b>Your website’s code</b>
Creating clean code isn’t really an option, it’s a necessity. Some designer’s don’t really remember to clean up the code on the website, as long as it looks right who cares right? It is important, cluttered code also prevents the search engines from getting to your content. Content is King! Right? If your website has unnecessary code, get rid of it. Make sure your pages validate. To get rid of some extra code use external style sheets and external JavaScript sheets and just link to them. Crawlers find it hard to read JavaScript, most times they just skip over it.
Besides the point listed above, my top five tips for “Being Seen in the Search Engines, Now! ” would be to minimize the use of JavaScript, as most crawlers can’t read it. Make sure every image has an alt attribute. Don’t use images for the navigation bar, use plain text and make sure that it remains the same on all pages to make it consistent. Hyperlink to the pages that are lower within the hierarchy of your website from the content of pages on the top level of the hierarchy. Use keywords in your url.