Some basic SEO site design stuff
It’s amazing how many sites we see that have been made by self-proclaimed “SEO experts” but are missing a number of the absolute basics of SEO design.
Here is an extract from an article I wrote for the Brighton & Hove Argus in January, with some of the bare basics to demand from your designers.
Of course, if you want great design first time, you can always ask us!
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Make sure that the search engines can find every page in the site. Search engines look through a site using so-called “spiders”. Don’t worry; these aren’t as sinister as they sound! They are programs which visit a site and follow every link that they can find, making a note of what is on every page. This process of recording is called “Caching”. You can only get results for pages that a search engine can find. To make sure a search engine can find every page, create a site map: a page that links to every other page on the site.
Make sure that the page title of each page reflects what is on that page. You will generally see better results if the title and content of each page are closely related. This is not a huge issue, but as a certain supermarket says “every little helps”. This philosophy hasn’t done them badly.
What are your “keywords”? You should think about what words people use when they are searching for your products. Which words would you use if you were searching for your products? Make sure that these appear on the relevant pages on your site. Be careful not to overdo it though, leading nicely to the most important advice:
Don’t try and cheat! It is not a good idea to try and “stuff” keywords into your site, by repeating them over and over just for the search engines. Other techniques such as using white letters on a white background and hiding lots of links where users can’t find them are also a bad idea! Google is very perceptive (certainly for a ten year old) and will punish sites found to be using underhand techniques to improve their search positions.
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Upstream Connections - SEO » White Hat SEO said,
March 25, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
[…] In the world of Search Engine Optimsation, “White Hat” is an umbrella term used to describe legitimate techniques for gaining rankings. This generally means ensuring that your site is choc-full of relevant content that is updated on a regular basis. It means ensuring that your site is visible to the search engines’ spiders and that every page can be cached. This is achieved through well planned design that sticks to some established SEO principles. […]