Designing Your Site For The Search Engines

When you design a website, it's easy to focus onpage appear more focused, although you should be
what your visitors are going to see. What you havecareful not to insert navigation links this way if you
to realise, though, is that you're going to havewant the search engines to follow them.
another kind of visitor with a completely differentUse Meta Tags.
agenda: they're not going to be looking at yourYes, meta tags are out of fashion, and search
pretty logo and they're not going to be passingengines pay no attention to them any more when it
judgement on your background colour. What they'recomes to ranking your site, but they're still important
looking for is the content and structure of your page.in one way: the meta description tag is still often
They're the search engine spiders, and they are inused to decide what text search engines' users see
control of probably the largest section of your traffic.when they find your site in their results! This can be
You need to please these spiders if you want yourjust as important as the ranking itself - write
site to be successful. Here's how.something here that will look useful to the searcher,
Make Your Structure Clear.and you're more likely to get them to click-through.
Resist the temptation to lay your page out inDon't forget that, while search engines are just
non-standard ways: you want it to be very clear tomachines and algorithms, the end result of it all does
the search engine where the navigation is, where theinvolve a human decision: to click, or not to click?
content is, and where the headings are. As a rule, putAvoid Splash Pages.
navigation first in your page. Always use the headingYou might think it's a great idea to have a 'splash'
tags (h1, h2, etc.) for headings and sub-headings.page displaying a full-page version of your logo (or an
Avoid using generic span and div tags and onlyad) to every user who arrives at your site, but
making things clear to the user through CSS fontsearch engines really hate that. Using this trick will get
sizes: instead, use every 'semantic' HTML tag thatyou ranked far lower than you would usually be, so
applies to your content. If you're quoting someone,you should avoid it - it's annoying to visitors anyway.
use the blockquote tag; if you're posting programInclude Alt Tags.
code, use the code tag. Search engines love this.Any time you use a graphic, include alt text for it -
Keep Keywords Consistent.especially if there is text in the graphic. Remember
It's not usually worth deliberately saturating yourthat, as far as search engines are concerned, all your
content with keywords in hope of a higher searchgraphics might as well just be big black boxes. Test
ranking - the engines have pretty much wised up toby removing all your graphics and seeing if your
this tactic - but do make sure that your keywordscontent remains relatively intact. If it doesn't, then
appear consistently when they occur naturally. Foryou'll be turning search engines away.
example, for these articles, I have stuck withFinally, Write Great Content.
'website' throughout, as suddenly writing 'web site'The key with modern search engines (and, at the
instead would bring down my rankings.same time, the thing you have least control over) is
HTML and Javascript.how many people decide to link to your page from
It's worth noting that search engines read HTML, buttheir page. How can you make more people link to
they don't, in general, read Javascript. That meansyou? Make your content useful. Make it something
that using Javascript to insert text into your page isthey'll want to quote on their blogs. Content is more
a bad idea if you want search engines to see theKing than it's ever been, and the best way to design
text. On the other hand, you might want to havefor search engines is to make your content really
just the text in HTML and insert all the other parts ofstand out.
the page with Javascript: this will tend to make your