Articles & Tips
Simple Designs, Good SEO
Once again, your web designer has just shown you the latest website he has just designed for you. Yes, it is extremely good looking, with the flash content
and interactive menus, very cool looking menus which changes when your mouse hovers on it and tons of other nifty javascripts! Right on! This will certainly
draw huge numbers of visitors to your site, right? But seriously will it? Well, first of all, how will your visitors find your flash site in the first place?
Unless you have the advertising dollars needed to get such an audience, you will not be able to draw such a crowd to your site. Especially not with a flash
site.
I would recommend you to rethink on opting such a fancy design. The best thing you can do for your new site is to use a
simple layout. A clean simple layout
will help you get the
rankings first. Even if your site is not new, I would too recommend you to choose a simple and less complicated design. Why? Simple,
good content rank well with Search Engines. Search Engines such love these content but ONLY IF they are readable by the Search Engine(SE) bots that index
your site. Yes,
most javascripts and flash cannot be read by these bots. And nowadays, simple designs are all the rage too in the web community. Simple
designs can look elegant too, both to SE spiders and to your visitors. In fact, simple designs can be more elegant and professional than those flash ones.
And ranking well in Search Engines can get you the visitors you crave.
I have complied a list of tips to get you started on getting your simple site up in Search Engine rankings. Of course, this is no guarantee that it will be
number one, but at least it will surely help improve your rankings.
1.
HTML - Use HTML to create your site. You won't go wrong with HTML or XHTML compliant sites because that is what Search Engine bots were meant to read.
Although using other languages such as php or asp will not be harm your rankings, they are more usually more complicated and require some coding experience.
If you are good in php, I would say go for it. If not, try HTML first. One more thing, you can use HTML to create Search Engine friendly static urls for your
internal links. Internal links (links to the rest of your site) are the main way in which your site is indexed. Sure, php has it's own mod-rewrite feature,
but that requires a lot of time and effort to do. If you don't need to create a dynamic site, why go for these more complex languages?
2. Use
CSS - Use CSS to design your site. Very easy to learn, very Search Engine friendly and won't trap Search Engine(SE) bots like frames do. And CSS can
create very sleek and elegant webpages, which can attract your human visitors. This is perhaps the only thing that webmasters and web designers can agree on,
they do love CSS.
3.
Text based navigation menus - Not as good looking as graphics or flash but using a text based navigation menu will make your site very appealing to SEs.
SE bots can't understand graphics (they don't know what it is), thus will not rank. If you need to use graphics or flash for your navigation menus, then have
a small text based footer menu at the bottom of your page to make it easier for SE bots to navigate your site. They need to index your site first before you
can rank. You should also use the alt tag for your graphics as well. You can also use CSS to design your menus, they can make extremely cool looking menus
(with graphics!) without the flash.
4.
Avoid Javascripts - Although some bots can now read some types of javascripts, they are still best avoided because you can never know whether they can
follow your links or navigate your site at all. It's a risk best not to take. If you need to use javscript, don't use them with your navigation links,
especially internal ones.
4.
No Frames - Frames trap SE bots, again avoid them at all cost.
5.
Avoid Flash - SE bots cannot read flash perfectly, so they may not index flash content. Anyway if you still need to use flash, make sure they are not for your main
content, use them for your logo or some eye candy only. And never create a site based completely on flash. Flash menus too should be avoided. They are a bane
to getting good rankings .
6. Fast loading - Having a simple layout with
minimal graphics/audio/flash/scripts can help speed up loading of yoursite. I am sure you won't like to wait
for a site to load when there is a back button so handy. Fast loading sites also ensures that SE bots can index your site faster.
I also need to mention that simple sites are
easy to debug or modify. Complex sites have tons of code. It can be a real headache as well. Simple sites have
less code. Which is easy for a programmer to debug or modify when there are problems or when you need to do some changes to your site. And more importantly,
which is easier for SE bots to index and for you to rank?
