Importance of Website Design In your SEO campaign
This is a guest post by Gagandeep Singh.
The design of a website can be an important factor when optimizing for search engines. A web site needs to be designed effectively in order to take advantage of a SEO campaign. Web site designers can keep in mind a few points when designing a website for the dual purpose of attracting more users and increasing page rankings:
1. Amount of Content: The amount of content a website has can be a major impact on search engine rankings. Search engines focus on content, so It’s crucial to include information about each and every aspect of your topic or company. A good idea is to incorporate free resources to attract more visitors.
2. Avoid usage of Dynamic URL’s: Dynamic URL’s are long and often consist of special characters and randomly generated numbers or letters. Pages consisting of dynamic urls are automatically generated by the database or Content Management System. Search engines will not give a high priority to them while searching for a given query. The solution to this would be to include more static pages in your site. A good internal linking system can also lead to more pages of a web site being indexed.
3. Selection of a proper URL or domain name: The basic rule for high page ranking is that while selecting a domain name, one should choose a business name or the brand name. Domain names provide you with the opportunity to include as many keywords as possible. But at the same time very long and complex urls should be avoided. Also if changing the existing domain name or url you should be careful to redirect your old domain correctly to avoid losing the any value your old domain had.
4. Updating content of websites regularly: The content of Web sites should be continuously updated in order to encourage more visits from search engine spiders, which can improve rankings. Stagnant content may even decrease the popularity of a web site. Older web pages are less likely to include content with searches for recent events or products. It is generally a good idea to create a section of your site devoted to news related to your company or enterprise, or provide users with frequently updated blog.
5 Avoid using Flash: Web spiders used by search engines for indexing function much similar to a typical text-based browser. However, they are often not able to read the text embedded in Flash. It is a common mistake to embed target keywords in flash. As a result they are not easily able to rank well. The solution should be to use flash only when you can not achieve what you are trying to do with another format. However, with more recent versions of flash modern search engines are getting better at indexing and ranking content.
6 Title and Meta Description Tags: Search Engines give lot of importance to the title tag and meta description tag of each page. So including your keywords will help. Also it easier to gain more traffic from search engines faster if you are targeting less competitive keywords.
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Comments (75)
Another problem with dynamic links is that they often contain your detailed query and, while followed, just redirect you to the front page. So not only would you be posting useless link but also it wouldn’t even lead where you’d want it to.
Very nice post. Website design can have great impact on seo campaign. But beside design, code structure in html can also play big role. Clean and well structured code can improve your rankings. Always try to validate your code with w3c validator.
Basically… simple HTML sites with lots of content are the safest bet.
That being said, I’m pretty sure search engines have shifted focus from internal content to external links coming in now. Content was just too easy to manipulate. It’s still important, but less than it was a few years ago.
That’s news to me Alfred. I have always believed that content is king and of course link building is queen.
About the post, I thought it would give us pointers on how the site should look. But great tips and a big thanks for them.
Your website content should be very unique and also it is important to have the keywords which are very which will go well with the contents….too, well these are great tips…to keep in account….
I agree with the above, however we should also remember to put our h1′s and h2′s in the right places with the right keyword text. It is always dangerous to use flash, and lots and lots of content.
Flash and javascript usually fsck things up, simple html pages (with a simpler layout) are the way to go
@Alfred: I have some friends deep inside google and they all agree content is still a primary focus.
You make it hard to argue. Fine list.
Also to have in mind from the first block of code/the first line of graphic is how you are gonna control the risks of getting duplicate content.
Hi,
Very nice post.
I agree with you that wed design play very important role in SEO because according the SEO content is king as you mention.
Title of page is also play major role in the SERP rank.
@Montana: Recently google announced that they understand some form of javascript links and these links also pass PR.
@Gagandeep: I wouldn’t really agree with your point about dynamic URLs. Static ‘looking’ URLs are better because they are keyword rich but dynamic URLs are indexed and rank quite regularly.
Hi,
Very nice post.You make a right point here web design is very important for SEO.Content of the web site is most important thing for SEO.
Thanks for the sharing.
Great easy to follow post on SEO. I’ve spent the past few months really trying to learn all the little details that add into overall search engine rankings, and I’m glad to see that a lot of the “little details” that really add up are covered in this SEO tips article. Thanks again for sharing.
I agree with all the tips here, however when choosing the content is important not to stuff full of keywords – that does not qualify as relevant content. You might get away with it a bit more at MSN but not with google
I like all the points in this post. dynamic URLs is something i just heard, but i get the point. my blog so far only has two static pages, and thanks for the advice, i will need then to add more pages.
Thank you for the work. Any information – only a starting point for your own conclusions.
I am in the SEO quite recently and a lot of the article got a new one. For example, some factors in general I have not thought about.
They affect the outcome, as written, or other – a practice will show.
Effective six points. Some website owners don’t understand the importance of these points for their SEO campaign. That’s why it would be link building wise if they have a SEO expert in their team to explain to them why these six are important. Or else a lot of effort will be needed to make the keyword or keyphrase gain rank in search engines.
Overall a pretty effective list. I definitely follow at least 5 of these religiously.
However as Google continues to progress its search algorithms, we can almost start to forget about number 5 on the list. Or at least put it towards the bottom of the list on overall SEO importance.
Thanks for the list!
These are all great tips!
Writing useful and unique content is the most important one (in my opinion). It helps when the google indexes your site, it attracts new and diverse visitors who are looking for fresh info, and it will increase the number of people who will link to your site.
Thanks!
Great list! Header tags are definitely of huge importance. A properly designed site can go a long way in the end.
Hi,
Very nice post.
Website design can have great impact on SEO campaign.Writing useful and unique content is the most important one. It helps when the Google indexes your site.
Thanks.
Very good info. I’d include that H tags are important as well. Proper use of H1, H2 and H3 tags goes a long way. And of course clean, valid CSS/XHTML too… Keep up the good work!
Fantastic post. SEO is so important to the success of any website.
As a new website creator/owner, I’m still learning about many aspects of website optimisation for SEO. While I’ve heard about all of these tips, I have to confess I’ve never heard of number 1, so I will look into addressing that.
But I’ve also heard of other tips such as position of text in relation to other components and modules on the site. Is this true?
I don’t think it can be stressed enough to newbies to the SEO game that too much Flash is a killer. It’s ok to have a few flash sections that serve purposes but always be sure to compliment it with good old fashioned HTML and text.
Flash is a great too, action script does some cool stuff, but again don’t build a site out of it.
Again a great post Simon.
A blog is a great way to add fresh content to web site regularly. Content is like food of search engines spiders. If a website provides them fresh and updated content periodically, it will be liked by them and result will be better ranking in SERP.
While choosing the keywords, people often go by the number of search being performed in search engines. Key words with very high number of searches are often most competitive, it will be better to choose less competitive keyword with moderate number of searches.
I am not aware of the disadvantages of using flash. I htough flash would be a great beneficial to SEO as what others believed. Glad that I found your site and I got some heads up. I want to thank you for sharing us these tips.
Hi,
Web Design Play very important role in the SEO.Because their are lot of factor like images and other onpage factor.
Thanks for the sharing.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! This post really helps me because I’m still newbie in this topic. If you update this blog with more qualify articles, then I will recognize this blog to my friends!
Hi,
Very nice post.Web design play very important role for seo.All the onpage factor are depend on the the web design of any page.
Thanks for the post.
Cutting down on the number of plugins you use helps in many ways as well. Just because they have a plugin for everything doesn’t mean you should use every one of them!
Great tips, but I am still wondering about dynamic URLs. I have noticed over the last couple of years that our website with dynamic URLs do get indexed. Not only that they do really well in the organic searches.
All good tips and I think its good to point out that all of these can be accomplished by using WordPress and a few popular plugins. I’m a novice at web design so WordPress lets me put up solid content sites very quickly and the google search results are great!
The way G00gl3 is so finicky right now the smart thing is to make a site that will attract humans first.
For SE0 all you need to do is to make sure the page has the keyword in the page name, title and a heading, pretty much, then get a few links, then move on.
Web designing is something that have to be done properly as this is something that is the very importannt part and also requires alot of effort.
Thanks
I think we should make a distinction between the SEO elements of a site and it’s actual design. The design being the CSS which plays a much less important factor in SEO than say for example title text.
I’m a Seo analyst and i completely agree with above post. If you want to start seo campaign for your site/blog, first of all you have to check the quality of site/blog, which comes in on page tech of Seo..
Importance of website design is very importance as this is something very important part of SEO and also itt should be taken in to consideration.
Thanks
Thanks for your detailed suggestions. Frankly speaking, SEO campaign is more difficult than thinking. The amount of content is important indeed, while content quality may be more significant!
Great post! It is rare that webdesign is being discussed in the context of seo, and to be honest I can’t grasp why. It’s at least equally important as building a good link base.
Nice tips, but I gotta say that I don’t disagree with meta description tags being valuable. At least not for SEO. For visitors who click through from a search engine, yes, but they’re pretty worthless for ranking purposes in my opinion.
Hi,
Generally people think that web design is only important for the looks of he site.but website design also affect the seo of web site.Lot of factor like content of site,images,layout all these play important role in the seo.
Dynamic urls will hold you back, but choose your page names carefully. We set up a site with static urls but wanted to slightly change the wording on two of them. Now we can’t since we are indexed and locked into the original names we picked.
Brilliant advice there. I’m re-designing my site from a basic page to something decent and I’m going to use this article as my checklist. It seems to condense most of what I’ve read on SEO and site design into one easy to follow piece. I don’t think it’s possible for me as a newbie to get the site right straight away but with constant tweaking I’m sure I’ll get there at some point.
Nice article. Updating contents regularly is extremely important, but I am confused whether home page should be updated regularly or any page in the website. Please let me know if anyone has the answer.
Thanks
The amount of content on each page seems to pretty relevant. I had read quite a few articles that suggest pages will gain PR just by having large quantities of content and decided to test the theory. I’ve experimented with posts ranging from 1000 – 1500 words and many of them have gained PR without any backlinks. Enough said?
Great post – design is definitely important to SEO. I’d also mention the image aspect for SEO, like making sure the uploaded image files are named correctly, instead of something like: 123456.png.
Google Image search can drive a lot of traffic.
SEO articles are very interesting. Provide insight more clearly how to build a quality website. If you wish, I wish there posting on stage to build a website such as the quality of this article. Thanks a lot.
Website design and search engine optimisation go hand in hand. I think it is important for a website designer and an seo consultant to have knowledge of each others roles and expectations to be able to create better sites.
Regards,
Karl
Hi there,
Visiting your blog is great and I think I can learn English grammar to improve my English skill and after reading this post, I'm interested in this topic and I want to ask you where I can find more information of this topic? And can you give me any references? Thanks for any response, just comment below my comment because I'll be back soon.
Thanks for this article. Very informative. I have a good illustration of your Point #2: avoiding dynamic URLs. I help administer a website for a Chinese-American civic organization. Because some of its constituents are ESL speakers, the webpages on the site have Chinese characters at the ends of long address strings. If you try to copy and pace the URL what you get are lot of percentage signs and other alphanumeric symbols that look unwieldy.
And just remember – content is king!
Choose catchy domain name. Of course it's hard now that all the best stuff is already taken but it's still worth a try. Catchy domain name means more people comming back.
The whole thing about updating is a lot of work so I'm really thinking of a way to get into this regular posting approach. The problem that I have is that I am a bit of a perfectionist which makes it really difficult to just post something without it being fantastic in my eyes. I think I'll just have to get over that or create a way to post without being too much effort.
Thanks for sharing
Eren
Its an nice work which precise how can we do seo for normal site, but now many site building tools includes this concepts such as Joomla and word press make this so simple.
It is very important for the website that it should be proper designed. A proper design means there are some rules for the website, so if your website is meeting all those rules then it will index easily on the SERP.
Thanks for all the nice tips but i need to ask something about links or you can say type of a link, my development department making some extra pages or you can say sub pages like www dot anylink dot com slash categoryID?=anynumber……..i used the above format so you can understand much better what i m trying to ask. So if you understand the above format, do you think that these kinds of links can take any ranking from SEO point of view.
Eren – remember that you want to write for the search engine (Google) spider first and the human reader second (most of the time).
Just get your content up so that you can get backlinks to it.
I would say that linking is really the most important SEO practice. If your site has no backlinks to it there’s nothing else that’s going to help you.
Great tips. But I think good quality content is the most important part of SEO techniques as compared to rest of SEO techniques
It’s amazing to me to still see flash based websites used by big companies not realizing the effect it has on their SEO efforts.
Thanks so much for the post. Quality content is very important to maintain visitors while SEO is very important to introduce visitors to your site. You have to be good at both to succeed!
I’m relatively new to blogging so this SEO post has been very helpful. I had heard some of this before, but I had never heard the warning against using Flash.
I’m going to review more of your posts to see what other gems of information I might find.
Thanks!
Content is still the king and good quality content is the best way to attract search engine spiders. Apart from adding fresh pages on your website it will be good if can make little changes to the existing pages to make the content more valuable for users.
Website Design has these important tips. Its better to use a static URL instead of Dynamic URL. Links are more important in the case of SEO. Using link submission the website will be rank higher in Search Engines
I would say that linking is really the most important SEO practice. If your site has no backlinks to it there’s nothing else that’s going to help you, that’s why sites with do follow links for comments are great!!
regular update of original and keyword rich content pays off
Great tips, Gagandeep! I’d also like to point out how important 301 redirects are. Plus other technical issues, like the usage of robots.txt and rich snippets, seem to be playing a bigger part in SEO (or Google) nowadays.
What do you think about those matters?
HI,
I think SEO is totally related from the web design because lots of things can be affect the ranking of the websites in the search engines in website designing. Images should be very less in the web page so this is also a great example of the best seo designing for web sites. Anyways keep it up and keep continue with your valuable thoughts!
Thanks!
Completely correct. I completely disagree with the people who have commenting saying that meta tag information is no longer relevant, it certainly is. Do a search on any keyword and you will see the site that ranks top has used that keyword in their title, description and keywords.
A further point to note is website speed. Google only spends a set amount of time crawling each site so if your site is slow or contains errors it will not get fully indexed. Many people install too many plugins on their sites and this impacts load time dramatically. Install only those that you really need and ensure that you have some plugins installed that will cache content and optimize images.
“1. Amount of Content” this is very important but as with most parts of SEO is a very time consuming process! good to vary the content using blogs etc
Too much to think about! I’m trying to get some SEO done for my site as it’s in extremely depserate needs but the thing is, there are so many rules! There seem to be so many different conditions and pieces of advice out there – and this one is new to me. I hadn’t even thought about how the design of my site can affect SEO to be honest.
Lovely tips here! Most of them are spot-on. Nowadays, you can add another golden tip: improve the speed of your website. It has become another factor in gaining better search results.
So turn on caching and gzip, minify JS and CSS and turn off eTags!
Great post, what I would like to mention is that ‘Avoid using flash’ which I fully agree with as Google spiders wont rank it well with it. Another point I also would like to raise is ‘The use of Keywords in your website’ – It possible is the number 1 factor which decides yur actual ranking
I got some useful stuff from this thank you and let me know i m going to fetch content and meta tags from database i:e dynamic content and dynamic meta tags, does it affect any harm to my website as per search engines?
Thanks
Thank you for a clear resource. I keep hearing about SEO but it’s pretty confusing! and I hope this these tips are really useful for me. and It feels good to find this kind of an interesting topic on the internet like this SEO nowadays. I was greatly interested with what you’ve shared and posted with us. thanks for sharing.