Everyone wants a pretty website. Everyone also wants to be #1 on google. It is very difficult to achieve both with a new website unless you are willing to make a few sacrifices.
In order to index and rank your website, search engines such as google usually use programs called “bots” or “spiders” to crawl the internet and read the code of all of the websites it runs across. A search engine spider uses the links throughout a website to find all of the pages in that website, as well as find external websites that a particular page might link to, and it does this by reading the code of your website. This entire process is automated, and most search engines use their own unique algorithm’s to determine the importance of keywords found throughout the code of your website.
Because of the complexities of these Search Engine Algorithms, it is very important to maximize the ability of a search engine bot to read the code and important keywords in your website. So if you ever plan to have your website search engine optimized now or in the future, there are several things you might want to know about what your website design SHOULDN’T contain.
Here is a list of the top design sacrifices you may have to make in order to improve your search engine rankings with google:
1. Menu links: Everyone wants a pretty menu because that’s the eye catcher that gets people to navigate through your pages. So its best to have flashy buttons and crazy fonts all over your navigation menu right? WRONG! If you want search engines to be able to easily index all of the pages of your website, its best to have a simple plain text and CSS menu using one of the 5 acceptable web fonts. Now there are work arounds such as putting a text only menu in the footer of each page so that a bot can access those pages, however the higher up the keywords are on a page, the more importance they have, so its always good for your search engine rankings if you can settle for a plain text menu.
2. Flash: Flash is my arch nemesis. Not all of my clients want to be in the top 3 on Google, however most of them do at least want to appear in Google somewhere. If your entire website is created in flash, or if you have a flash intro page with one of those tacky “SKIP INTRO” buttons that everyone digs for, you can just forget it. Even if you do get your website indexed by Google and other search engines, your rankings will be severely crippled by your flash. Google and other search engine’s can’t read the content of a flash website, so it has no idea what search terms are related to your business. Best bet, stay away from flash unless its a small flash graphic, or some sort of useful flash tool such as a photo gallery.
3. Home Page Content: Most people would argue that your home page is your most important page. Its where you grab your viewer’s attention, and most studies say you only have a few seconds to do so. Google and other search engines agree! So if your home page is nothing but an image with no text, search engines don’t know what keywords are associated with your website until they start digging around in the rest of your pages. Make sure you have text on your homepage, and even if there isn’t much of it, make sure write it with lots of keywords related to your business.
4. Link Text: How many times do you see a link that says “click here” for whatever information? Happens all the time. This may help keep your text nice and clean looking, but have you ever considered linking some important keywords to other areas of your website? Search engines take the text in your website links into consideration when indexing your site, so instead of “click here for tips on website design”, why not try something like “Read our Tips on Website Design page”? You may think its a goofy and not so pretty way to link to a page on your website, but Google loves it.
Now if you’re like me, you like the pretty things in life, and sometimes these things come at a cost. Work with your website designer to find a happy medium between great website design and search engine friendliness. It can and has been done as long as you are willing to make some sacrifices.