Top Ten Recommendations for Search Engine-Friendly Website Design
By Maurice McGrath
Web Development Team Leader
Designing a website that is search-engine friendly and visually attractive means maintaining a delicate balance between what attracts search engine robots, and what human visitors will find appealing. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the search engine robot's perfect date is a website which contains pure keyword-rich html text and simple text links. Humans on the other hand are generally attracted to visually stimulating web sites with images, animation, and interactivity. I guess we're somewhat shallower than our robotic friends!
Below are a list of ten guidelines which will help to ensure that your site is appealing to the search engines.
1. Text Content
The body of the home page should contain a significant amount of plain, keyword-rich text. If your pages lack simple text content, the search engine robots will have little to index.
2. Text Links
The site should use simple html text links (as opposed to image, javascript links). If this is not possible, include text links at the bottom of each page. If a non-text based navigation system has been used, place duplicate links at the bottom of the pages using simple keyword-rich text links. If images have been used for navigation, create descriptive Alt text for each image (Alt text normally appears as a yellow rollover box containing black text).
3. External CSS Style Sheets
Use external CSS style sheets to cut down on code bloat (i.e. superfluous source code). By using external style sheets, you will avoid the need to fill pages with individual font tags for each piece of text. A central style class is used which eliminates duplication of colour, font, and size settings in the source code. This gives the search engine spiders less code to wade through.
4. External Javascript
If it is necessary to use javascript code, make sure to place it in an external include file. By removing actual code from the source code of your pages you will again cut down on code bloat and make your pages easier to navigate for the search engines.
5. Simple Architecture
If the site is reasonably small, keep all pages at the root level. The shorter the search engine spider has to travel to index your pages the better. This will not be feasible with larger sites as they will become chaotic unless sub folders are utilised.
6. Linking
Make life easy for the search engine spiders by providing a clear navigational path to follow. In smaller sites, all pages should have links to all other pages. In larger sites, all pages should link to the default page in each sub-directory and each page in a particular sub-directory should link to all other pages in that sub-directory.
7. Frames
HTML frames make life difficult for the search engines. If you have to use a frame, place keyword-rich text and text links between the noframes tags to ensure that spiders are at least able to view some content.
8. Redirects
Avoid page redirects, especially on the home page. Redirects are often used by spammers to direct users to content that the user did not intend to view. The search engines are aware of this and are consequently shy to index pages with redirects. This technique can also effectively disable the user's back-button which is generally viewed as a spamming technique.
9. Flash
Sites which are totally built in Flash are very difficult for search engine spiders to index. Because site content and navigation are removed from the html source code and embedded in a Flash file, the spiders have difficulty finding anything to index. If Flash is used sparingly on your site as an animated image or interactive feature on certain pages, these difficulties do not arise.
10. Database-Driven Sites
Dynamic, backend-driven sites can be a problem for search engines if complex, querystring-based urls are over-utilised. If your site is database-driven, try to leave the home page and as many other pages as possible as static pages with simple text links.
Interactive Return