Web Development with SEO in Mind

  • by Adam McFarland
  • Published on 11/24/06
  • Article views: 438
Your Ad Here

When a business owner decides to bring their business to the web, generally the last thing that they think about is search engine optimization. They assume that whomever they hire to do their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the search engines and the traffic will magically pour in. Unfortunately it takes more than that to drive search engine traffic to your site, and even more unfortunately most developers don't program with SEO in mind, nor do they educate the client about the process involved in gaining traffic from search engines.

Whether it's carelessness or a lack of knowledge, or a combination of the two, this often leads to a client that several months down the road doesn't understand why their site doesn't get any traffic and isn't helping their business. A good designer will not only program with SEO in mind, but will also educate the client about the basic principles of SEO, whether they are the one who executes it or not.

Many times the clients I inherit have gone through this scenario and then face drastic on-site changes to get their site search engine friendly before we are even able to begin the arduous process of link building. Whether you are designing a site for yourself or for a client, following the simple steps below when programming will ultimately save the business time and money and result in a search engine friendly site that truly maximizes the online potential of the business.

Use proper tags for headings, bold text, italic text, and lists - HTML has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists for a reason and you should use them. Using CSS you can practically style them however you like, but actually using a heading tag for your headings, and bold tags for important text, will help allow search engines understand what text on a page is a heading or what is more important than the surrounding text. Simply applying a CSS style that makes text larger or bold doesn't do that.

Optimize your images - search engine spiders can't read text within an image. Adding ALT text to your image tag helps, but ideally you should remove all wording from the image and style it using CSS, adding the remaining portion of the image as a background image to the text. Here is a side-by-side comparison of two images that look the same in your browser, but much different to a search engine spider.

Avoid canonical problems - believe it or not, search engines can see http://yoursite.com, http://www.yoursite.com, and http://www.yoursite.com/index.html as three different pages. A simple solution is to use a 301 redirect to point all of your pages to their 'www' counterpart. You can also select the preferred domain that Google shows in the new Google Webmaster Tools console.

Get rid of Session IDs if you have a PHP site - have you ever seen a PHPSESSID variable added to the end a URL on a PHP page (it looks something like PHPSESSID=34908908)? This happens because PHP will add a unique PHPSESSID to URLs within your site if cookies aren't available. This can be extremely problematic for your site's search engine ranking. Google and Yahoo will see a unique PHPSESSID in the URL every time they visit a page on your site, and in turn think that said page is a different page each time. At worst, this could be viewed as duplicate content and get your site banned, and at best it will reduce the perceived value of each page. One solution that I've used successfully is to utilize url_rewriter.tags.

Put CSS and JavaScript in external files - nearly every site nowadays uses CSS and JavaScript for something. While both are great for enhancing user experience, neither will help your search engine ranking if left on your page. One of the factors that search engines consider when ranking your site is the percentage of code relevant to the search term. CSS and JavaScript can take up hundreds of lines of code, minimizing the importance of your text and in turn hurting your ranking. By putting them in separate files and simply including them in your page by reference, you can reduce hundreds of lines down to one and increase the amount of code in the file that is relevant content.

Minimize the use of tables in layouts - the debate about whether or not tables should be used in site design has been going on for years and there's no end in site. I fall somewhere in the middle. There are certain circumstances (like organizing tabular data) where I think tables still make the most sense, but I also appreciate the SEO benefits of using CSS layouts. CSS layouts drastically reduce the amount of code in your site that isn't content that the user sees. Just like moving CSS and JavaScript to an external file, the less on-page code that isn't content, the better. Check out search engine friendly layouts for some free example layouts.

Validate your site - a site doesn't have to be perfectly coded to rank high in the search engines (there are many, many other factors), but valid HTML will help ensure that search engines and browsers alike will accurately see your page. Try using the official W3C Validator or install this handy Firefox extension. Validating generally identifies areas of code that are redundant, unnecessary, or not accepted across all browsers. All of which will help make your site more search engine friendly.

Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - simple to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others.

Bookmark it: Digg this! Add to Del.icio.us Furl this! Add to Stumbleupon Add to Facebook

Rate this article:

More Articles

  • Top 10 SEO secrets
    Today everyone wants to have better search engine result pages ranks. However only one can have the rank 1. Therefore you need to optimize constantly your websites and to have an edge over others you need to do something different and unique. Following are 10 rare tips/secrets which can help you get high search engine ranks.
  • SEO For Beginners
    Since the beginning of the understanding of Search Engine Optimization - SEO - there has been tons of different theories developed about how to do it 'right'. The truth is, however, that there is no one single method that is one hundred percent known to be better than the rest.
  • SEO Merits of Interlinking
    Many webmasters spend a lot of time optimizing their home page only. That's fine and is something you should definitely do, but you should also take some time to optimize all of your inner web pages as well.
  • How can Your SEO Keywords make Money?
    As you likely know by now, there is a big difference between effective, quality website content, and search engine optimized (SEO) website content that will obtain the highest ranks in search engines and directories such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
  • The Mysteries of SEO
    SEO, or search engine optimization, is the most important element in building a successful website. Most people online have heard the term SEO and have some idea of what is involved yet it remains a mysterious process to many.
  • Top 10 SEO secrets
    Today everyone wants to have better search engine result pages ranks. However only one can have the rank 1. Therefore you need to optimize constantly your websites and to have an edge over others you need to do something different and unique. Following are 10 rare tips/secrets which can help you get high search engine ranks.
  • Google Sitemaps: The New Features
    The Google Sitemap program has brought a high level of assistance to web developers, web designers and business owners who want to optimize how their websites web pages are seen by the Google search engine.
  • Search Engine Optimization Basics
    SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process of getting high placement in search engines at search phrases, relevant to the web content.
  • Use of Search Engine Optimization
    For a website owner the only way to get potential customers is to have them visit your site and there are only three ways a customer can reach your site. By typing the web address, a link of another website and through search engines.
  • As Search Engines Grow Smarter, Will You?
    As search gets smarter, tricks get cheaper and we get nearer to coming full circle to an original goal of Internet search: that content is, indeed, king. It cuts across the grain of some notions we've held in the industry for some time, that there are shortcuts aplenty in the hunt for better search rankings.
  • How to Straighten Out Your Tax Affairs in 2010
    Utter the word 'taxes' in front of people and you are sure hear a loud groan. Frankly, there are valid reasons behind this response: First of all, paying your taxes annually can be a financial burden, especially with the economic hard times which we are going through these days.
  • Benefits of Yoga - Redefining Life, Meditation and Exercise
    Yoga is a complete exercise for the mind, body and soul and it can give a person a change to know himself in a new light. Regular practice of Yoga has been known to reduce stress, increase concentration and also benefit one's overall health.
  • The Best Floral Perfumes
    Floral perfumes are considered the best perfumes all over the world. In fact the history of perfumes says that floral perfumes are the first perfume category of the world and thus popular also. Floral perfumes represent the essence of love and romance.
  • Coffee Gift Baskets
    Even a Coffee Bean or San Francisco Coffee outlet frequenter will not be able to master the art of appreciating true gourmet coffee unless they know the history and information about gourmet coffee.
  • Rent a car in Israel
    If you are already in Israel and wish to rent a car, then you can make a booking and tell the service to pick you up from wherever you are. The best part about car rental in Israel is that they are extremely flexible.
  • A History of Vintage Automobiles - From 1916 to 1924
    Before cars were around, people usually traveled distances using horse-drawn carriages. But as early as 1335 several bright minds have been trying to come up with a 'horseless carriage'.
  • Ecommerce Checkout - Make Them Register
    The world of ecommerce is expanding daily as more and more retailers take their business to the web in the hopes of attracting a percentage of those ever finicky web shoppers. As the amount of businesses open up ecommerce shops online, the amount of web development companies is also growing, offering ecommerce solutions for even the smallest of budgets. It is important that web developers understand the dynamics of the checkout process when discussing the options with the client.
  • 3 Rules to Follow in Your Logo Design
    When designing your own logo or getting it done by logo design professionals, ensure the following three basic rules and you will have a great and memorable corporate identity.
  • Common mistakes before starting a website
    If you want your website to be a big hit then you need to avoid some common mistakes before starting one. Here you have a list of pitfalls that are designed for beginner and for many established ones too. Check out the common mistakes that have to be avoided for sure!
  • Top 10 SEO secrets
    Today everyone wants to have better search engine result pages ranks. However only one can have the rank 1. Therefore you need to optimize constantly your websites and to have an edge over others you need to do something different and unique. Following are 10 rare tips/secrets which can help you get high search engine ranks.


The opinions expressed in the above articles are solely of the authors and the owners of Point Articles may or may not agree with them. Copyright (c) 2010 Point Articles. All rights reserved.
Script error: local_46140.xml does not exist. Please create a blank file named local_46140.xml.