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Web Page Design Basics, Level 2

by Dave Maloney
Our last post Web Page Design Basics sums up the idea that "Simple is Better;" you don't want visitors to be confused without a clear message, or overwhelmed by so much fanfare that they can't find what they came to your site for in the first place.

Plan your Web Design with SEO Already Built In

Right from the planning stages of your web site design it's a good idea to consider how nice your web page layout looks, not only to human eyes, but also to the robots who will be indexing your pages. Keep in mind, they are machines, not people, so their "eyes" work different than ours. Although they "see" different than us, the same rule still applies: "Keep it simple!"

Web Site Design with SEO: Some Basic Tips

1. Avoid designing your site with Flash! Ok, some will argue that you can do a little seo in Flash, but it is complicated. Search engines robots see a big blank nothing; don't you think you'd be better off with some real content so there's no doubt in search engines' minds what your site is about?
2. Avoid image or java based navigation. Like Flash, robots can't see what an image is. If your nav is all image buttons, you're making it very difficult for search engines to crawl and index your page structure. Use text buttons which you can custom style in your design. 
3. Keep your navigation simple. Using text is best for your navigation, and even better, try to give your pages more specific names. Help search engines understand what your page is about; maybe even work a keyword into it!
4. Content! Content! Content! Don't design a page with all or mostly images; search engines can only read and crawl text. The design may look great to you and I, but for SEO from a robot's point of view, it's invisible and useless.
5. Content Location. It helps your page SEO if you position your text (with keywords built in) near the top of the page and place large images or a table of images below. This is easier for both people and machines to figure out what the page is about.

So if you are going to search engine optimize your new web pages, (which you definitely should!) why not plan your web design with SEO already started. Remember, although your layout "looks" different to human eyes and seo robots, simple and easy to follow is universally better!