With everything now practically being available on the internet there is a whole lot of material out there. From a simple topic to complicated ones you will find endless data online. Try searching any random thing on your mind and you will so many links that will be popped up by your search engine. How do you ensure that you stand out amongst all of them? How do you ensure that your blog or your website is one of the first few names to be popped up when someone searches for a related article or content? The key to all these questions is to make your website SEO friendly. You have to ensure that your website is optimised for search engines. In this article we will discuss about some SEO guidelines for Web Designers. We will be discussing below, why SEO is important, what mistakes not to make and some steps to help you make your website SEO ready.
Table of Contents
What is the big deal about SEO?
Imagine writing endless quality articles for your blog or creating a website on a certain theme. No matter how good it is and no matter how hard you trying to promote you are just unable to reach out to the crowd. The mistake that is happening is that the content is not optimised for the search engine. This means that when a user would type to get information on the topic related to your website the search engine will pick up some other websites which may not be as good as yours but they are better optimised.
It is a misconception that only people who do marketing need their website or blog to be search engine optimised, in fact even web designers need it. Indeed you need to keep in mind that you have make it search engine optimised because if not trust us you are losing out on a lot of traffic out there which could be all yours. If you think that having a website starting with www is the only thing you need to get traffic to your website you are wrong. Thanks to the search engine most of the people will just go just their and type the key words and look up for whatever they are looking for. This is actually not an added skill anymore, as a web designer this is has to be one of your key skills.
What do you have to do as a search engine optimiser?
As a web designer and an SEO expert you will be expected to draw as much of traffic as possible. For a better understanding there are 2 sides of SEO, on-site SEO and off-site SEO. The On-site SEO means the changes and the add ones that you can make on your website. These can be HTML, adding mark-ups, keywords, site structuring and internally linking and many more. In short all that you can do to jazz up your website. The off- site SEO is about factors like adding back links to your account, social book marking and how to make people link up to the website that you have created. Out of the two, On-site SEO would need more of your attention and focus while making your website SEO friendly.
What to do or not to do by web designers while making their website SEO friendly
Here we are going to discuss a few do’s and don’ts which will act as a basic guideline for you as a web designer. Some of these, mistake may seem harmless but they may actually be blocking your traffic or there might some things you might not know which if you do will gain you a lot of traffic towards your website.
Don’t make Flash Menus
Flash menus are one of the biggest mistakes that a web designer can make. Search Engines like Google cannot read Flash Menus. While they look very happening and extremely jazz up your website but trust us they do no good to your website. There is no pint having a graphic image on the website that cannot be read by the search engine.
Ajax! A big No!
Most of us as web designers make this blunder of over using Ajax. These are mainly used for the purpose of navigation and to attract the traffic that will visit your website. However, did you know that if they liked the page and wanted to share it with someone else they couldn’t do it because of Ajax? The Ajax content that you create is loaded by the system dynamically. This means that it is not spider able which would in turn mean that the search engine would not be able to look for your website.
Don’t turn your keywords into spam
What happens often is that the web designers do over stuffing of keywords. Instead of helping the user get the right audience this would make it a spam of keywords. You could use this in a different way by using different words with the same meaning like “how much to run and jog to get fit”. You will realise that run and jog have the same meaning.
404 errors. Pay attention!
Don’t ignore the 404 errors. Try eradicating them as soon as possible. These errors can really throw your pages behind in the log queue of links that the search engine will pop up.
Try using sitemap
By using the sitemap, you will be making it easier for the users to look for you. Also this is one of the best sitemaps that the search engine can look for and throw up in front of its users.
Use a Keyword in the URL
Your URL should always have one of the main keywords around which the theme of your website revolves. The keyword in the URL will help the search engine pull out your website very quickly.
Name your images
You must name your images. Instead of uploading a photograph directly from your camera in the DSC023 type format you can name them. Use keywords in naming them this would again help the search engine pick up the images and along with that the website.
Are you looking forward to hire a Web Design Company in India ? Call us at +91 9544668844 & get in touch with our team right away!
Vipin Nayar is the Digital Marketing Head at Acodez. As a Social Media, SEO & SEM expert with over 8 years' experience in online marketing, he uses his keen insight into customer behaviour to formulate innovative strategies that helps clients enhance their online presence & open up new business avenues.
nice article