In the highly competitive online market, designing a beautiful and functional website is not enough. If you really want your client to obtain the profits of having an online presence, then SEO is a must.
Generally we think that SEO should be done after the website goes online but first of all it is very important to design an SEO friendly website. Besides search engine visibility, SEO friendly website can even make the user experience far better than non-SEO friendly design. Here are a few tips that can make your website SEO friendly and help your client to get a better business.
Use best keywords- Keywords are the main ingredient of any search engine optimization campaign. You need to determine the right keywords for your business that your customers will type in it. If you use wrong or weak keywords it will never find the websites. Before designing a website, the designer should know who the target audience is and whether he needs to attract local or global audience. Once you have a clear idea, you can design the pages accordingly. To choose ideal keyword you should create a list of probable keywords and research those keywords into a keyword research tool. When you learn their value finalize your keyword list and use 3-4 related keywords per page.
Place the keywords at the right places- Search engines read keywords to find relevant information. It look into specific places for keywords and if you place your keywords in those places then search engines will easily recognize your site. Some of the best places to use keywords are title tag, Meta description and keywords, Website slogans, Navigation, Breadcrumb trails, H1, H2 and H3 tags, Bullet points, Alt text, Title attribute on links, The main website copy, Internal links, Footer links, URL’s, File / folder names etc.
Search engine friendly design- Always avoid using images as links. Use text and button based links because search engines can find them easily. Also while designing the site, try to make the structure simple so that search engines spiders can easily crawl them. Use CSS3 in design because it’s SEO friendly and avoid JavaScript because search engines find it difficult to understand. Smartphone revolution is changing the way we used to communicate and mobile web is gaining popularity. For the mobile compatibility try to avoid advanced scripting languages as most of the mobile browsers can’t read them.
Use keywords in URL- When you use an SEO-friendly URL, search engines can easily locate you. For example, if you sale variety of electronics and your webpage URL is like http://www.websitestore.com/products/item1?=20193 then it’s pointless. Instead of such URL, if you use http://www.websitestore.com/home/smartphones/apple, the last two keywords will help the search engines to find you. When you use any image in the site try to give it a proper name instead of a digital id. For example “1234.jpg” isn’t going to be as successful as “iPhone4.jpg”.
Customize images- Images are not given much important in SEO but if they are properly optimized in designing then they can provide you better search results. When you use any image in the website optimize them to achieve faster loading times. Keep the image size small such as 30-100kb in size and 72dpi.
Use social media- Social media is a perfect tool for SEO. Social networks can build relationships and interacting with connections can help build your brand. Implement Facebook and Twitter link in your website for better search engine optimization.
These are a few useful tips for SEO friendly website. Having just a SEO friendly website won’t get you the top spot in search results though. But if you use professional SEO service then a SEO friendly website will reach the top spot faster than a non SEO friendly website.
