Search Engine Friendly Design

Search engine friendly design ensures that all the important parts of your site are easily accessible by search engines. When a search engine visits your site for inclusion in a search index, it doesn’t actually ‘see’ the site. Search engines automatically read the code that is behind the visual interface and use this information to log what your site is about. This code can be easy to get to or difficult and in some cases impossible. If your site code doesn’t contain information that is relevant to what your site is about then your site won’t be very effective in search engines.

An example of this would be with a navigation menu. In general, search engines find it much easier to figure out plain old html text vs. graphical images of text.You may have noticed that many sites these days are using plain text for navigation rather than the fancy ‘roll-over’ button images of the past. This is happening as web designers begin to understand the importance of search engine marketing. If the graphics used as text are named appropriately (in the code) then a search engine will still be able to understand what the button is for but it’s likely to place more emphasis on a text link over the graphical link. If you absolutely must have an image based navigation bar then it’s wise to also include text links at the bottom of your page. This is just one example of how design can influence your search engine accessibility and position.

Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly?

If your site isn’t search engine friendly and optimised for relevant keywords, chances are your search engine position won’t be too good and your target audience might not be able to easily find your site. Do a quick test right now:

1) Think of a phrase that describes the main product or service your business provides. If you service a particular geographic area, include the name of that area, eg. brisbane suit hire.

2) Visit the Google Australia website, type your phrase into the search box and click the ‘Google Search’ button.

3) Next, try a Google Search using your exact business name.

Note that it should be easy for you to rank number one for your business name (unless it’s something very generic no one else should be more relevant to those words than you!).

Did You Get Good Search Results?

Was your site included in the Google Search results? Were you on the first page? While you were there, did you see your competitor’s website listed?

Google is still the current KING of search engines and a listing is absolutely essential for any serious commercial website.

You can submit your site for free however as long as there is a link to your website from another website that is already in the search index, your site will be picked up by Google pretty quickly and search engine submission won’t be required. Search engine optimised web sites with search engine friendly design achieve a better search engine position.

Now read about Search Engine & Directory Submissions…