If you new website will be undergoing a post-launch online marketing or search engine optimization program, a little awareness at the time of building your website will save you a lot of money and headache in the long run.
What is a Search Engine-Friendly Web Design?
If a web design is user-friendly, can easily be indexed search engines, that’s a good start. Google indexes every page on the internet and then filters it through a secret algorithm to determine how worthy that page is to be served up as a result. A search engine-friendly website is designed for be inviting for the search engines to easily read, index and store the information on the site.
Search engine robots are the tools Google uses to read and index content. They do the following:
- They read all text
- They follow links
- They measure popularity
So in all of the above, the keywords for your business or service come into play. The content should have readable and yet enough density of the keywords to be measurable. The navigation should use keywords to link content and pages. And last, the inbound links should be keyword-related and keyword-rich.
How Can I Tell if a Website is Search Engine-Friendly?
Well, this is a challenge. In general a few tips:
- A content management system like Drupal or WordPress
- A website built without tables for structure
- CSS positioning style sheets
- XHTML compliance
Although you may not understand each of these items, if you inquire that your site will meet these basic guidelines, you’re more likely to end up with a better outcome. Some enhancements we use on our Drupal web designs are:
- 301 & Canonical Redirect
- Cloud Tags
- Enhanced Footer
- Feedburner
- Glossary for Auto-Linking
- Google Analytics Embedded
- htaccess Modification
- Meta Description
- Meta Tag
- No-follow Menu Tags
- Page Title Module
- PathAuto
- RSS Feed
- Social Bookmarking
- Statistics
- Taxonomy
- XML Sitemap
My Web Design Firm Doesn’t Do SEF
Although a bit surprising, many design firms are not yet versed in building search engine-friendly websites. The entire web design, search engine optimization and now social media industries are still in their infancy with little regulation, testing or certifications. It definitely is buyer beware. Read enough to learn the lingo and ask questions. See which of the web design projects went on to the SEO or online marketing stage and talk to the SEO company about the quality of the platform they were provided.
A SEF web design will save the SEO company time and money. Their work will yield higher, faster and better results. Our clients often enjoy a huge boost in rankings just from launching a new Drupal website.
This is an extensive topic with much to discuss, if we can help you sort out your situation, give us a call at Green Bird Media for a free consultation.
