Website Design Blog

Very simple SEO tips for your webpage design

What impact does graphical style have on the SEO performance of a page?

A websites search engine ranking is hardly impacted, if at all, by how it looks graphically. However, If you are considering the position of text and menu's within the design then this does have an impact. The rule of thumb is that all the important text and links should be as near to the top of the page as possible.

What about keywords?

Links should include keywords and not generic terms such as "click here". The links should include descriptive words to help visitors navigate to the important content for which they are searching. It’s important to remember that if something is helpful to the visitor; helping them easily identify and navigate to the good stuff, then it will be helpful to the search engines also.

What titles should I use for the pages?

The specific wording of page titles obviously depends on the nature of the business, but the position of titles of pages and titles of paragraphs should be near the top (unsurprisingly) starting with the most important down to the least important. Again, titles should always contain keywords, for example instead of a title for the homepage of a web designer based in Doncaster being "home", use instead a title such as "Web designers in Doncaster" or whatever is relevant.

Should I structure keywords in a certain way?

If you use related keywords in the links, titles and body copy content of your webpages that is great, if you structure those keywords to mirror actual searches conducted by your potential visitors, that’s even better. Again, if you are a web designer, like me, based in Doncaster and people looking for my services tend to search for “web designers in Doncaster” then that is the keyword phrase you should use instead of maybe “Doncaster based website designers”. Think of how you would search for a product or services and let that guide you. Better still use some of the keyword research tools out there that list what people are searching for, a good free one is Google adwords keyword research tool.

What should I avoid doing?

Tricking your visitors or tricking the search engines. Staying on the topic of keywords, text should never be the same colour as the background in an attempt to hide a load of keywords that people might be searching for, that is called spam. Devious stuff like that will literally get you kicked out of the Google rankings.

I’ve done all the good stuff you just mentioned so what else should I do?

If you’ve nailed all the stuff above, the “on page SEO” it is called, then the next step is to get links back to your website from respectable, relevant and reliable website with a good PageRank. This is probably the hardest part of SEO and an area I am certainly no expert in. I know a company in Doncaster headed up by Andy Roberts called www.needmoreclicks.com, they are SEO experts and will be able to advise and even set up a full SEO strategy for your website including link-building.

How link building is important for your website in terms of SEO can be thought of in the same way as how real world testimonials are important for your business. The greater number of respected-client’s that give your company positive feedback, the more potential clients will be convinced that you are a good company to do business with.

Google see’s links from respected websites as a testimonial for your website and shoves you higher up the rankings. However, if you get a link back to your website from a dodgy website who Google does not respect at all or even mistrusts, then that has the potential to shove your website DOWN the rankings. That is why it is vital you get goo quality backlinks. Companies such as www.needmoreclicks.com can help you with this.

So style does not matter that much?

For companies selling products or services the actual aesthetics of the website are vital as that can be the difference between a visitor taking the next step and buying and a visitor judging your services based on your sites appearance and legging it. So style is important, but not so much for SEO.

Consider Wikipedia; not the most visually stunning site on the web, but outranks most other sites for its targeted key words.

Hope that helps

James