SEO - Search Engine Friendly Web Site Design Checklist

Dec 14 2009

Search Engine Friendly Design

Published by David at 10:30 pm under Search Engine Optimization, Web Design

A search engine friendly website design is the starting point for any SEO campaign. When considering a new site or redesign, get us involved as early as possible. Often our involvement early in a project will cover a good chunk of the SEO fee we charge by saving you from extra redesign costs and extended development time.

Domain: Your entire primary websites content should be delivered within the domain url structure. Content located anywhere else is NOT considered to be on your website, and no amount of SEO will correct this. This includes content located on off-site blogs, sub-domains of your domain, booking engines, quote engines, MLS data, and reservation systems that reside off-site.

Structure: All design elements and scripts should be called from an external file, not inline or embedded into the web page.

Meta: The <title> tag and <meta name=”description”> tag must have the ability to be independently structured for every page, and must not be tied to any on-page element such as the navigation or the H1 tag. I know this might seem like a remedial SEO point, but I still run into web designs on a regular basis that completely ignore this basic rule. In addition, your site or CMS must not prepend and append any text to the <title> tag.

URL: Every effort should be made to deliver url strings that are short, easy to read, and contain as few odd characters as possible. With URL strings that are dynamically delivered, your web designer should implement a url rewrite technology to emulate a static URL structure.

Content: Text is still the primary way that search engines interpret what your website and individual web pages are all about. If you require a design or page that is primarily graphic or media (Flash or video) there are a number of design tactics that can be used to place text on a web page in a manner that is approved by the search engines, but has a small footprint on the web page.

Duplicate Content: Repetitive content such as calendars or photo galleries should be excluded from the search engines. They create a massive number of duplicate content pages on your site for the search engines to crawl, reducing the overall value and Page Rank equity of your websitesite. Your designer can hash (#) the url strings, or put the section in a directory that can be excluded.

Common Page Elements: Your site design should not include excessive duplicate content that is placed in common site headers, side bars, and footers. Excessive amounts of site-wide repetitive text will dilute your sites content, and its ability to perform in the search engines

Size & Speed Matters: Your site’s load time and overall size have a direct impact on your search engine rankings. Pages that load faster have an advantage. Websites that have more pages have an advantage. Breakup your web pages where feasible. In addition, consider moving to the best server environment available. Dedicated servers and virtual private servers have come way down in cost – hosting is no place to skimp.

Internal Linking: The search engines need to easily be able find every page on your site. Create a navigation structure that is visible to the search engines. Navigation that is deployed in a scripting language like Java or Flash can be invisible to the search engines. Use html links, consider using breadcrumb navigation on every page, and have both a visitor and XML sitemap. The visitor sitemap should have a link on every page, and every page should be on your sitemaps.

Images: Make sure that all unique images have the correct description in the IMG ALT tag. ALT text should be brief and describe the image. Design graphics should leave the IMG ALT tag empty.

Now that your design team has created your search engine friendly website, the next challenge is How to Move Your Website.

*** Thanks to Meredith over at Key to the Rockies ( Keystone Lodging ) for prompting me to write this blog post!