SEO and Design Can Coexist
With today’s technology and mass quantity of experts continually improving the internet’s functionality and appearance, there is absolutely no reason why SEO and design cannot coexist, living in peace and harmony.
Justin Briggs at MarketingPilgrim.com has gone into great detail with his 9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design. He talks about how there should be equilibrium, a balance between the two.
Designers love beautiful websites and SEOs love optimized content and code, but neither should fool themselves, because these days, both matter.
Here is a basic rundown of his nine points:
- SEO no longer means hiding and stuffing keywords
- Anchor text matters, it describes the link to search engines
- Strong CSS and design will be rewarded
- Start with website content, search bots are dumb
- Use the hash/pound sign (#) to help eliminate unique URL’s
- Be careful of Javascript, make it SEO-friendly
- Flash is okay for SEO, but still be weary of where it’s used
- CSS for visual improvements and not hiding keywords
- Supply links-of-plenty in the footer
Yes, it’s time to get excited about web design and SEO as an item! You of course need to be sure you follow the rules of both, but intermingling is no longer frowned upon. In fact, it is quite encouraged when it comes down to a website ultimately being successful.
Ah, the brains and beauty of the interwebs, united.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Thanks for the tips, yeah a good design with a good SEO tactics will make your website at the high page rank.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:07 am
Designers love beautiful websites and SEOs love optimized content and code, but neither should fool themselves, because these days, both matter.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for the post.
Can you elaborate on # 7: “Flash is okay for SEO, but still be weary of where it’s used?”
Where is the best place to put Flash elements on your website?
July 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Very true! A professional website audit can be a highly effective way to identify opportunities for improving your site’s design and SEO-friendliness.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Patelligence:
Even thought Flash can now be read by major search engines, it’s a good idea to not make Flash the primary source of imagery for your website. Using spots of Flash animation to enhance your sites appearance is a much better idea. Maybe you want something to stand out in particular on your site, so add some animated Flash accents around it. Don’t use Flash for your site’s navigation and be careful not to overdo it. Too many things loading at once will slow your site down tremendously.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:51 am
Great tips. Thanks for taking the time to reply!!
August 10th, 2009 at 8:45 am
i m also an seo executive and i can understand ur info in your blog post…….thanks for the info…….
August 12th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Good design is a fantastic blend of visual joy, usability and SEO.
@ Patelligence ” Recently, we’ve improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe’s Flash Player technology.” you can read more here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html
It was long thought that search engines were not able to read flash movie files, Yes, search engines can read and index flash files but Flash still is not optimal in competitive spaces.
August 20th, 2009 at 7:42 am
This means that we understand how search engines operate, and what it takes to get your website ranked well with the search terms that your potential customers are using to find your competition.