Chapter 4 of the Website Building Series.

SEO web design is the process of creating a website that will provide a positive influence on organic rankings for targeted keywords. The website is still created with the visitor and conversions in mind. This means that we are creating something that will be useful, linkable, and still be a contributing factor in our SEM process.

If you need some help understanding the basics of web design take a look at our HTML tutorial.

10 Commandments Of SEO Web Design

Captivating Title's

Each page of your website must have a unique, captivating title that includes the main keyword or keyphrase that is targeted on that page. The page title is the large underlined portion of your SERP snippet. The title attracts the most attention on a SERP and many times is the difference in a visit or a pass. The main purpose of the title should be to entice a click from the visitor.

The title should be as short as possible and still entice the click and convey your message. Try to keep the title length below 60 characters.

Informative Headings

You must include headings that describe the copy included below that heading. The page copy must be organized into logical sections that are defined by informative headings.

The page must have only one H1 heading. This heading describes the page content as a whole rather than components of the page. The H1 heading is NOT a duplication of the page title.

The page can have multiple H2 headings. These would signify components of the page that have equal importance. Alternatively, an H3 can be used to further describe something that relates to the H2 above it.

Copywriting

Copywriting is an art form. You must be able to achieve these objectives to be a great copywriter:
• Convey your message clearly
• Organize the information logically
• Write with personality (don't be boring)
• Write with a purpose (each page doesn't just 'end')
• Provide adequate whitespace for readability & easy scanning
• Use grammatically correct content that has been spell checked
• Write with enthusiasm using terminology the average person would understand
• Use verbs and adjectives not just nouns (be descriptive)

When you have completed your page list the possible reasons people would search for the keyword. Make sure that your page answers those questions. The major questions your formulate about a keyword should located by scanning the page not reading it in its entirety.

Navigation

Site navigation is a critical component of website design. Logical organization of your tiered site design is critical for visitor usability. Local navigation is just as important as global navigation. A section of your website that provides informative pages related to a parent page should include local navigation back to the parent page, as well as to its sibling pages.

Navigation can't just be about your keywords. The critical function of navigation is to aid your visitor in finding information, products to buy, pricing, reviews, and current events. Anchor text in global navigation is depreciated in value since they are duplicated throughout your site. Save your keyword focused anchor text for contextual linking unless they also just happen to work perfectly for visitor navigation too.

Contextual Linking

Always use absolute paths when creating a link, not relative paths. Here are examples of absolute and relative path linking:

Absolute
<a href="http://www.domain.com/dog-training-services.html">Dog Training Services</a>
Relative
<a href="dog-training-services.html">Dog Training Services</a>

The reason for using an absolute path is that when your seo web design and marketing campaign bears fruit, and you are ranking for top keywords, your content will be scraped. With an absolute path the scraped content will provide a back link to your site.

Pages on your site must be linked together in a logical, topical manor. They must be linked together for indexing purposes. A link from a tier two page to a tier 3 can be the difference in being indexed and cached or not. Topical indexing is important so don't link apples to oranges just for the sake of linking.

As mentioned above, pages must be created with a purpose. The page must close the sale, interest the visitor in more information about the subject, or a related subject. Linking from one page to another in an intelligent fashion using appropriate anchor text improves the topical relevance of your site. Linking out helps build authority, which is discussed later.

Nofollow links can be used to link pages within your domain that need not be indexed or uses anchor text that is not relevant (Home, for instance) and are otherwise not pages that need participate in the flow of link juice. Remember that nofollow of each HOME link on pages on your site should only be implemented if you have other 'followed' links to that home page that use keyword topical anchor text.

Always match anchor text to the content of your page. Google is becoming rather good at discounting anchor text that has no topical relevance to page content.

Tagging

Website building is certainly all about incorporating tags in with content to create a web page but you can do far more hand coding than with graphical editors. We already discussed the most important tag, the <title>My Page Title</title> so I won't repeat anything about it. Here are some other tags that are important to seo web design.

• Meta Description
The page title is the headline that is presented when your page is ranked and presented in the SERPS. The content of the meta description tag is generally used in the snippet below the title headline. It should be used to attract the click. Get the attention of the visitor with your title and draw the click with your meta description content.

The meta description tag must be unique for each page and focus on the content of that page. Don't use generic boilerplate about your site in general. Your home page is often the exception where it is advantageous to include the entire site theme.

We suggest the meta description be 25 to 35 words with your important message conveyed first. Include your main keyword for the page in the first sentence but write to close the click not for keyword prominence or density.

• Bold & Emphasis
Minimize the use of these tags. Too much can make your content a horrible read. Any emphasis you include in the content should be logical to someone reading the text, not just for seo. Use bold tags <b></b> for bold content and <strong></strong> for keywords. Also, use <i></i> and <emphasis></emphasis> in the same manor for italics.

• Acronym & Abbreviations
To easily explain to your reader, and often, include LSI, or related relevant words, incorporate the acronym tag in your content. The acronym tag works the same way the abbreviation tag does. The acronym is dotted underlined and includes a title when hovering the mouse over the word.

<acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym>
<abbr title="Search Engine Marketing">SEM</abbr>

• Hyperlinks
A hyperlink can be created in many different ways. To ensure that all search engine spiders can follow links simply use straight html to create your links. Include anchor text with accurate, descriptive keywords in the content, and more straightforward anchors for navigation.

Links can be created with additional attributes like nofollow and title. The title can and should be used in the same manor as the acronym and abbreviation tags discussed above in appropriate measured ways.

Example:
<a href="http://www.domain.com/page.html" title="Link Title" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text</a>

Nofollow can be used in various ways. Some of the more important uses of nofollow are :

• Blog Comments
Links to sites that you do not wish to benefit in search engine rankings.
• Outbound links in your Content
If you plan to write an article about a site, company, or person that you dislike or otherwise don't wish to provide ranking benefits to.
• Internal links
Linking withing your domain from one page to another is critical for topical relevance, indexing, and enticing visitors to read more content. That said, you may not be interested in indexing certain pages on your site. Links to those pages (Contact Us, Privacy Policy) can be nofollowed without fear of search engine manipulation. Duplicate content can be handled in the same fashion. Pages that you need in more than one place on your website can be followed in one place and nofollowed in another.

Tables
While we don't recommend the use of tables to build an entire page, the use of tables to format tabular data is quick, easy, and cross browser compatible. Any time a table is created, include a summary tag to describe the contents of the table to the spider and visitors using screen readers.

<table summary="What this table is about">

Multimedia

Spice up your plain text content with relevant images and flash content. Don't go overboard but including images and relevant flash as tutorials and supporting information can be a good way to interest visitors in the content on your page.

Images should be appropriately sized for the page, include alt text, and typically floated left or right with padding to separate the text from the image an appropriate number of pixels. There is a fine line between quality of the image and page weight when saving the graphic. Check the image at different screen resolutions using a high quality flat screen monitor.

Google is beginning to index flash files now. This fact certainly does not make them search engine friendly components of your page. The page still must be content heavy and not rely on flash for topical ranking.

Citations & Linking Out

Your website building process must include great content. Referencing or including citations for facts you may include about your product simply lend credibility to what you have to say. The type of content you are creating may or may not lend itself to including information from other sources.

Linking Out
Good resources link to other good resources. The best possible scenario is to be included in the linking neighborhood of trusted related sites in your niche. Don't be worried about losing traffic. The combination of great content, website building techniques, and linking to good content ensures sustainable long term results for your domain.

Jenny Craig Page's

The load time for pages on your website is a critical part of the seo web design equation. Many Internet users still have slow or medium speed connections. Search engine spiders are not interested in pages that load too slowly. There are slight benefits to a good code to text ratio when designing your site as well but the most critical factor is that your pages load quickly. This means using a reliable high speed web host and pages that are not fat with code, images, and rich media.

Markup Validation & Spell Checking

The biggest turn off on the web is reading through a page with spelling errors and bad grammar. Your content must be a conversation. It must be a literate conversation. You certainly don't want to use language that the average person wouldn't understand, but you must create trust and develop authority within your content.

We build link analysis tools. You would be surprised how many pages we uncover with H1 headings that are hundreds of words long because of bad markup. We go to great pains to ensure that hyperlinks can be deciphered due to bad markup. Search engine spiders deal with the same issues. Markup validation is important to ensure that the pain and effort placed into your work is easily indexed and understood by Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live search, and all the rest.

Website Promotion
The next chapter in our Website Building series discusses promotion of your domain and the individual pages you must rank to achieve success. This chapter includes information on social media, directories, article marketing, RSS feeds, and the end all be all of seo, natural links.

Return to Website Building Series

Technorati Tags: seo web design website design seo website design ranking design