August 10th, 2010 by Jon

Although search engines are very sophisticated, they are in fact limited in how they can search the web. They need to interpret almost unimaginably large quantities of data in order to retrieve pages and display results to users. As someone with an interest in search engine optimization you need to be aware of how search engines gather data about your site and how you can implement effective methods of design and development to help them see that your site features content that users want to see. Many businesses wishing to gain an advantage in the highly competitive online marketplace decide to employ a reputable search engine optimisation company to get good results. SEO services will advise on various aspects of building and modifying sites to make them friendly in terms of search engines and users. We’ve compiled some hints on how to develop and design with search engines in mind to help you navigate these sometimes difficult waters.

How Do You Make a Site Transparent to Search Engines?

To be visible to search engines, your content needs to be readable. What you need to remember though, is that search engines don’t employ people to read all the content on the web. This stands to reason, since there’s more information available online than could be read by any number of employees. So, how do search engines know what’s on your site? They send ‘crawler’ programs to search the internet and report back on what content you have on your pages. Unlike humans, these crawler programs do not linger to appreciate design features on your site. Although they are getting better at recognizing Flash content and other stuff, they still require a lot of readable text to be readily available to them on your pages. From a design and development point of view you need to feature a lot of what’s known as indexable content. That means text being visible in HTML format. SEO services can advise you about how to include optimal levels of HTML.

How Do You Make Sure Crawlers Come to Your Site?

Crawlers travel around the internet searching for sites by means of links. Therefore, from a design and development perspective, link building is crucial. Links within your site are the roads down which crawlers travel to see your pages. With this in mind, you need to be aware of how links work and how human visitors to your site might come to view pages that aren’t available to crawlers. Pages available to visitors via drop down menus should be avoided as it’s likely that crawlers will not be able to follow the links. Valuable pages on your site that are available only through drop down menus may be useless from an SEO perspective. JavaScript is similarly ineffective for helping crawlers to read your pages, as are links that are featured within frames. Having too many links on a page can result in crawlers ‘missing’ the ones you want them to follow since they only look at up to around one hundred on any given page. Think also about pages on your site that are only visible to users who are following the steps to complete an online form. Crawlers will not be filling in forms and will therefore not be reaching the pages that users are. Avoid links in Flash, Java and plug-ins as these are not likely to be followed by crawlers either. Think of search engines as providing an indispensable review of your site. If they can’t get in, they won’t review it at all. Design a site with this in mind, and if links need to be featured in, say, Flash, provide an additional link in HTML, just for the crawlers. You need effective link building strategies if you’re going to succeed.

How Do You Design with Keyword Usage and Targeting in Mind?

Keywords form a vital part of the transparency of your site, and every page needs to be designed and developed with them in mind. As crawlers search the web, they keep a record of keywords to help search engines decide how relevant your site is to users. Make absolutely sure that keywords feature as indexable content on your pages, i.e. as HTML text. Don’t design a site that features keyword usage at the expense of useful content, however. Crawlers look for overuse and penalize websites which practice it.

Design a site that’s crawler-friendly if you want to succeed!

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