Web Design Agencies are great at making lovely sites, however can they do SEO too? We examined prize-winning site designs around the world to see how SEO friendly they were. We likewise compared these sites to leading SEO agency websites to see if they were design smart. We noticed that most SEO firms have great rankings but poor designs, and we saw that web design companies have lovely web sites however poor SEO.
Our motivation to do this research project was that we were redesigning our web site and we wished to achieve both-- a great and fresh design while keeping the internet site search engine enhanced. We analyzed both fields (SEO Agencies and award winning internet sites) as a research project to see if it was possible to accomplish both so we could name it something like seo web design as motivation for developing our own website. Our objective was to create our new internet site while using good design and SEO services all at once while making the site mobile responsive.
How Do Search Engines Work?
First, let's look at how crawler-based online search engine work. Each search engine has its own automatic program called a "internet spider" or "web crawler" that crawls the internet. The primary function of the spider is to crawl websites, read and gather the content, and follow the links. The spider then deposits the details gathered into the search engine's database called the index.
Exactly what makes or breaks a search engine is how well it addresses your question when you perform a search. That's based on what's called the search engine algorithm which is basically a lot of factors that the search engine uses to say "hey is this page RELEVANT or NOT?". The higher your page ranks for these aspects (yes some factors are more vital than others) then the higher your page will be displayed in the search engine result pages. For instance this page is relevant to social media marketing, so anything linked to it should be related to that subject.
Nine SEO Mistakes Made by Designers and Developers
1. Splash Page
This mistake is made lots of times where individuals who are not a search engine optimization company simply post a big banner image and a link "Click right here to go into" on their homepage. The worst case-- the "go into" link is embedded in the Flash, making it difficult for the spiders to follow the link.
2. Flash Menus The Spiders Can't Reach
Numerous designers make this error using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can not be seen by the search engine bots; and therefore the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.
3. Image and Flash Content
Web spiders resemble a text-based browser, they can't read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. A lot of designers make this mistake by embedding the important material (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.
4. Overuse of Ajax
A lot of designers are trying to impress their visitor by executing large Ajax functions (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a huge SEO mistake? Since Ajax content is packed dynamically it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.
5. Theme Design and Different Versions
For some reason some designers love to work their style design into sub level folders (ie. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the brand-new folder. Constantly altering the major root location could cause you to lose backlinks and position.
6. "Click Here" Link Anchor Text
You probably see this a lot where people use "Click right here" or "Learn more" as the linking text. This is terrific if you want to be ranked high for "Click Here" However if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, then use that specific topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It's much more descriptive (and relevant) to for it to read "discover more about... ".
Warning: Don't use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can be seen as spam.
7. Typical Title Tag Mistakes
Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site must have an unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the whole site. That's like telling the online search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same subject and one isn't really anymore unique than the other.
One example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress motif. In case you didn't understand, the title tag of the default WordPress style isn't that beneficial: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn't this online search engine friendly? Due to the fact that each and every single article will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the beginning of the title tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it must be at completion: Post Title|Website Name.
Exceeding the 65 character restriction:
Numerous bloggers write long post titles. So what? In online search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including areas) to get your message throughout or risk it getting cutoff.
Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common error people have the tendency to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times does not make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is taken a look at as online search engine spam (bad). However it might be smart to repeat the very same word in various ways:
"Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures".
"Photo" and "Photography" are the same word duplicated two times however in various ways due to the fact that your audience may utilize either one when performing a search inquiry.
8. Empty Image Alt Attribute
You must explain your image in the alt feature. The alt quality is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines cannot see images either so your alt characteristic is illustrating what your page is about.
Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search engine result.
9. Unfriendly URLs.
Most blog site or CMS platforms have a friendly URL function built-in, nevertheless, not every blogger is making the most of this. Friendly URL's are good for both your human audience and the online search engine. The URL is likewise a crucial area where your keywords ought to appear.
Our motivation to do this research project was that we were redesigning our web site and we wished to achieve both-- a great and fresh design while keeping the internet site search engine enhanced. We analyzed both fields (SEO Agencies and award winning internet sites) as a research project to see if it was possible to accomplish both so we could name it something like seo web design as motivation for developing our own website. Our objective was to create our new internet site while using good design and SEO services all at once while making the site mobile responsive.
How Do Search Engines Work?
First, let's look at how crawler-based online search engine work. Each search engine has its own automatic program called a "internet spider" or "web crawler" that crawls the internet. The primary function of the spider is to crawl websites, read and gather the content, and follow the links. The spider then deposits the details gathered into the search engine's database called the index.
Exactly what makes or breaks a search engine is how well it addresses your question when you perform a search. That's based on what's called the search engine algorithm which is basically a lot of factors that the search engine uses to say "hey is this page RELEVANT or NOT?". The higher your page ranks for these aspects (yes some factors are more vital than others) then the higher your page will be displayed in the search engine result pages. For instance this page is relevant to social media marketing, so anything linked to it should be related to that subject.
Nine SEO Mistakes Made by Designers and Developers
1. Splash Page
This mistake is made lots of times where individuals who are not a search engine optimization company simply post a big banner image and a link "Click right here to go into" on their homepage. The worst case-- the "go into" link is embedded in the Flash, making it difficult for the spiders to follow the link.
2. Flash Menus The Spiders Can't Reach
Numerous designers make this error using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can not be seen by the search engine bots; and therefore the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.
3. Image and Flash Content
Web spiders resemble a text-based browser, they can't read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. A lot of designers make this mistake by embedding the important material (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.
4. Overuse of Ajax
A lot of designers are trying to impress their visitor by executing large Ajax functions (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a huge SEO mistake? Since Ajax content is packed dynamically it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.
5. Theme Design and Different Versions
For some reason some designers love to work their style design into sub level folders (ie. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the brand-new folder. Constantly altering the major root location could cause you to lose backlinks and position.
6. "Click Here" Link Anchor Text
You probably see this a lot where people use "Click right here" or "Learn more" as the linking text. This is terrific if you want to be ranked high for "Click Here" However if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, then use that specific topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It's much more descriptive (and relevant) to for it to read "discover more about... ".
Warning: Don't use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can be seen as spam.
7. Typical Title Tag Mistakes
Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site must have an unique <title> tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the whole site. That's like telling the online search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same subject and one isn't really anymore unique than the other.
One example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress motif. In case you didn't understand, the title tag of the default WordPress style isn't that beneficial: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn't this online search engine friendly? Due to the fact that each and every single article will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the beginning of the title tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it must be at completion: Post Title|Website Name.
Exceeding the 65 character restriction:
Numerous bloggers write long post titles. So what? In online search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including areas) to get your message throughout or risk it getting cutoff.
Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common error people have the tendency to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times does not make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is taken a look at as online search engine spam (bad). However it might be smart to repeat the very same word in various ways:
"Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures".
"Photo" and "Photography" are the same word duplicated two times however in various ways due to the fact that your audience may utilize either one when performing a search inquiry.
8. Empty Image Alt Attribute
You must explain your image in the alt feature. The alt quality is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines cannot see images either so your alt characteristic is illustrating what your page is about.
Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search engine result.
9. Unfriendly URLs.
Most blog site or CMS platforms have a friendly URL function built-in, nevertheless, not every blogger is making the most of this. Friendly URL's are good for both your human audience and the online search engine. The URL is likewise a crucial area where your keywords ought to appear.