The Essentials of Optimized Web Design
The art of website optimization is more than just building optimized pages with keyword inclusion. Website optimization must also respect the SEO friendly fundamentals of web design and development.
In other words, the back-end structure or mark-up language (HTML) of a website can ultimately influence SEO performance. So in this blog post we underscore some of the essentials of optimized web design and development, and how to address these components in a SEO friendly manner.
Optimized Website Development
Developing an optimized website must take into consideration the HTML coding structure of each page. In short, the coding techniques applied to each page can have a significant impact on SEO.
SEO-friendly web developers will typically utilize CSS (or Cascading Style Sheets) when developing a website. Using CSS is an effective approach for search engine friendly web development by eliminating the need to use basic HTML tags for colors, fonts, and other styling elements. This helps to keep the HTML code of each page very minimal. As a result, search engine spiders can crawl and index pages with greater efficiency. Additionally, CSS based websites will usually have a greater ratio of keyword optimized content over cumbersome code.
Also a major consideration for optimized websites is the visible (and crawable) on-page copy. The keyword rich copy of each page should be coded as early as possible in the HTML. For most pages of a website, navigation links and other non-optimized page elements are the first lines of code that a spider crawls. If the keyword-optimized content is positioned above cumbersome lines of code, the SEO potential of a page can be further maximized.
Skilled web designers and developers will make use div tags to ensure the optimized content is placed early in the HTML of each page. This technique is not the easiest to execute, but can have a momentous impact on search engine performance.
SEO Friendly CMS Software
Many websites are designed and developed using CMS (content management system) software, such as WordPress or Exponent. In the context of SEO and website optimization, it is very important that the CMS has the essential page editing functionality allowing users to write keyword optimized URLs, page titles, meta descriptions and keywords. Although these capabilities are critical for website optimization, a truly SEO friendly CMS will offer more.
Good CMS software for SEO, similar to a web developer’s coding techniques, will produce SEO friendly HTML for each page. There are a number of content management systems out there, but only some generate SEO-friendly pages with minimal coding structures. Some criteria for finding solid CMS software for website optimization includes:
- pages are produced based on CCS rather than nestled tables
- the software is web design or developer-flexible, offering the ability to add links, images, videos, and other content on specific areas of pages
- sitemaps are generated automatically
- URLs can be custom written per page (dynamic URLs)
Optimized Web Design
Select elements of website’s design, particular images and videos, can be further optimized for greater SEO potential. In a past blog post, we show you how to optimize images. This technique should be applied during the website optimization process. This can not only build a page’s keyword relevancy, but can help get your media search engine exposure in the blended results.
Optimized web design goes hand in hand with website conversion optimization. This focuses on how users interact and behave on a website with respect to its design, content, and overall layout. Proper positioning of web design elements and valuable pieces of content is imperative to achieve the goals of a website. For this reason, considering the basics of web design and development when optimizing your website is a must.
If you’re interested in learning more about SEO friendly web design and development, visit our parent company’s website www.Peoria-Web-Design.com.
This article written by Tyler Tafelsky, one of our SEO & Website Optimization Specialists here at Web Presence Group.
Visit Tyler on Google+
