subject: Designing Websites with SEO [print this page] Designing Websites with SEO Designing Websites with SEO
With the growth of the Internet, so are the tools that help with client's needs. One tool that's very important to incorporate with web design is SEO or "Search Engine Optimization."
As you're building and developing your web sites, incorporating SEO isn't a difficult task to perform. Overall, the elements that make the site appealing are the same elements that are attracted to search engines as well.
Listed below are some basic techniques you can use in order to implement SEO into your design which results in more visitors.
- Keywords: When someone is looking for a particular service or product, they are typing this specific word into the search engine. Thus, if they are looking for paper towels, and you sell paper towels, you need to have "paper towel" in your website as much as possible without over doing it. Although this is a broad topic, if you're selling "green paper towels" or "earth friendly paper towels," these details are what you need to incorporate into keywords.
- Less Directory Depth: When you're developing your site's directory, less is better. This will, for one, help the visitor to be able to navigate easily to find what they are looking for, but furthermore, it picks up in search engines a lot easier.
- Headings and Subheadings: When structuring your sites, you should break each topic down into a heading (h1) and subheadings (h2 and h3 and so on). This helps the reader as well as search engines because each topic is broken down. Think about structuring it similar to how you would write an outline for a high school or college-type paper.
- Images: Although images are absolutely wonderful for your site and for your readers, search engines can't pick them up unless you use alternate text. Even the caption or words within the image won't be picked up, thus you have to use alternative text in order to reach a search engine.
These are just a few tips for using SEO within web design and developing and by all means, it doesn't stop here. However, these are successful tips in order to drive more traffic to your client's or your own site!
