Every kid on the block seems to know web designing these days. Actually thinking along those lines it is not difficult at all to learn how to design a web page or for that matter even a site. What with FrontPage, Dreamweaver and the gang making the job even simpler.

But one has to realize there is more to web designing then knowing how to write a few HTML codes or use one of the many commercially available programs. While teaching you how to code or code correctly for that matter is not the objective of this article, I would be giving you some tips that distinguish the real web designer from the rest of the pack.

1. I will strictly ask you to not to use lots of flash contents if you want to be at the top of the search engine. Yes, I know it looks awesome but it does nothing more than hindering your all search engine optimization strategies. You don’t need to provide your visitors an eye candy, dude just provide them some helpful content.

2. Always remember to use navigation menu at the right side of each page of your site, why? because search engines count the first few phrases appearing on the page, this way you would provide the search engines the content first.

3. Make your pages cross browser compatible. Though this is very difficult even for the most experienced among us, TRY!

4. Time your page for its loading speeds. Remember, though a graphic image looks really good on your site, its hateful if your visitors have to wait hours for it to load. You may be using a high speed connection, the whole world doesn’t. Your page has to be quick to load.

5. Too many images have exactly the opposite effect then they are meant to have. So, do everything in proportion including putting in graphics and animations.

6. Colour combinations matter. Your text has to be readable & as importantly if not more, worth reading.

7. Always work on a good navigation structure Remember if a client cant find your contact info or order link, you’d miss on a sale.

8. Make your site search engine friendly. Its no use having the best site in the world which no one can find. And for every one’s sake don’t mess around with hidden layers to get a high listing on the engines. It is JUST NOT worth the risk!

9. If you have ad banners, place them with a little thought. Too many of those little pop ups are the most annoying thing on the web and more often then not deter visitors from sticking onto your site rather than earn you some extra cash.

10. Lastly you never know everything. Over the years and after designing a dozen sites, I still learn something new from ever project that I undertake. Guys you can never be perfect when it comes to coding And if you are then there is always room to improve perfection.

Akash Kumar an seo expert and the founder of vistadivine.com - an
economical search engine
optimization firm

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This article reveals several important web design elements you must consider during website optimization process.

1. CSS Stylesheet

It is good to use CSS stylesheet to format your web design because it can standardize the appearance of your website. For the sake of convenience, some web designers use internal CSS.

It is no good! You should use external CSS stylesheet so that
your HTML coding becomes consise, and mainly compose of your website content. It is an essential SEO practice.

2. Content Management Software (CMS)

If you use CMS to manage your website, make sure your CMS provides these features:

a. Allows you to define different templates for different sections/pages. It gives you flexibility in optimizing website content.

b. Allows you to define Title and Meta tags for different web pages. Again, it gives you flexibility in optimizing every web page.

c. Allows you to generate static HTML pages instead of dynamic pages. Search engines are not good at reading dynamic web page. Accoding to Google webmaster guideline, Google may not index dynamic URL with more than 2 parameters within the URL.

If your web pages cannot get indexed, you definitely get no rankings no matter how many SEO effort you make.

3. HTML Code Compliance

As a good web design practice, make sure your HTML coding is compliant to some well recognized HTML standards such as W3C standard. Some search engine optimizers reported that non-compliant web design could cause difficulties for search engines
to index and analyze your website. It hinders your website to get top search engine ranking.

4. Use of Graphics

You must optimize the file size of your images. As search engines like to read text, you should consider avoiding the use of graphics near top of your website, whenever it is possible.

5. Multiple-level Navigation Menu

Many websites use multiple-level navigation menu in Javascript. However, the coding usually leaves in the HTML body. This is no good in terms of SEO. I recommend seperate Javascrpt from HTML coding by using external Javascript file. For example, Marketshare - an Asia consumer market research firm, found that their website cannot get indexed properly by several search engines. This situation has been changed only after adopting external Javascript.

6. Bad Web Design

To make your web design search engine friendly, you must consider avoiding:

a. Use of frame. Search engines have difficulties to index all your frameset. Even though they can index some frame pages, users would only access to part of your webpages only in case they can find your website from search engines, e.g., only see a left-hand side navigation menu with a blank page on the right-hand side.

b. Re-direct techniques. For some reasons, web designers may make some re-direct pages or adopt Javascript re-direct techniques and re-direct visitors from one page to another content pages. Since search engine spammers usually use this technique, search engines could penalize your website.

7. Flash

Web designers may sell you to build a flash website or make a flash intro page as your home page. Their point is that flash makes your website more appealing and it would improve effectiveness of your website. However, it is not always the case.

Visitors want to find information fast. Flash sometimes could make your website slow and require visitors to install plugins before they can see your website. In terms of SEO, simply speaking, search engines treat flash as a graphic and cannot analyze content inside a flash file. The implication means a flash website is hard to get top search engine ranking.

Conclusion:

For small business to succeed online, you must strike a balance between SEO and fancy web design. A too fancy web design, in many cases, cannot give you any business as no one can find your website from search engines and if it annoys your visitors.

Jimsun Lui, is working in Agog Digital Marketing Strategy Limited, a company offers SEO Services for both English and Chinese search engines. Click here to learn more about how to optimize website. The company also offers Ecommerce Web Design Service with an emphasis of search engine friendliness.

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