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Search Engine Friendly Web Designers

Return to the index of frequently asked questions about online marketing.

If you are keen to get your website ranked highly on search engine results pages (as most businesses are), then it's imperative to work with a web designer who can accommodate the requirements of 'search engine friendly' web design. Unfortunately, some web designers are still very much in the business of 'design' rather than search engine optimisation.

They may look tasty, but all too often delicious-looking, delectable 'designer' websites are just like the worst sort of chocolate cake - look great, taste even better and are bad for you (bad for business). Unhealthy websites from an SEO perspective may include any of the following 'design temptations':

• Splash (graphic) entry pages
• Excessive amounts of Flash and images
• Little text content and few pages
• Ineffective (or incorrect use) of page and site Meta data
• Database websites with dynamic pages rather than search-engine friendly URLs

It's in your website's best interests, to say 'no' to these bad boys and focus on creating a lean, mean, search engine-loving machine.

Working With Your Website Designer

If your web designer isn't in the SEO swing of things, then don't despair. A SEO professional (like me) can produce a meticulously detailed brief* for a web designer to follow which includes elements such as:

• Overview of content requirements
• Suggested navigation structure and button names
• Page naming
• Unique Meta data for home and sub-pages
• Optimised content for each page
• Search engine optimisation techniques (almost the family secret recipe!)

*Following keyword and market research

Glossary

If these terms sound like a foreign language to you, please don't stew about it. You can refer to the (easy-to-understand) glossary of terms for more information.

Store Them Away

If you want to keep any pages tucked away in your online pantry of goodies, simply bookmark the relevant page in your browser by clicking:

• 'Favourites' (if you're using Internet Explorer/IE)
• 'Bookmarks' (if you're using Firefox).

"Easy-to-understand information about search engine friendly web design supplied by Steph Kendall, optimiser, writer and editor."