Creating A Search Engine Friendly Web Site

Posted on 04. Feb, 2009 by Pete Hollier in Search Optimization

Is Your Web Site Search Engine Friendly?

Ensuring your web site is not only user friendly but Search Engine friendly ultimately benefits your business. The Search Engine’s job is to search the Internet for web sites, determine the subject and content of these web site accurately and store all this information in their index.

Once this information is indexed the Search Engines use an algothrim to calculate hundreds of factors to determine where each and every web page should be placed in the results of Search Engine queries submitted by users.

Obviously all of this is a huge task, if you want your web site to rank well in the Search Results there are some basics which must be understood and adhered to, if you wish to keep the Search Engines happy.

The Search Engines Content Hunt

You have probably heard the terms “Robots, Crawlers and Spiders” when referring to Search Engines, these terms refer to the software used to Search the Internet for content and web sites. I like the term Spider, that little visual effect of many legs going in all directions is quite apt for how Spiders perform their duties.

How the Spider Crawls

The simplified version goes something like this. Let the Spider out into the web, feed it a link, and it will follow to the next link and the next link and so on, just like a trail of bread crumbs.

You Want to Help the Spider

There are some things you just have to get right to make life easy for the Spider

Content and Keywords:

HTML web development code is easiest for Spiders to crawl therefore, to ensure the Spider is able to access and determine what your web page is about, important content should be presented within the web page HTML code.

JavaScript and in particular Flash developed web sites are difficult for the Spiders to crawl and determine topic and content. If you want good Spidering stick to HTML for your content.

Allow The Spider Access

If you block the Spider he/she cannot access the pages to index them. A few things can restrict the Spidering of your site:

• Content behind user registration forms, Spiders are just not capable of creating Usernames and Passwords. They are smart but not that smart.
• Drop down navigation menus are not Spider friendly, if you must use drop down navigational menus be sure to include the links embedded in HTML text through out the site to enable the crawl. Footer are a good location for these if nothing else works with your design.
• Use Session IDs and Cookies settings cautiously, Spiders are not cookie enabled nor do they accept Session IDs

Careful consideration of you web site development should alleviate these issues and let the Spider roam at will, assisting you to bring traffic to your web site. The Spider is your friend.

Site Navigational Structure

The Spiders depend on links to crawl the Internet, with this being the case, the linking structure of your web site can have a significant impact your Search Engine Optimization.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words below is a very basic example of logical Web Site Architecture but provides the structural model.

Search Engine Friendly URL’s

Creating user friendly URL’s is also creating Search Engine friendly URL’s When developing you web pages consider the following guidelines when naming the files which eventually become your part of you web site address.

• Use keywords or phrases to describe page content
• Keep URL as short as possible
• Static URL’s are considered more user and Search Engine friendly. Can you read and understand what "&", "?" and "=" mean in a Web Site address?
• Try to avoid numerous folders to store your web pages in structure with links not folders
• For multi word URL’s use hyphens – to separate words not underscores _ .

Search Engine Friendly – Final Comments

This has been a brief overview of what to look for to ensure you web site meet Search Engine’s criteria for some of the more important aspects which can adversely effect your Search Engine Optimization. Another Blog post which should be read in conjunction with this post is Web Design Optimization in 2009.

Written by: pete@seowizardry.ca – Search Engine Optimisation Consultants

Want to use this content on your web site?

If you would like to use this article on your web site please contact pete@seowizardry.ca for an html version. All I request is you provide Seo Wizardry with a reference to this article and provide a link back to www.seowizardry.ca