Do
not use drop-down menus for your navigation.
Search engines and people
using screen readers will not be able to find those pages in the
drop-downs. If you must use drop-downs, ensure there are accompanying
text links on the page.
Do
not build your website in Flash.
Search engines cannot
read the content in Flash movies and neither can people using screen
readers. If you must have a Flash site, build a second HTML site for the
search engines and disabled visitors. Make sure that you instruct the
robots to only index your HTML site using your Robots.txt file.
Have
an SEO consultant on board from the start.
They will ensure that
your web development process is as search engine friendly as possible.
Having an SEO professional work on your project from the start will also
reduce post-production costs to make the site search engine friendly.
Go
easy on images.
Just like Flash, the
search engines cannot read the content of images. It is best to describe
your content in text as much as possible.
Search engines and visitors like fresh content.
Ensure you have an area
on your website devoted to this. New content gives both the search
engines and your visitors a reason to keep coming back!
Search engines and people navigate through the web and your site via
links.
Don’t neglect this
important part of building a website. Ensure you have at least a
text-based site map and generously link to other relevant areas of your
site. If you can use your important keywords, even betters.
Do
not use dynamic URLs (include variable IDs etc.) on pages that you want
to be indexed.
Keep it simple and the
search engines will reward you.
Avoid
using JavaScript in your header tags and reference it externally when
necessary.
Search engines still have
trouble reading this kind of code and may miss important information if
they get tangled up in unreadable code.
Try
to keep all of your important pages in the top levels of your site.
Just as you don’t want
your visitors to travel too far to find the information they want, the
spiders don’t want to do it either.
