An effective website design not only is appealing to the eyes but also to the search engines. This is a list of the most common mistakes that web designers make and why they should be avoided at all cost.
Using tables for the layout
Use divs for layout, not tables. Tables add a lot of unnecessary code to your pages and search engines don’t like them.
Using frames
Don’t ever use frames. Google and Yahoo hate them. It’s a horrible way to structure a website.
Putting text inside images
Search engines can’t read the text inside a picture. You need content to rank high on the search engines and that means plain text.
Making the whole website in Flash
Flash is great for animations and some headers. But when your website is 100% Flash, there is no text for the search engines to read!
Not doing a basic optimization
All the content on a website needs to be optimized for the search engines. Put your keywords in the title, meta keywords tag, meta description tag, alt tags, and H1 and H2 tags. Get a sitemap that links to all the pages on your website. And never stop adding quality content.
Now, if you want a website that will rank high on search engines but don’t want to do it yourself or don’t know how to do it, look for a great web design agency that knows about Search Engine Optimization and can create an optimized website for you at no extra cost.
There are not a lot of them out there, but I am sure you can find one.
Feel free to contact me with your web design related questions.
