Search Engine Optimisation
Website Marketing and Promotion

Website Search Engine Optimisation Tips

Website Design Guidelines

The Website designer needs to work closely with the Copywriter and the Graphic artist. This will ensure that the Website is attractive and has a good Ranking.

Here are some design guidelines for a Website:

• Set the width of the Web Page so that visitors never have to scroll sideways.
• The size of the Web Page, including Images, should be less than 40 KB. The ideal size is less than 20k.
• Each Web page should have a descriptive name containing relevant Keywords. Each word contained in the name should be separated by a hyphen (-). If the URL is in a hyperlink, the anchor text should inform the visitor of the link contents. The URL also appears in the Search Results and will be in bold if a Keyword is found.
• Despite the advances in CSS, Tables are still the easiest way to align columns. However, don't use Tables within Tables within Tables. Search Engines have difficulties with complex structures.
• Use CSS to ensure that all links are consistently styled and stand out from the regular text.
• The CSS Stylesheet file size should be minimised to reduce initial load times.
• Using the bold <b> tag around some of the keywords on each page may help. Two or three times per page is quite sufficient.
• Put relevant descriptions in all anchor hyperlinks
• Some technology can confuse the Search Engine spiders. Frames, CGI scripts, image maps, etc may be ignored by the spiders.
• All Websites should have an up-to-date Sitemap. The Sitemap must reside in the root folder.
• For ASP.Net, it is essential to set strict="true" and explicit="true" in the web.config file. This will minimise problems with Visual Basic code.
• Statistical Analyses of visitor activity is essential. See Website Activity Tracking and Website Statistics.
• Google advises that there should be a different Meta Description for each Web page. Using ASP.Net and Master pages, only a common Meta Description tag will be created. It is possible to have a different Meta Description for each page – see Specifying the Title, Meta Tags, and Other HTML Headers in the Master Page.
• Search Engines may ignore links in JavaScript code. If the JavaScript code in the page is too large, the spider may skip the Website entirely.
• Store Images in their own folder.
• Avoid using Flash. Search Engines have problems reading it.
• Avoid using script for navigation – pages may not get indexed.