Search Engine Marketing Series: Building a Search Engine-Friendly Website
by Daniel Shortell, Search Engine Analyst
03/19/2007
Plan Early, Pay Less
You'd be surprised at the number high-budget, high profile websites that are surprisingly unsuccessful at achieving success with search engine marketing. This is usually a result of the neglect of search-related issues during website planning. Following a few design guidelines will ensure that your website is readily accessible by search engines and will give you a leg up on much of the competition.
Crawability is Key
Search engine "robots" are automated programs that "crawl" through websites, following links adding pages to the search engine index. A properly constructed site facilitates delivery of page content to search engines, while improper construction leaves pages undetected or disregarded.
Rule 1: Keep the Site Navigation Simple (Don't use Javascript)
Search engines don't understand JavaScript. At least, not well enough. This means that navigation bars and menus that depend on JavaScript should be avoided, as the links will be invisible to search engines. "Pop-up links" commonly use JavaScript and should be avoided. If JavaScript - based links cannot be avoided, include footer links either directly to the other pages or indirectly to a site map page. This serves as a back door to your site's pages.
Rule 2: Don't Get Flashy
Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash animations have many ideal uses, but should not be used to display website navigation or important content. Search engines don't readily access text in Flash animations, and valuable, keyword-rich text may be overlooked. Additionally, links in Flash-based navigation links may not be detected. If Flash links cannot be avoided, provide an alternate path to internal pages through html links, or a link to the site map.
Rule 3: One Page, One URL
Today's increasingly dynamic, database-driven websites often commit the error of serving varying content to one page - or more specifically one URL. A URL is a web page's unique address in the Browser's address window, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seo. If page contents vary with the path used to reach them, search engines will omit the pages from search engine results. Existing web pages can often be given unique URLs rather easily - talk to your Webmaster.
Rule 4: Drop the Drop-Downs
Search engine spiders have difficulty navigating past drop-down menus and submitting forms. Pages hidden behind these remain undetected. When possible, use a list of standard links in place of drop-down menus. Alternatively, provide another route to the target pages via conventional links. The same is true for forms - provide an alternate path to reach pages that live on the other side of a form submission.
And the List Goes On
The above list of "rules" is not exhaustive, but describe a few commonplace obstacles to obtaining winning search engine results. Existing websites can often be modified to be more search-engine friendly, but careful planning in the design phase of a web site will enable compliance with search-engine best-practices with relative ease and greater effectiveness. It's usually enough to pass a design specification by an SEO (search engine "optimizer") to spot potential problem areas when they are easy to remedy.
