SEO is nothing new. It is quite possibly the most popular buzzword related to non-web people, even more popular than 2.0. There are many services out there that sell SEO (search engine optimization) services, charging sometimes as high as $1500 a month and $1 per visitor. I find this ridiculous. SEO service providers are nothing more than web designers that can’t design. They probably follow a checklist in order to “optimize” web sites for SEO. Often there services stop after the optimization, sometimes they’ll continue by doing SEM (search engine marketing). These service providers are taking advantage of your client.

Anyone interested in this little article I’m writing probably knows the difference between SEO and SEM. SEO is optimizing a website to perform well in search engines. It’s not quite that simple anymore though because the search engine rankings have gotten very competitive. So, SEM was born. This is actually marketing your site for search engines. This sometimes includes pay-per-click services, or pay-per-blog services, or general link building. If its link building, hopefully the service provider isn’t simply signing up the site for a link exchange, because that could potentially hurt the site’s ranking.

With SEO and SEM explained, now for why SEO is a part of the design process. SEO isn’t very difficult, and as a designer, you’re touching everything that needs to be optimized for search engines anyway. So let’s hit the important stuff.

The Title Tag

As a designer, the title tag for the page is the most important thing you can do for SEO. You’re setting up the header anyway, sticking in a title tag, so why not make it descriptive. Every page should have a different title tag, and should include keywords that relate to the content of that page. You’ve got 70 or so characters, so make them count. If it is for a local business, make sure you include the location, what people will search for when looking for the business, the business name, and any other related keywords.

Meta Tags

Though certainly not as important as they used to be since Google started excluding them several years back, other search engines still make use of them. You’re in the head area anyway, add in the description and keywords meta tag. I see sites all the time that lack descriptions and keywords. Your client is eventually going to Google them self, and they’re going to wonder why the description isn’t very nice. Again, every page should have tags related to its content.

Headline Tags

There is a reason why we have tags like <h1>…<h6>. They’re for headlines, and they work in order of importance. Don’t make the mistake of just using a span class, or a paragraph class to style your headlines. I hate committing styles to just a tag, so I’ll make my style as a class with a descriptive name, but I apply that class to the <h1> tag. Robots expect to see important information here, so choose your words wisely and make sure to include your most important keyword.

Navigation

Navigation is very important. The best site navigation are text links. With CSS you have a lot of options to style your nav, you can put background images to make them look like buttons, or tabs, or anything. It’s important to keep in mind that robots aren’t going to follow your links if they’re embedded in flash, or javascript. So stick to XHTML here. If you must use flash or javascript, make sure you include text links in your copy or in the footer. If you’re putting it in the copy, try to make sure to utilize key word linking instead of generic “click here”. 

Your copy

Here is where people can get carried away. Write for people, not for robots. Include your keywords in your copy, but do so in natural places. If you write for a robot, it won’t sound good to humans.

Image alt tags

Though not extremely important, they do add into the equation. For accessibility sake use descriptive text, but include a keyword or two when you can. We’re looking to be as optimized as possible while staying legit.

Above the Fold

This is something you hear a lot of people say, relating web design to newspaper layout. It means put your important information at the top so it is visible when the page loads. This isn’t nearly as important anymore because we have scroll wheels. Before, when people had to mouse over and pull the scroll bar down, or click on the arrow this was a more important concept, but now it is pretty much void. However, the above the fold concept does hold some truth when it comes to SEO. Content that is higher on the page, receives more importance than content lower on the page. Not necessarily something to live by, but something to keep in mind.

That’s it

SEO isn’t something abstract or difficult. Any good designer will cover most of the basics when creating a site. This sometimes means sacrificing design, like not using images for text, or using the proper text replacement techniques like the infamous text-indent of -9999px. A lot of times you want to pitch a Flash site design to a client, but do you really think that your clients’ customers care about that. I guess my point is, SEO shouldn’t be an add-on service, it should be an included in the package type of deal.

subscribe to my feed