Design & Layout for SEO

As we know that a web site design and layout gives first impression of any site. If your site is too fancy and regular net surfers will just reach on those sites only and will come out even without pressing a single click.

Now days, Search Engines are very smart enough but after all they are software and not human being who will read the content of their interest. If your site is too complicated then Search Engine would not be able to parse the content of your site properly and finally indexing would not be efficient which will give in a low rank.

The real page content should have a keyword density of about 10% and weigh in at about 200 words – as per SEO experts, keyword density should be 5% but some say it should be 20%. 10%

While designing a web page, few guidelines should be considered

1.       Have more text content than HTML elements.

2.       No frames. They are the enemies of Search Engines

3.       Avoid ads if possible. Because most of the ads uses Java Script which is not advised to be used.

4.       No JavaScript. If you need JavaScript, call it from an external file.

5.       Avoid unnecessary directories. Keep your files as close to the root

6.       Avoid fancy stuff (Flash, Splash, Animated Gifs, Rollovers etc.) unless absolutely necessary.

Relevant Filenames for SEO

Best way to improve your search engine optimization is to look at the way you name your files. Search engines like Google give too much importance to file names. You should think what you are going to put in your web page and then give a relevant file name to this page.

Just try giving any keyword in Google search engine and you will find file names highlighted with the keyword you have given. So it simply proves that your file name should have proper keyword.

Naming Style of File:

1. The filename should be short and descriptive. It's good to use same keywords in file name as well as in page title.
2. Avoid using file names like service.htm or job.htm.
3. Avoid more than 3-4 words in file name and separate them with hyphens rather than underscores. Try to use 2 keywords if possible.

Example of File Name:

Below are some file names which should be preferred from SEO as well as from user point of view.

slazenger-brand-balls.html

wimbledon-brand-balls.html

wilson-brand-balls.html

Note  that keywords are separated by hyphens rather than underscores. Google sees file names as follows:

seo-relevant-filename as seo relevant filename(good)

But Google sees

seo_relevant_filename as seorelevantfilename (not good)

Extension of File:

It should be observed that .html, .htm and .php and other extensions do NOTHING for your visitors, and they are also  a means of offloading some of the work of configuring your web server properly onto your visitors

Some of Web masters think that its a good idea to use filename without using extension. It may help you but not a whole lot.

Lastly, I will suggest the following points in mind before naming your files:

1. Use web page file name short, simple, descriptive and related to page content.
2. Use maximum 3-4 keywords in your file name and these keywords should be appeared in your web page title as well.
3. Using hyphen if needed rather than with underscore.
4. Keep the file size fewer than 101K.