Website design and search engine optimisation are separate disciplines, and few web designers have a comprehensive understanding of the issues, elements and best practices. In tertiary educational institutions, website design is usually treated more as art than as a business discipline. In contrast, an SEO consultant usually has a much greater focus on the business aspect, often at the expense of the artistic elements.

There conflict that arises is invariably due to the average designer’s passion for graphics and animation. This often results in the use of graphics-related technologies in inappropriate areas on the website. For example, when Flash and JavaScript are used to generate menus, two very negative consequences are inevitable! First, the ability of search engines to index the website is severely jeopardised. Secondly, internal cross-linking within the website is compromised.

Why SEO

The challenge all business websites have is how to generate potential client leads online. Invariably, acquisition of new business is far more expensive than maintaining an existing client base. New online clients will usually find you via searches on the Big 3 – Google, Yahoo and MSN’s Bing search engines (SE’s).

In order for that to happen, your site must be carefully engineered to ensure that;

- SE’s can find and index it in its entirety

- SE’s can determine exactly what the site is about

- SE’s can assess its relevance to common / popular specific keyword search phrases

- SE’s can assess what external sites say about yours – i.e. external verification

There are 200 plus elements assessed in Google relevancy ranking algorithm, and the more of those that you are able to control and have working for you, the better off your site will be. Think of this as being like a library cataloging process, done by robots! If a robot picks up a book, how does it assess where in the library it should be placed. Obviously, it needs some clues to the content to determine a classification, and where it should sit in the library’s shelves.

Search engine robots / spiders operate in a fully automated “rules-based” methodology to first determine what the site is about. For external verification, they correlate the ‘about’ information against the descriptive titles within external links pointing to the website. Then, the search engine assesses the relevancy of the website against real-time searches as they are made. The process is similar for all the major search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing etc.

There are two aspects that impact on search engine rankings, usually referred to as On-site SEO, and Of-Site SEO

Onsite SEO

This encompasses the assessment of technical and architectural deficiencies that impact negatively on indexing and categorising a site. Problems are assessed and remedied. Then, every page must be accurately composed so that it targets a particular niche keyword set –usually, 1 primary and 1 secondary keyword phrase. In addition to on-page elements, its also vital that meta-data accurately describe the pages. Title and meta-tags for Description and keywords should accurately describe the content on the page. All of this requires keyword research on search engine databases, analysis of competition, and assessment of appropriate keywords to target on a page by page basis!

Off-Site SEO

This encompasses building of links that include a range of relevant keyword phrases in the Anchor Text (link titles). In a competitive niche, a site simply cannot rank well for any current/popular keyword phrase that is NOT included in link titles of incoming links TO your website. 1-way links are better than reciprocal links. A broad geographic (global) spread of incoming links gives a higher perceived value / profile than a narrow range of local links.

Without that range of relevant keyword phrases in external links to your site, Search engines have minimal external verification of what your site is about! So, its imperative that you cast the ”keyword search phrase” net across the pool of relevant keyword search phrases, and pull in a broadest range of qualified traffic / visitors.

Web SEO Summary

Achieving a concurrency between internal website content (what you say the site is about) and external links (what other people say the site is about) is the objective of the search engine optimisation exercise. In general, many designers and their clients don’t fully understand the mechanics of optimising / tuning a site, page by page to achieve a planned outcome on Google et al. Many designers regard this as a completely separate issue, one to be dealt with by the client at a later date.

That’s where professional SEO consultants come into the frame – applying all their knowledge and experience in identifying and addressing the technical and architectural deficiencies, tuning content, and addressing external factors. At Website-Designers.net.nz, we are SEO specialists first and foremost, and apply our knowledge to website design for the best possible outcome for our clients.

Google Sitemaps for SEO are VERY important in the overall scheme of things. Ok, if you’ve got a good text-based CSS menu system and the link to and between pages are easily followed, you’re in better shape than some. However, on a larger site, especially with poor menu structure, and minimal use of anchor text hyperlinks to/between internal pages, Google et al may have trouble finding all your content. Worse, your visitors might have trouble finding what they want, and leave disappointed…

HTML & XMLSitemaps can assist in overcoming both those problems. Its really important that you have a version for each problem… when using WordPress as your Content Management System, there are two plugins that solve both issues very effectively.

Google XML Sitemaps

A Google XML sitemap is an external file aimed specifically at the search engine spiders. These are a less-than-pretty list of pages, with last update, priority and rate of change indicators. The major search engines all agreed to a specification and location format. The convention is that;

• the file should be called sitemap.xml
• it is located in the root directory
• it is referenced in the robots.txt file e.g.; Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

The Google XML Sitemap Plugin performs the role of automated creation and updates of the sitemap file, according to basic parameters that you set.

Download Plugin

HTML Sitemaps

An HTML sitemap is internal website file that provides an overview of the internal page structure of the site. This page can be accessed by visitors who are not sure what is where – and also provide additional clues to search engines.  The Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, once installed and configured, automatically manages your HTML sitemap. The sitemap becomes another item on your menu that anyone can access.

Download Plugin

Search-Engine-Friendly URLs can make a significant difference to a website’s positioning in the SERPs. This is not achieved by a plugin. In fact, its a core WordPress mechanism for controlling the URL’s on every page. By default, the URL’s are garbage: e.g. www.yoursite.com/?page_id=16

What you want is an explicit, keyword-rich URL! A search engine friendly URL… something more like; www.yoursite.com/guaranteed-bad-credit-mortgage-finance.html

However, a lot of people never get it quite from an SEO perspective, so lets shed some light on it.

Using Permalinks

This is controlled from within in Admin / Setting / Permalinks. The default is;

So, what we need to do is change that so we get an explicit Category / Page name format like this;

Having changed the setting, and clicked on “Save Changes” you will need to check that the required Mod_Rewrite code is inserted in your .HTACCESS file. Depending on how your site’s file access permissions are configured, WordPress may, or may not, be able to write directly to the .HTACCESS file.

If WP cannot automatically update .htaccess, you have two options;

1. Change the .htaccess file access permissions so that WP can write to it, then reset back to original permissions afterwards
2. Manually edit the .htaccess file and paste in the Mod_Rewrite code

Once you’ve completed this step, you will discover that editing page and posts now displays verbose, plain-English URL’s based on the page or post title as you enter and save pages / posts.

You can edit this as / if required, to ensure the URL is exactly as YOU want it to be…. For this site, page URLs start to look like this; www.website-designers.net.nz/the-best-plugins/title-meta-tags-management.htm

Post Slug

The “Post Slug” option also allows you to manually control the URL for the post

- and this appears in the Posts / Edit / Quick Edit options;

Whilst most people have heard the term “search engine optimization” – surprisingly few people seem to really understand WHY it is absolutely essential.

When the economic gravy pot is bubbling merrily, and there’s ample business gravy slopping over, even the mediocre get a share. But when the economic ice age casts midnight shadows at noon, and credit wolf packs softly pad the empty streets, howling balefully at the waning moon… then, when you’re sucking the last congealed streaks of business gravy off your tarnished website spoon, ask yourself… Can you afford your website to be second rate, disorganised and drifting ever further into the icy wastes of mediocrity? With a better understanding of why SEO is so important to your website’s success, could you continue to ignore it?

» Full article on The Why of of SEO