SEO tricks- Bits that all web designers should know

Web designers/developers seldom create a new site, or approach a site redesign, from the perspective of search engine optimization (SEO). Instead, their primary focus remains on achieving a high level of aesthetic appeal and functionality. Animated Flash based graphics and engaging images usually take precedence over a site architecture designed for easy search engine indexing and positive organic ranking. In a nutshell, it is not uncommon for most designers/developer to neglect SEO optimization. The SEO part almost always comes after the website is ready to be deployed, and sometimes, its too late!However, new web designers and developers will do well to remember that the design and the development process can often lead to enormous problems with regard to a website's ability to do well as far as the search engines are concerned. Because search engine optimization is a core marketing strategy, these problems often have a severe, and at times, hard to reverse, impact on a site's profitability. It is always better to plan ahead, and factor-in the website's visibility on search engines right through the early development phases. Keeping this in mind, let's overview 15 SEO techniques that 3turtlestudios.com recommends every web developer should integrate into a site's design:1. Streamlining Your Website's CodeCreate attractive sites, by all means, but avoid making the underlying code bulky. Search engine spiders love to crawl through efficient, optimized code and they award you by indexing your site more accurately. This eventually leads to higher organic rankings for a site's target keywords. Lighter, efficient code also makes it easier to maintain and update your side easily.Clean codes do not hamper, in any way, a website's creativity factor. It merely streamlines the underlying code structure. Get in the habit of using external CSS files that can accomplish the same thing as a heavy HTML table, but using far less code.2. Optimize you pages for one Main Keyword For Each PageYou should aim at making every page of your website act like a mini-website and attract traffic on its own. For optimal search engine optimization, each page should be designed to focus upon one main keyword. The content, meta tags, and surrounding code on the page should work together in a way to emphasize that particular keyword. Secondary keywords can be used to add thematic support, but the main keyword should be the priority.3.Place Your Keywords In Title TagsWhen you search for a certain keyword or a phrase on a search engine, the SERPs show websites with the title of the page highlighted (in blue). Organic search algorithms rely heavily on these page titles to determine the thematic relevance of a page's topic to a searcher's query. If all pages within a site's architecture have similar title tags, you are losing out. Instead, you should aim at improving each page's respective ability to rank competitively. Each page should have a unique title that includes its primary keyword. Furthermore, that keyword should be placed as closely as possible at the beginning of the title. Avoid giving your pages title like "welcome", or "homepage" or similar.4. Always Create "Friendly" URLsA website's URL often plays a very significant role in making or breaking the site's SEO visibility. Novice web developers will often design a site with URLs that are hard on the search engine spiders. For example, pages might look like the following: some%20domain%20name.com/?page24&num=4197&fs=thur34&q=dr476Search Engine spiders do crawl such URLs, but their ability to index them properly takes a major hit. What's more, the above URL does not even support the page's main keyword. If a page is focused on "seo services," the following URL would be far more search engine "friendly": domain.com/seo-services/.Search engine algorithms are capable of identifying keywords within an URL and use them to further identify thematic relevance to searchers' queries.5. Strategic Placement of Keywords Throughout Each PageApart from the the title tag and URL, as mentioned above, the page's main keyword should be used strategically throughout the page. Aim at positioning the keyword at the top of the page, ideally within H1 header tags. It should also be used within the first paragraph of content, and if possible, the should also be placed some H2 header tags as well.A word of caution: While using the keyword several times on a page is recommended, over-doing it can attract severe penalties. Don't go about placing the keyword every single line. Your pages are designed to be read by humans and no one like repeated stuff over and over again. There is a thin line here. Act smart.6. To Flash or not to Flash?Many web developers are obsessed with using Flash to create engaging visuals for their websites. While Flash based designs are a good way of making your site get that aesthetic edge and captivating an audience, unless done properly, these designs cannot be read by most search engine spiders. These contents are skipped by the crawlers, resulting in the page not being indexed properly. To experience this, do a quick search for a topic on your favorite search engine- how many flash based websites appear at the top?The bottomline is- use flash, by all means, but limit its use on the website. An all-flash website is a strict no-no.7. Create Semantically-Related ContentAs discussed above, a page's main keyword should be used in specific ways on that page. However, it is also important to develop content that employs phrases that are semantically related to the main keyword. When search engine spiders crawl a site's content, they are looking for relevance based partly upon whether a coherent theme exists.As an example, let us consider a site that reviews Apple's music players (iPods). The site pages are more likely to rank well for queries about Apple's products (rather than the fruit) if all page use phrases related to electronics, MP3 players, and digital devices and computers (or Macs, if you will). Decent web development companies typically offer very strong SEO copy-writing services.8. Generous Use of Internal LinkingLinks are the transportation used by search engine spiders to access pages throughout a website. Usually, a sitemap contains links to all pages. However, smart web developers further enhance a page's organic ranking ability by using several internal links across the website's pages. Internal links should be placed within a page's body content and should use anchor text that includes the linked page's main keyword.9. Using AjaxAjax enabled pages load dynamically, which reduces the overall load time of individual web pages. Ajax has evolved as a popular development tool for web applications owing to its eye-candy audience-engaging effects and a near-seamless integration with most websites. Ajax, however, should be used with caution as this content cannot be indexed well by the search engines. Since Ajax based content loads dynamically it cannot be crawled properly by the spiders -- leading to poor search engine optimization.10. Don't over-do the Keywords on your pagesAs briefly mentioned above, throwing around your keywords at every opportunity on a web page is considered a Black-Hat SEO practice. It may be done with the intention of optimizing a web page but in the long run, may attract penalties for your website. Search engines aim to provide quality content to their searchers and practices like thse might even get you banned! While keyword density is important for competitive rankings, avoid using them above 3%; on your web pages.11. The Alt Attribute of ImagesThough Search engine spiders cannot "see" an image; they still index through an image's description which is placed within the accompanying alt attribute. This is an often overlooked, yet, very important SEO strategy to have in place. By using a proper description that supports the page's main keyword, developers can further enhance the page's organic ranking ability.12. Broken Links- Find 'em, and Nuke 'emBroken links are akin to dead-ends for search engine spiders. Avoid them. You don't want the crawlers to lose track of your website as they run into a dead-end. Unlike reasonable human beings these spiders don't like retracing their steps upon reaching a dead end (broken links). This may again affect your site's ability to do well on the search engines.Use a tool like Adobe's Dreamweaver or some other online tool (there are several) to hunt for all such broken links and fix them right away.13. Include a robots.txt fileA robots file (robots.txt) should be placed at the root of the web server (http://www.your-domain.com/robots.txt). This file tells search engine spiders how to crawl and index your pages. All pages are accessible by default so having a robots file isn't necessarily important. However, each time a search engine indexes your site it will generate an error if one is not present.14. Include a Sitemap.xml fileXML sitemaps are key to let search engines understand the page structure of your site, how often page content is updated, and when new content is added to the site. There are several tools available that will help you create your website's sitemap.15. Last, but not the least: Back Links to your WebsiteBack links or Incoming links to your website are critical to a website's ability to rank competitively for its target keywords. Get innovative and get as many "quality" websites to send links back to your pages as you can.As has been a heart-breaking experience for several web developers to see their beautiful creations go un-noticed due to poorly optimized SEO efforts, it takes just a few steps to avoid it altogether. All Web developers can use the 15 common SEO techniques recommended by 3turtlestudios.com while designing - or redesigning - a site that not only looks attractive, but also Search Engine friendly.