Reinvent Your Site and Get Hits - Reinventing for search engines
(Page 3 of 4 )
Be search engine friendly
One major design obstacle to making your site search engine friendly is graphics. Web designers love graphics; remember, in the print industry it is often said that “one picture is worth a thousand words.” Designers of brochure sites like it; it is a nice escape hatch when the customer is slow coming up with content. Amateurs love it the most, since they know nothing about optimization techniques.
One word is worth a dozen pictures
In web search, one key word is worth at least a dozen pictures. Graphics should always be next to text, or far below it. Web crawlers cannot read images that do not have the “ALT” tag; some cannot read images even with the “ALT” tag. Combine that with the fact that images take up valuable text space in the first paragraph. Images should, if possible, always be next to text.
This redesign feature is an issue that has been harped on by web designers (amazingly, not search experts), but surprisingly a lot of web sites make this mistake. Why don't you know about them? The search engines list them on page 500, if they are listed at all.
HTML boot camp
Frames and dynamically generated pages have to be used with the search engines in mind. Check for broken links, and remember to use header tags. The crawlers must be studied to know which ones are unable to crawl through certain features. If in doubt, hire an SEO expert while redesigning. When in doubt, stay with HTML throughout the site's design and stay away from frames.
When redesigning for search engines, you have to watch every aspect of your web site design, from content to navigation. Most sites are built with no search engines in mind. To effectively position a site for search engines, radical redesign with the aid of an external SEO expert working with in house staff would be ideal.
Next: Reinventing for other reasons >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By Akinola Akintomide
/ 14 
