Home
>
Web Design
>
How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site

How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site

Many web site designers don't design their sites for the search engines. This is a huge mistake because they miss out on attracting lots of free traffic. Your beautifully designed web site may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors to be profitable.

Here are 12 highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly web site:

1. Research highly targeted keywords - do this even before you begin designing otherwise you may have to go back and clean up some of your web site design. Use the keyword research tool, Wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to research the most popular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of your web site. Wordtracker will show how many people have searched for that particular keyword over several search engines within the last 60 days.

2. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. After having completed the above research, you should have found the keywords that were searched on most frequently, but only produce a small number of competing web sites.

3. Write a paragraph of 250 - 500 words of text for the top of each web page. Weave your keywords within this text being careful not have them so close together that your copy reads strange for your visitors. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.

4. Optimize meta tags - the most significant meta tags are the title and description meta tags. The keyword meta tag has lost its effectiveness due to people spamming it, however include it anyway as some search engines still use it. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. The title meta tag should be a short sentence about the purpose of your site. In your description meta tag, write a sentence on the greatest benefit of your site. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page.

5. Include Heading Tags - these can range form H1-H6 most designers will only use H1-H3. These tags separate each section of your web page with subheadings. The H1 tag contains the largest font and is the most significant. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword meta tags.

6. Optimize images using the alt tag - write a short description for the alt tag of your image. The alt tag has 2 purposes:

a) visitors can read the description if they can't see the image.
b) search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site's rankings.

7. Reduce image size - too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site. Make sure your images have a resolution of 72ppi. Slice large images into smaller pieces with your graphics editor.

8. Find incoming links (backward links) - web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include them on your web site. This means your site has a greater chance of being indexed quickly as well as getting a boost in its rankings.

Create absolute links (ie http://www.domainname.com) from all your internal pages to your home page. This will increase the number of links pointing to your home page.

9. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your web site. It will also enable you to easily update your whole site should you wish to make any future changes.

10. Place any script code into external files - when using javascript (ie for swapping images on your navigation bar) it creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search, engines would spider first. Placing the script code in an external file reduces the code to just one line.

11. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( "document type declaration") informs the validator which version of HTML you're using for your web pages. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won't validate without them. i.e.

[!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"]

DOCTYPES are also essential to the proper rendering and functioning of web documents in compliant browsers like Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win.

12. Write clean html code - web site editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. Check your html code by running it through a html validator (http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator).

Once you have implemented all the strategies above, submit your site to the search engines and get ready for lots of targeted traffic.

You now have built a profitable search engine friendly web site.

Resources

The Global Structure of an HTML Document
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.1

Page Validation and Loading Times
http://stoco.net/cgi-bin/wc/wc.pl

Fix HTML code errors
http://www.netmechanic.com

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.isitebuild.com Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his "Marketing Tips" newsletter for more original articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com

recurring maid service Buffalo Grove ..

In The News:

The iconic Mary Kay pink Cadillac goes electric with the Cadillac Optiq, available only to the company's top 1% of sales force performers.

Cybercriminals abuse trusted Intel driver to gain kernel access and shut down Windows Defender, enabling undetected malware deployment since July 2025.

Using email aliases for online shopping and subscriptions can protect your privacy by preventing companies from linking your activity across websites.

New research shows AI overlap does not equal job replacement, with knowledge-based roles seeing most integration while physical jobs remain least affected.

Scammers target seniors who avoid social media by exploiting public records like obituaries and real estate filings to steal personal information and money

Recovery team in Italy use AI-enabled drones to detect missing hiker's red helmet, leading to successful recovery after months of ground searches

Google Salesforce system breach exposes business data while scammers use incident to target users with fake security calls and phishing attempts.

Google announces Pixel 10 lineup with Tensor G5 chip and Gemini Nano AI, introducing Magic Cue, Pro Res Zoom up to 100x and satellite emergency support features.

C San Diego study reveals 86% of school safety companies monitor students 24/7 on personal devices, raising privacy concerns.

Users can now add their favorite outlets' coverage to the Top Stories section of Google search results by utilizing the 'preferred sources' feature. With just a few clicks, you can add Fox News.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS shows an unexpected frontal glow that Harvard's Avi Loeb says cannot be explained by sunlight reflection or standard cometary outgassing.

Receiving order confirmations for purchases you never made could mean your email address is being exploited in fraud operations targeting multiple retailers.

First wireless brain implant works with Apple's official protocol, enabling hands-free control of iPhones, iPads and Vision Pro through thought alone.

Data brokers sell personal details that scammers use to target retirement funds through fake financial advisor calls and convincing phishing attempts

Ten innovative tech solutions from gait sensors to smart pill dispensers help adults 65+ track fall risks and prevent injuries before they happen.

Meta AI internal documents revealed chatbots were allowed to flirt with children and engage in romantic conversations until the company was exposed by Reuters.

ChatGPT will avoid giving direct mental health advice under new OpenAI rules following instances where the AI model provided harmful or misleading responses.

Your phone tracks you in more ways than that little GPS icon suggests. Here’s how to find and clear hidden location logs on iPhone and Android.

Authorities in France and the Netherlands have been notified. Meanwhile, impacted customers are being told to stay alert.

Apple just rolled out a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature to specific models, following a recent victory in a legal dispute.

Kidney dialysis provider DaVita experienced a ransomware breach by the Interlock gang affecting 916,000 people in the second-largest U.S. healthcare attack of 2025.

A Chinese-made Unitree R1 robot walked Manhattan streets and shopped for shoes as part of KraneShares' $28 million AI robotics fund promotion campaign.

The ShinyHunters cybercriminal group breached Google's Salesforce system through vishing attacks, stealing business contact details and customer data.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site

Web Design