Search Optimization Web Design, Minneapolis, St Paul, MN
How Can Your Web Designer Sabotage Your Search Engine Optimization?
Looks can be very deceptive when it comes to web design. Two websites can look identical to human eyes, but they can look totally different to search engines, with one ranking much higher than the other. When you work with a web designer or web design company, you need to be aware that choosing the wrong web design company can seriously affect your SEO effort.
Web design technologies have been evolving as fast as the search engines advance. However, not all web design companies or web designers know how to apply the latest technologies. Still, many web designers build brand-new websites using technologies that are 5-10 years old. Such websites are extremely difficult, even impossible to optimize for high search engine rankings. Some business owners are surprised to learn that their new websites have to be completely rebuilt.
You may have a cool-looking website that you love, but you are puzzled as to why your website can’t be found at any of the major search engines. The reason is very simple – search engines don’t see what we see. Your website may have plenty of beautiful photos, fancy Flash animation or soothing music. However, search engines couldn’t care less how pretty your website is and will not give you high rankings simply because your website looks nice.
Most web designers only care about how the site looks to human eyes, without thinking much about how the website looks in the eyes of search engines. This is often why your site looks way better than your competitors’, but their sites outrank yours at all search engines.
So How Do Search Engines Understand Your Website?
Search engine users interact with search engines through keywords. It is the search engine’s job to match those keywords with websites based on the keywords it finds at a website, and then match how relevant the website is to the keywords searched by users. So, search engines understand a website primarily through keywords.
In order to tell search engines about your products and services, you need to have keyword-rich content that can be read by search engines. But not all keywords are the same. The same keywords can carry different weight depending upon where on the web page or the site they are found by search engines. If you put a keyword phrase at the top of a web page, this keyword phrase will be considered more important by search engines than the same keyword phrase found near the bottom of the page. Search engines associate keyword locations with their importance. A big part of search engine optimization is to place the right keywords at the right locations on the right pages on your website.
What can’t Search Engines Understand?
- Text embedded in images CAN’T be understood by search engines. There is a simple way to find out whether search engines can read the text on your website. If you can select and copy the text you see and paste it into a Word document, then more than likely, search engines can read the texts you see.
- Flash animation doesn’t tell search engines anything. Many web design companies love to build Flash-based websites so they can integrate photos, images, sounds or videos. This comes at the cost of confusing the search engines. No matter how much text your Flash animation contains, none of it is readable to search engines.
- If search engines can’t navigate your website, they can’t find out all the pages that you have created. Search engines don’t navigate your website as an human visitor does. They can’t click on a button or a drop-down menu. For example, some websites use Flash or Javascript to build their navigation menus, and unfortunately, pages linked inside the menus are invisible to search engines.