[RayB]

If you are getting a new website designed it is vital to include in the brief to your Web Designer the essentials required for SEO - Search Engine Optimisation - of your site and also to ensure your Website is constructed in a Search Engine Friendly way:

Search Engine Optimisation Web Design Brief

1. Use a Content Management System - CMS !
2. Using a CMS will allow you to add or change content without reverting to your designer
3. Field to create unique title tag for each page
4. Field to create unique meta description and meta KW's
5. Field to create unique product description (which creates a SEF Url in turn) - if the site is an e-commerce store
6. WYSIWYG editor to control on page <h > tags and create content easily
7. Ability to link images and set a custom alt tag for each one
8. Avoid tables, frames and flash
9. Include a .htaccess file to redirect the non www version of the domain to the www version (or vice versa)
10. Include an XML sitemap and submit it to Google (via their free Webmasters Tools account)
11. Add Google Analytics Tracking Code for Stats and Adwords

[Tigglet]

Avoid tables, frames and flash

.. why doesn't Google like tables?

Include a .htaccess file to redirect the non www version of the domain to the www version (or vice versa)

I do have one one of these but wasn't sure what it was for - what do you mean by 'non www version'?

do you mean for example: http://a1businessforums.co.uk re-directs to http://www.a1businessforums.co.uk?

Thanks

[Jeewhizz]

Originally Posted by Tigglet

do you mean for example: http://a1businessforums.co.uk re-directs to http://www.a1businessforums.co.uk?

Yup

And http://www.a1businessforums.co.uk goes to http://www.a1businessforums.co.uk/

[Alvin]

Great list I am just going to expand a bit about the importance of Titles and Meta tags.

The first word of your tile is the single most important word on your page for the search engines.

Yet time and again one see's a title that begins with a company name I.E

"Joe Blogs and son for all your printing flyers postcard "

Now that is a waste of a title .

the correct way to do it is to put your major keyword first and if you must include your company name it goes further down the title.

so the corret title should be.

"Printing flyers postcards from Joe blogs and son"

Remembering that the keywords you want to be found for go the closest to the start of your title.

Now its often said that the search engines only read 65 characters of the title.This is not true.you can put up to 50 words in a title,our friend Shaun at Hobo web tested this see http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/i...-well-read-it/

Now again its said that descriptin tags are ignored by search engines these days Not true.so as much care wants to be taken with them as the title making sure the description tag echo's elements of the title tag.

Page copy this wants to reflect both the title and description tag in that words used in the former should appear in your page copy.


Alvin

[RayB]

Originally Posted by Tigglet

.. why doesn't Google like tables?

Tables are not ideal because spiders can not always read the content and it bloats the code to content ratio - our resident coders could tell you more

[Alvin]

Originally Posted by RayB

Tables are not ideal because spiders can not always read the content and it bloats the code to content ratio - our resident coders could tell you more

Ray tables have never been a problem for spiders to crawl ,the only time there could maybe be a problem is if several tables were nested inside each other but even that I doubt.I tend to think this was a myth put out by webdesigners who wanted to sell more expensive sites.


A

[RayB]

Originally Posted by Alvin

Ray tables have never been a problem for spiders to crawl ,the only time there could maybe be a problem is if several tables were nested inside each other but even that I doubt.I tend to think this was a myth put out by webdesigners who wanted to sell more expensive sites.


A

Oh I agree it has to be severe to stop the spiders - but it's not best practice either and can lead to bloated code

[Carbon Neutral Copy]

Originally Posted by RayB

Include a .htaccess file to redirect the non www version of the domain to the www version (or vice versa)

Thanks for this, Ray, I found it useful. I didn't have the redirect in place so I thought I'd set about changing that. Trouble is, I can't get it to work . If I put in the non www domain it doesn't redirect. Boo hoo

Vicky

[Nua]

OK so it's the new buzz word around SEO at the moment but it is something that will revolutionize flash usage.

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/search/faq/

[RayB]

Originally Posted by Nua

OK so it's the new buzz word around SEO at the moment but it is something that will revolutionize flash usage.

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/search/faq/

Thanks for the link Nua - interesting stuff!

Welcome to A1 by the way - why not pop up a post in introductions to say Hi!