When it comes to designing your website there are two main considerations, how visitors will see it and how search engine robots will view it, and unfortunately what makes a website great for one may weaken its impact on the other. Flashy graphics and navigation, words or images that move around and lead capture pages may all help grab the attention of someone looking at your site but these dynamic web design features are often hated by search engines which may struggle to read them the way you wanted, and the resulting low position on the search engines may mean that very few people actually get to look at your website in the first place to see the wonderful design that you were so proud about.
I’ve seen some amazing websites with stunning designs, but a quick look at the source code behind it and it is a total mess, with excessive coding that a search engine would hate. Keeping your html or php code as clean and clear as possible is important for getting a high search engine ranking, and try to avoid too much JavaScript as some browsers as well as search engine robots can struggle with it.
People look at a website much the same way they look at an advert or a poster, top left to bottom right, so this line of sight matters on your web page, which is why top and left navigation is the best to use, especially as right panel navigation can disappear from view altogether on a smaller screen. However, the right panel is more search engine friendly because it comes after your page content and therefore means your keywords appear higher up in your website code. There are too ways around this conflict, first is to put keywords in your navigation button names, the more complex is to set up your coding in such a way as for the main content to come immediately after the header and titles, and before any navigation. Speak to your website builder or web design company on the best way to do this.
Turning off the images on your browser for a moment is a clever way of getting a snapshot of how some search engines will read your page, if there are bits on there that make no sense then you might want to make some changes.
Ultimately, however much you try to bridge the compromise between human and robot, your web design is likely to always favour one more that the other. If you have a new site, a new brand or reply a lot on new customers for your business then your choice is simple, you have to make your site as search engine friendly as possible. For a more established business, one that will mostly be visitors by returning customers who know where to find your site then how it looks to people will be the main priority.
Article by Roy Strong of Strong Marketing Ltd
http://www.strong-marketing.co.uk/
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