According to a poll I conducted, just over 1 out of 10 people don’t think SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is mandatory as a designer; and what really surprised me is about 24% don’t even know what SEO is! If you’re among the quarter of people who don’t know what SEO is or understand how it can help you, you should really read this article. This is an SEO guide for designers who want to learn about making it easier for websites or blogs to be found by search engines. I’ll explain the common mistakes made by designers and developers. Then I’ll provide some basic tips that you should be practicing to optimize your site for search engines.
[poll=7]
First, let’s look at how crawler-based search engines work (both Google and Yahoo fall in this category). Each search engine has its own automated program called a "web spider" or "web crawler" that crawls the web. The main purpose of the spider is to crawl web pages, read and collect the content, and follow the links (both internal and external). The spider then deposits the information collected into the search engine’s database called the index.
When searchers enter a query in the search box of a search engine, the search engine’s job is to find the most relevant results to the query by matching the search query to the information in its index.
What makes or breaks a search engine is how well it answers your question when you perform a search. That’s based on what’s called the search engine algorithm which is basically a bunch of factors that the search engine uses to say “hey is this page RELEVANT or NOT?”. The higher your page ranks for these factors (yes some factors are more important than others) than the higher your page will get displayed in the search engine result pages.
Each search engine has its own algorithm in ranking web pages. Understanding the general factors that influence the algorithm can affect your search result position, and this is what SEO experts are hired for. An SEO’s job has two aspects: On-Site and Off-Site.
On-Site SEO: are the things that you can do on your site, such as: HTML markups, target keywords, internal linking, site structure, etc.
Off-Site SEO: are the things that you have much less control of, such as: how many backlinks you get and how people link to your site.
This is a guide for designers and developers. The main concern is the On-Site aspects. Secretly though, if you do your job right… and design a beautiful site… and/or produce useful content… you’ll get Off-Site backlinks and social bookmarks without even lifting a finger.
I’ve seen this mistake many times where people put up just a big banner image and a link "Click here to enter" on their homepage. The worst case — the "enter" link is embedded in the Flash object, which makes it impossible for the spiders to follow the link.
This is fine if you don’t care about what a search engine knows about your site; otherwise, you’re making a BIG mistake. Your homepage is probably your website’s highest ranking page and gets crawled frequently by web spiders. Your internal pages will not appear in the search engine index without the proper linking structure to internal pages for the spider to follow.
Your homepage should include (at minimum) target keywords and links to important pages.
Many designers make this mistake by using Flash menus such as those fade-in and animated menus. They might look cool to you but they can’t be seen by the search engines; and thus the links in the Flash menu will not be followed.
Web spiders are like a text-based browser, they can’t read the text embedded in the graphic image or Flash. Most designers make this mistake by embedding the important content (such as target keywords) in Flash and image.
A lot of developers are trying to impress their visitor by implementing massive Ajax features (particularly for navigation purposes), but did you know that it is a big SEO mistake? Because Ajax content is loaded dynamically, so it is not spiderable or indexable by search engines.
Another disadvantage of Ajax — since the address URL doesn’t reload, your visitor can not send the current page to their friends.
For some reason, some designers love to version their theme design into sub level folders (ie. domain.com/v2, v3, v4) and redirect to the new folder. Constantly changing the main root location may cause you to lose backlink counts and ranking.
You probably see this a lot where people use "Click here" or "Learn more" as the linking text. This is great if you want to be ranked high for "Click Here". But if you want to tell the search engine that your page is important for a topic, than use that topic/keyword in your link anchor text. It’s much more descriptive (and relevant) to say “learn more about {keyword topic}”
Warning: Don’t use the EXACT same anchor text everywhere on your website. This can sometimes be seen as search engine spam too.
Same or similar title text:
Every page on your site should have a unique <title>
tag with the target keywords in it. Many developers make the mistake of having the same or similar title tags throughout the entire site. That’s like telling the search engine that EVERY page on your site refers to the same topic and one isn’t any more unique than the other.
One good example of bad Title Tag use would be the default WordPress theme. In case you didn’t know, the title tag of the default WordPress theme isn’t
that useful: Site Name > Blog Archive > Post Title. Why isn’t this search engine friendly? Because every single blog post will have the same text "Site Name > Blog Archive >" at the beginning of the title tag. If you really want to include the site name in the title tag, it
should be at the end: Post Title | Site Name.
Exceeding the 65 character limit:
Many bloggers write very long post titles. So what? In search engine result pages, your title tag is used as the link heading. You have about 65 characters (including
spaces) to get your message across or risk it getting cutoff.
Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:
"Photo Tips & Photography Techniques for Great Pictures"
“Photo” and “Photography” are the same word repeated twice but in different ways because your audience might use either one when performing a search query.
You should always describe your image in the alt
attribute. The alt
attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your alt
attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.
Hint: Properly describing your images can help your ranking in the image search results. For example, Google image search brings me hundreds of referrals everyday for the search terms "abstract" and "dj".
Most blog or CMS platforms have a friendly URL feature built-in, however, not every blogger is taking advantage of this. Friendly URL’s are good for both your human audience and the search engines. The URL is also an important spot where your keywords should appear.
Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title
Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356
Let me tell you WHAT TO DO by telling you WHAT NOT TO DO:
Write about topics your audience cares about. Like what? Find out, by conducting a poll (like I did), scan some relevant bulletin boards or forums, look for common topics in customer emails, or do some keyword research. There are great free keyword tools like the Google Keyword Tool or SEO Book’s Keyword Tool and loads more. The plan is not to spend your life doing keyword research but just to get a general idea of what your visitors are interested in.
Once you have a topic for readers; help search engines find it. Keyword Density is the number of times a keyword appears in a page compared to the total number of words. You want to make sure your keywords are included in the crucial areas:
Most people aim for a keyword density of 2% (i.e. use the keyword 2 times for every 100 words). But what if your keyword phrase is “SEO for Web Designers and Web Developers” how many times can you repeat that before it sounds just plain unnatural? Write for your readers not for search engines. If you follow the tips
in this article you’ll be writing naturally for your readers; which works for the search engines too.
Warning: Do not over fill your page with the same keywords or you might be penalized by search engines for keyword stuffing.
In this article, it makes sense to mention topics like “keyword research”, “search engine crawlers” and “title tag use”, but what if I mentioned a highly trafficked term like “cell phone plans”… kind of out of context right? So use other keywords and topics that make sense to your audience, the search engine measures keyword relations to determine relevancy too.
Do you want the search engine to see every page on your website? Help the search engine spider do its job. There should be a page (like a sitemap or
blog archives) that links to all the pages on your site.
Tip: You can promote the more important pages by inserting text links within body content. Make sure you use relevant linking text and avoid using "click here" (as mentioned earlier).
You should always search for and fix the broken links on your site. If you’ve removed a page or section, you can use the robot.txt to prevent the spiders crawling and indexing the broken links. If you have moved a page or your entire website, you can use the 301 .htaccess to redirect to a new URL.
Tips: You can use the Google Webmaster Tool to find broken links and your 404 Not Found errors.
To search engines, a www and a non-www URL are considered two different URLs. You should always keep your domain and URL structure consistent. If you start promoting your site without the "www", stick with it.
Semantic and standard coding not only can make your site cleaner, but it also allows the search engines to read your page better.
Coding and setting up your site to be SEO friendly can improve how well a search engine can access your website, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll end up at the top of the search engine result page (SERP). There are many factors in determining the search result position, but here are the basics:
Some professional SEO’s pay attention to Google’s PageRank and some don’t. In my experience it doesn’t hurt to have a high Google PageRank. It’s a nice little benchmark to let you know how important Google sees your web page as. You can improve your PageRank by following the tips above and building-up quality backlinks. If you want to learn how PageRank works, Smashing Magazine has a very good article.
You might be surprised to learn that domain age is also a factor in the search engine algorithm. Older domains have a history, and their content is looked at as more credible than the website that got started last week. Older domains sometimes get the edge in search results.
You may have done every single thing right., but your site is still not showing up in the search engines for your target keywords. Why? Because everything takes time. It takes time for the search engines to index and rank your site (especially for new domains). So, be patient.
Another reason — it could be the keywords that you’re trying to target are very competitive. Try altering the keywords on the page and you may have different results. Remember, you are competing with millions of web pages on the internet.
Google Webmaster Tools allow you check the crawl statistics of your site. If you haven’t been using this great tool yet, login to the Google Webmaster Tools, then add and verify your site.
After you’ve verified your site, you can find out:
Here are some online SEO tools that you can use to check your PageRank, Link Popularity, Search Engine Position, Keyword Density, etc.
Here are some external links where you can learn more about SEO:
Please note that I’m not a SEO expert (although I manage to get very high rankings on all my sites: N.Design Studio, Best Web Gallery, and Web Designer Wall). The tips I share in this SEO guide are based on self-taught knowledge and years of web design experience.
Good Luck.
David Appleyard
Fantastic article – raises some great points for new designers.
Milan
Hi thanks for this good article, i still do some SEO but with the knowledge of this article i can do some more!
Jonas
I think the h1-Tag is not as important as h2, because h1 is often used for the title (Company Name, Blog Name etc.) or as replacement for the brand.
Look at WordPress. The main content is structured by h2, h3. We can find the h1 only as Blogtitle. And WP-Blog are well SEOized. :)
ferdinand
I must admit I was in the 24% of people not knowing what SEO really is. That is until now. Your article has really given me a good insight into the topic and I will do my best to put all the tips in practice. Thanks a lot!
b0li
nice article
cheers mate
Evan Meagher
Great article. I’m sick to death of hearing about SEO, but this is a good primer.
Erika
Thanks for sharing this info!
More power!
Robin001
ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT…
WELL DONE!
DazzleCat
thank you great article… good read!
ogee
great article, i work on seo since one year and there are so many sites outside that do not care about seo – its amazing to see, how quick a page comes up in search results after doing some seo on site/off site work… thanx :)
Paul M. Watson
I was expecting more design orientated SEO tips. This is a good primer but my graphic designers aren’t going to make a whole lot of use of it.
What specifically do designers need to keep in mind to make the developers job easier and better when it comes to SEO?
Rik
Probably the best intro to SEO I’ve read, fantastic!
Horous
That was really useful !
Thank you so much !
Web Design Belfast
Nice article, I’ve read many of these tip before but it’s good to have such a comprehensive list all in 1 place.
Cobus Bester
Great article! I’ve always wondered how much a designer/coder can actually do to help with SEO. Now I know!
Thanks
Tom
Nice post for beginners, it is really accurate and complete.
Well done.
Peter
Great article, can only confirm many of the things you mention here!
Robbi
Thanks very much! I’m off to change my default title to show the constant part after the page name! Genius xD
wpGuy
Wow, great article! Thanks a lot!
David
This Guide is a Brilliant SEO Starting point for any developer / designer
Many thanks
naran_ho
Really interesting article, very useful, thanks
Majesticskull
Very usefull! Thanks for the great post!
Web designer
Very nice post Nick, you have done a really good beginners guide about SEO, this is really helpful for any designer.
Dejan Cancarevic
here’s another SEO guide
http://stylizedweb.com/2008/01/24/learn-seo-basics/
Lathan Britz
Hi there, from what I have read on the subject many people make this mistake with the alt and title attribute.
I think it should read as follows.
8. Empty Image Title Attribute
You should always describe your image in the title attribute. The alt attribute is what describes your image to a blind web user. Guess what? Search engines can’t see images so your title attribute is a factor in illustrating what your page is relevant for.
Drupal Museum
Wow, very thorough! One thing I might add is external links to quality websites. Giving your users access to useful information outside of your site makes your site more useful, and search engines take notice. Thanks for the great article!
TiS
Yeah, this is a good one :) Some things I knew, some were new to me. But this is a good summary of several SEO techniques. :)
Fabian
Nice article! It explains the basics really well.
I wrote an article about making a custom 404 page, so you won’t get the standard Ie or Firefox 404 page:
http://www.onyx-design.net/weblog2/htaccess/how-to-make-a-custom-404-page/
And this one is about SEO friendly redirecting:
http://www.onyx-design.net/weblog2/htaccess/redirecting-with-htaccess/
kibotu
thanks a lot, man. i was looking for something like that for ages :3
Kurt Cruse
Could you explain a little more about being consistent with your URL? This is the first time I’d ever heard of this.
Gwynwyffar
This is an awesome article. I’ve learned SEO very much the same way you have, through lots of research and experience. SEO really isn’t rocket science, and there are so many companies out there that want to charge clients and arm and a leg for search engine placement, which is really unnecessary if the site is designed properly from the beginning.
I also HIGHLY recommend the Google Webmaster Tools, they are free and offer you so many ways to improve your search engine placement.
shellie
Great article…very informative…love the poll too, really shows how many designers don’t know about SEO. …and the ones who don’t think SEO matters.
I always find it so hard to believe when some of my graphic designer friends think it will be quick and easy to make a website with two things: a Photoshop file and the slice tool. People need to do some research before they throw together a website…might as well make your time and effort worthwhile – with great SEO practices.
Renata
good stuff
ceast
Thanks for sharing. I’ll try to fix my own.
;)
steven
this article could not have came at a better time .
i just had an interview with a place who.s looking for not only a front end web designer, but a seo professional . of course, as a web designer, i knew what seo stood for, however, since technology has changed so much, i wasn.t really aware of all these little things that help with the seo process .
i appreciate this article more than you know .thanks .
mee
Wow, that’s a cool overview which brings it to the bottom what there is to do :-)
Joni
This is an awesome post. I think on-page SEO is a vital part of web design.
philfreelanceweb
such a great post about this blog.. for me, it’s also nice that you know atleast the basic seo in order for you to gain traffic.
Alex – Markup4U team
Very nice post indeed.
Our company does *not* offer any Search Engine ranking improvement services, however we can help you out with the SEO optimized markup or WordPress theme coding.
At least On-Site SEO part is no longer a problem at all.
Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
Subash
Thanks Nick, its always a pleasure going through your articles. This article was a bit more special since I’m also digging into articles regarding SEO’s and I’ll surely follow the points that you’re focused.
SEO
It’s a good post indeed..
Some sites are not for BOTs to find out though.. :)
brad
Thanks for the great tips. As more of a designer than developer it can be tough to keep up with SEO, but this article is a great help.
Ty
Nice Nick, I’ve been threatening to write up a post covering SEO for designers myself. It looks like you’ve done a great job!
Watch this post for a bunch of spam showing up in the comments, anytime there’s an SEO discussion, that seems to happen, the spiders come out of the woodwork!
K.Brown
This is a great article for beginners! I often have a hard time explaining the do’s and don’ts of SEO. This is very helpful!
Davor Peić
wow! awesome tutorial, and great tips! some of the things you listed must be “default” for every designer who is trying to work serious, but the other ones helps so much! thanx! another great article!
davor
Todd Smith
Great article. Thank you!
A question about WordPress title tags: how do you change them? I went into the header template (header.php) in the default WordPress theme and found a dynamic title tag which I did not know how to edit.
After reading your article, I would really love to change my title tag for each post on my blog but I don’t know how to do it.
Also, can I write a custom meta description tag for each post too?
Thanks,
Todd
Tim
Great Post!
@Todd – Try searching for “SEO Title Tag Plugin” in google. It’s one of the best plugin available for properly SEOing a blog:)
Sil
Excellent post! All web designers should read it.
One question: putting my web design company’s link on the bottom of all client’s pages would be considered search engine spamming? (Link Anchor Text)
Thanks in advance!
Banago
This is definitely a great tutorial on SEO. Thanks!
Daniel de Paola
Man, wonderful post. I´m designing my new portfolio and this will be very usefull to me.
really good!!!!
alisa
Nice Article! Will be a helpful resource! Thanks!
Melissa
This is great! As a beginning designer, the idea of keeping up with SEO seemed a little intimidating until I read your fantastic article. Thanks!
Todd Smith
Thanks Tim! I just downloaded “SEO Title Tag 2.1.3” This is a huge help. Thanks!
Todd
Kit
One point regarding AJAX loading content. I agree completely that AJAX loading should be used sparingly as it’s not spiderable content, but there’s absolutely no reason any developer worth their pay can’t parse the hash at the end of the URL on page load, creating a copy-pastable URL in the process.
The unfortunate fact is that people can be lazy and they don’t take the extra couple of steps to get this done.
Matt89fe
wow..superlative tut!! oh, thanks for the MCTE V3 Component :-D lol…it’s great!!
Matt
;-)
Steve Edge
I was really shocked by those statistics, however not suprised. One of the key flaws in the design – developer relationship is SEO. This is usually an after thought and left up to somebody to try and turn the website that may look graphically creative and beautiful into something that a search engine can actually read.
ALL graphic designers need to read this article, It is one of the best articles I have read in a long time! Well done
details
hey! thanks so much for this article. i’ve actually been trying to find a great source on SEO because, unfortunately, i fall into that bottom quarter of uneducated designers. not for long!
.details.
Mridul
Hey … that was a great article
madaerodog
I see you are accepting only convenient comments :) Pretty bad ..
D. Carreira
Great tips! Thank you for this!
David Carreira
Marcin Petruszka
Thanks a lot for this tutorial. I’m aware of my responsibilities as a web designer/developer, but since my background is in graphic design it’s always nice to read something as clear and simple as your article.
I’m using it right away :)
Marianne
This post is great! Keep up the good work!
VT
Amazing post. Do comments in a blog also get indexed as key words? :)
tudor
Excellent article!
Regarding the flash menus, when I decide to go with one on a site I make a second menu and put it somewhere on the page (in the footer for example, depends) just for the search engines.
Tommy_Gun
Thx for the great post!
Jeremy
Great article! I’ve read that the TITLE tag is one of the most heavily ranked factors in determining search relevancy. Putting your page/post title first before the site title is important for search engine listings. You only have so much space (65 characters) before the title gets chopped off. That’s exactly what were doing with Spotobe by putting the event/location title first, before the site title.
Muhammad Aftab
Thanks for the post.
Boris
hey nick, good on all points. Indeed a lot of designers do not care about SEO . Another thing which i found during my research into SEO for clients, use of invisible for h1 tag can actually hurt your web site. Some people use h1 tag hidden/invisible when using image based page title. Great alternative to that is simply to use text-indent: -9999px; Something I learned from a fellow designer from design team i’m in.
Alex Samsonas
great tips!!!
SEO Firm Owner
I am not really surprised that 24% did not know what SEO is because it is just becoming ‘mains stream’ over the past six months. In another six months I bet that percentage will be up to 50%.
Ces
Thanks a lot for this article. This will help me a lot on my designs. Your posts are always informative. Keep it up!
[email protected]
Just to help people that like using ajax, like me, make your links next way:
<a href=”static-page.html” onclick=”ajaxEvent(); return false;”>link</a>
This way even spiders AND visitors with Javascript disabled will be able to view your pages. Another technique I used a few times is using Javascript to replace the link urls with #link-like urls and add the onclick event. (Don’t forget users cannot bookmark pages if using ajax, unless using #link-like urls)
philfreelanceweb
It is such a great post learning on this thing, for me it’s a good way to learn atleast the most basic in SEO as it can also add a marketing to your self. Once you been a doing SEO it can make you an asset
Eric-from-Boston
nice writeup… SEO I feel is mandatory when building any website today. Any website I build now is setup with what I call basic SEO. What I mean here is that I will do all the on-page optimization (h1-h6’s, tags, etc…) but I do not do any keyword research or off-page optimization. I let my clients know this and tell them that the site is built for SEO, so at any point if they feel they would like to invest more than it would be made easier since I have now laid out the framework…its just a matter of changing the keywords being used within the site. I feel there are different levels of SEO to offer clients (not all clients truly need seo or would benefit, certain industries don’t rely on the internet)…you got your basic, medium (keyword research, etc) and large (building external links to website, aggressively try to increase PR, analyze the competition that ranks for keywords you want to rank highly for and go that next step past them).
I think there is one thing you can add… analyzing the competition that ranks for the keywords you are gunning for…this is huge and a great way to know how your competition got where it is and how to get past them.
Eric
Zeb
Very interesting article Nick ! ;-)
bweb
Thanks a lot, it’s very helpful… as always :)
Bali Web Design
Thanks mate..this is what i’m looking for..
Ken Nickless
Very informative and right to the point for all designers,webmasters and in fact anybody wanting to increase their site presence.
linkto
Thanks for you post,which so useful for me.
Matthew
Thanks so much for putting this together. This is a very helpful ‘how to’ I will be sure to reference frequently.
Andrei
Google can track AJAX’ed-in pages, it’s explained in their Google site map page.
Peter Steen Høgenhaug
Amazing article! Thanks a lot!
Paintworkz Web Design
Thanks for this amazing post on SEO. Its really helpful as you have put it up as points and easy to go through the details.
istioselida
very interesting article! sometimes people forget that seo needs to be address in the design of the website
Marc Reeder
Great info I will be using it all to help my site out. http://www.ancientcitycon.com
imaginepaolo
Great article..this is what i’m looking for..
Brian Petty
Really great article! Thanks so much. I’m going to save this for future reference.
Banago
The title of the page is very important in my opinion.
Banago
The title of the page is very important in my opinion.
Joshua Goodwin
Sometimes, people sacrifice usability for SEO, and then I think, “this search engine optimisation stuff is stupid.” But many of the practices described here happen to be good for usability etc. too — for example, splash pages are idiotic for reasons other than SEO disbenefits — so well done.
tambre
great article. i’m actually an SEO that’s come from a design background and i am very happy to be seeing more designers take interest in SEO and realize that a lot of it starts with design.
something i’d like to recommend adding to the Search Engine Position (page rank, doman age, etc) is content. while it may not seem like a design thing to be concerned about, a page of good content is highly important for visibility and placement within a SERP. it’ll help you can create url structures, title and description tags, you can also code the CSS so that the content sits higher so it’s found faster and it all backs up the keywords or phrases on the page.
really stellar job on the article. :)
Edward Turtle
There’s some real useful into there. Like I never knew that a domains age would have an effect. Thank you.
Wai Ng
think i’ll print this article on my bathroom wall.
very very helpful information here, thanks alot for sharing.
Ray Gulick
I’m waiting and hoping for the day when web designers aren’t expected to be specialists at everything having to do with the web. SEO is its own specialty and, frankly, one I don’t find very interesting. As a result, I confine my concern with SEO to building SEO-friendly websites (and this article contains some great suggestions about that) and recommending an SEO specialist to clients who want or need that service. Most clients are grateful that I’m not trying to represent myself as having expertise that I don’t have (and don’t care to have).
thivy
i learned a lot 4rm this article..
ill use all these on my site and hopefully i can get some mo visitors :)
http://www.thivy.com
Guisella
cool
David
Awesome article. You covered a lot of ground and didn’t drag it on forever. One for the bookmarks.
Lisa Ditlefsen
Haleluja, a designer that totally get SEO! This is a brilliant summary of what SEO is Nick!! Really good, and I’m Head of Search and write an SEO blog (seo-chicks.com). In fact I’m going to Sphinn this blogpost!
cheers, it was a pleasure to read!!
LisaD
SEO-Chick =)
Pleasuremole
This is really great article!
Matt Wilcox
“You should always describe your image in the alt attribute” – this is not good advice. ALT is an alternate for when the image can not be displayed, and not simply a description of the image. If the image is purely decorational and has no semantics relevant to the main document then the alt attribute should be blank. This allows screen readers to hop right over it without reading a redundant description or an ‘image missing alt attribute’ type warning.
But that’s the only thing I found contentions in an otherwise spot-on article.
Jayme
So I am taking the challenge to build my own website. I had a designer create the visual and now I am constructing. He is really big into Flash. I finally convinced him to not have a Splash page because of the reasons you mentioned above. However, he designed the menu navigation to include a bit of javascript, or did he say flash?! Can’t remember. How would you recommend to construct the menu navigation? (I have CS3 package and just a beginner). Once I finish building my website, I will upgrade my wordpress blog in a similar design.
Janice
This is the best no-noncence piece I have seen on SEO. You might want to look at the SEO functionality on the Bitrix Virtual Lab at http://www.bitrixsoft.com/sitemanager/demo.php. They have the functionality you are commenting upon.
Kevin Crawford
@Jayme
Javascript can be either destructive or transparent to spiders, it depends on the quality of the code. When possible, it’s advisable to use CSS to power drop-down menus (with a tiny bit of javascript to help out IE6). You can see some search engine-optimized menus in my portfolio. If you need any help, let me know, I’m available for work.
Weverton Naves
Very Good Article!
The SEO its a way for sucess in the disclosure of your site.
Congratulations.
Real Estate Graphic Design
The Alt text on images sometimes shows up in the SERP descripton, if it’s pulling text top-to-bottom, so make sure you factor this in.
Great article, I’ll be coming back often for review.
Balentxi
Very useful, complete and well explained. A great article.
imaginepaolo
Check my SEO, search web design blog in google…
Felipe Ramos
Awesome as always ^^
Andy
@99 – I wonder if the remark in the original text meant more that you should never forget to put at least an ALT=”” on an image. Obviously putting ALT tags on purely decorational images (ALT=”Blue shading” for example) is completely redundant and a hindrance.
php-web-developer
Very useful, complete and well explained. A great article.
Nekko
“Hey! I read your tutorial and found it very usefull, so I took the liberty to translate it into Spanish, to share it with my colleagues. You can check it out at http://www.summarg.com.ar/showthread.php?t=1600, Cheers!”
Freelance Web Design
Thanks for the article. I never really understood SEO until now.
Keep up the good work!
jody Desbiens
Just curious, what is the difference between using www or no www?
Cause I haven’t been consistent. But I will try from now on thank you.
Thanks so much for your great articles.
Kaiserlino
Hi Nick, probably you don’t know me.
But… Can i translate this guide as is and post on my blog (portuguese) and for sure give all the credits here?
See ya.
Darren Cornwell
Thanks for the really great guide – everything all in one neat little package. Great Stuff.
Dave
Hi, nice guide, however the points about Flash aren’t exactly true. Google’s spider (i.e. the only one you should really be concerned about) can crawl .swf files, indexing the text inside them and following the links they contain. You can see this by specifying filetype:swf in a google search.
Having said that I do agree that you should only use Flash when necessary. Just don’t think people should panic about their sites not being indexed at all due to it :-)
Strike
Very useful, complete and well explained. A great article.
Joefrey Mahusay
Great article. Bookmarked! Thanks for sharing. :)
kg
Fantastic article!
Adam Kayce
Very nice … I’m lucky in that I studied marketing for years as a solopreneur in a different arena before getting into web design. Your tips are sound; people would do very well to listen. I’d say you’ve shaved a few years off people’s learning curve, if they put into practice what you’re preaching!
Volkan Görgülü
Turkish translation avaliable at http://www.siberkultur.com/?q=tasarimcilar-icin-arama-motoru-optimizasyonu-nedir
usagreed
with box are all now and climb along in a hollow that day. pulled neighborhood his
Adam Patterson
I was talking to a friend of mine who is a very competent flash developer and he was saying that Google is the only search engine that can index SWF’s the drawback is they have to be version 8 or better.
Peter Ochabski (web designer)
Just wanted to add that getting your content onto dig.com and other social media sites is a great way to get incoming traffic AND boost your SEO!
Thanks for the great article,
– Pjo of DefineToys: sub-culture rave toys and clothes plus goth gear and fun for creative types
SEO Experts
Hi,
I’ve designed new site and I would appreciate any suggestions to improve site more for SEO friendly. (www.gigaturn.com)
Rata
Thank you very much indeed for this great article, very easy write and explained in a high readability.
Bookmarked … of course :P
Kind regards
Rata
ibmgreen
magnificent huge tree to dine had probably I noticed Forest. gardening sour, and we all what
Nantucket Art
A great bite-size intro to what used to be considered a dark art. Well done
Kadir
Hey,
Great Guide. I did know from SEO – I just didn´t know what it exactly is and I didn´t realy bother looking up what it is. Well as I see I´ve already done most of the things correct you have stated in your guide. I just left the alt tag on images empty. I am going to fix that asap. I have my site up like 3-4 months and a PR of 3 already.
Best Regards
Kadir
php-web-developer
Just wanted to add that getting your content onto dig.com and other social media sites is a great way to get incoming traffic AND boost your SEO!
arif
good articles..now i’m learning about seo too..this articles gave me more information about seo itself
Gary Pollock
keep up the good work. I really enjoy your tutorials on flash,css,etc.
Gary Pollock
Nice work. I have enjoyed your many tutorials on flash, css, etc. – Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us.
MhawSayar
Great article Nick! This is what I want to know about SEO! I’ll translate this article to Burmese Language if you don’t mind.
Thank you so much for all of your efforts! :)
Octoberfest Info
Man could you translate this wonderful article in german? :)
Best Regards from Munich
Visitenkarten
WOW!!! Thanx. What a helpful article.
Farshad
Thanks for your great web site,
can I translate this article and put it on my weblog ?
Many thnx…
Andrew
Awesome and comprehensive article. Thanks for all the great tips and links!
Promotion
Another useful and informative article from web designer wall. Nice work and a good read.
Azeem
It depends what ones speciality is. If you are strictly a front end developer working only in Photoshop and not marking up anything, for example, then SEO is largely irrelevant to you.
Design itself and SEO are 2 completely seperate things.
If you do markup/page building then of course it is relevant.
Although there is no excuse not to know the basics as it’s a easy to learn set of rules.
Rob
Very very helpful article, most of the things mentioned I did know, but I also learned a lot from this aswell. Great Job!
Roland
Really nice work. I am a webdesigner at first, but the “SEO-guy” in our company, too. So I know most of the problems and faults you mentioned above.
Ever thought about trying a similar article about the Social Media buzz? ;-)
Roda Golf and Beach Club
Thanks very much for an informative and useful article.
Antoine Lépée
Hey, thanks for all !
It will be really usefull, an easy way to build SEO website :)
If I have free time I will translate it in French ;)
vanoin
Thanks !
Ant Sir Pest
Great read! I just got a chance to browse through it, but I am for sure going to boomark this and come back to it. SEO is very important, and often overlooked. This as MANY very helpful tips. Thanks.
adrianvdesign
Very good article! Thanks Nick!
vredin
10x, very useful article!
Mike Archibald
Great artice. Full of good sense. I’m also shocked at the number of developers who never give a thought to SEO. Surely these days it’s an integeral part of the job description? Unless SEO and copy are covered by a third party company.
SEO Techniques
Seo experts from india providing cost effective seo services to our clients.
Brian Yerkes
With regard to your note on keeping consistency when adding your url to other site, using the www prefix or not….this is all corrected by adding 301 permanent redirects to your pages or htaccess file ….you can simply send all non-www pages to permanent redirect to the http://www….and it ensures you get all backlinks etc for your one site
php-web-developer
Thanks very much for an informative and useful article.
Matthew 'Web Design' Adams
Great article! i’ll have to work some of the ideas above into my site and clients sites. Cheers
Sara
Wow! Thanks for all that input. Now to implement.
Sean Hartigan
A really simple and effective guide.
Thanks a lot for spelling it out and giving me some really useful tips!
Adaptiv SEO
This is absolutely the best synthesised guide to seo for designer’s who are not in the know. Great! Now get your sites search engine optimised
Kronik Media
Although offsite SEO factors are important one should not forget the importance of good quality and fresh content on the website. In the long run adding regular new content will play a crucial role. Look at the rank of Article website and press release websites.
Our own web design company website http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk initially saw good results after our on site and off site SEO campaigns. After a while however we were running out of new SEO techniques to try. In the second phase of our SEO Campaign we are concentrating on updating our website with regular, new , quality content. We have also set up a web design resources blog at http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog mainly for this purpose.
gw
Very useful and informative, thanks.
NJ
Thanks, very helpful and clarified a few things. Fantastic posting, keep it up!
revy
Great article. I think a lot of people do follow some of these, but like me, question if they are doing things the ‘right’ way. Good stuff. Cheers.
Shycon Design
Great post. All designers should keep SEO in mind. 6 Months down the line when you client isn’t seeing any traffic, they’re going to come back to you. Why not seperate yourself from other designers right from the get go!
mcm69
Well, I think it was mentioned in the comments before, but describing every image in “alt” attribute isn’t a good idea. Who the hell need information like “top border”? Certainly, such images should be backgrounds not <img>’s, but what I mean is: If the image has any attibution to the content of the page, it should have an alt, otherwise alt=”” should be your friend.
UV
This website is excellent!
Very beautiful!
design nottingham
I think SEO is important for all web designers and it’s becoming increasingly one of the most frequent client requests after website launch – ‘why can’t I find my site in Google’ type questions. Even if the site needs to be flash based, you can still have SEO friendly content running behind the site
Graham Strong
As you pointed out, there are some very simple and basic ways you can improve your page ranks by simple design optimization. You don’t need to be an “SEO Guru” to help your clients (or yourself). Just by tweaking minor things like file names, link structure, and code layout, you can make a huge difference in your rankings.
In other words, I agree wholeheartedly – yes, designers should have the basics of SEO down, and do them as a matter of course, not as an extra service!
And BTW, thanks for listing “Splash Page” at the top of your do-not-do list. I saw one for the first time about 10 years ago, loved it for about five seconds, and can’t stand them ever since. Not only do they restrict your SEO, splash pages are self-indulgent and get between your reader and your content.
~Graham
Dennison Uy
Great guide, especially for someone who knows very little about SEO, I really learned a lot. You may want to reconsider the title though, as “designers” may be too specific – this guide is for everyone, not just designers.
Stephen Orsini
Well put… good article. I joined the SEO bandwagon 2 years ago and my business has more than tripled… not to mention that I don’t need to attend networking functions to drum up business.
Anyone have any thoughts about ArticleUnderground(.com i think)? They have a keyword/meta analyzer available that I used to make full use of…
Also, if you don’t have an attachment to any sort of tracking software (which is half the battle of SEO), I strongly suggest you install google.com/analytics on a site and see how comprehensive it is.
Thanks for the article… i just stumbled upon this site… i’ll be back.
80Paul
Hi there.
Very usefull article. Thank you!
But i’ve an eternal problem with the splash pages. I live in belgium, wich is a country with 3 national languages. My clients often insist to have a “choose your language”-like homepage. What’s the best way to manage these kind of situation. Is there any “automatic” language redirection script ? Is this SEO Friendly ? Argh.
~Paul
Carly
Thank you for the seobook / wordtracker SEO keyword tips – I had totally forgotten about them…!
seo freelancer
I would add:
– don’t use heavy pics everywhere (>100kb). There are mobile devices and people with slow providers. Big pic can be cutted on jpg (better) zone and (rude, bad) gif zones
– Don’t overuse png pie – tons of layered png images with transparancy
– We still don’t have smart image reading Search Engines. Keep design simple and elegant: use text and pics in smart way
michele
Thanks!
Great post. I bookmark this for my clients when he ask me to make a splash screen for a new site!!
Gilberto Galea
Not only the humans surf the web. 24+365 the search engines, bots and other software try to put order at those we call internet. The correct use for the seo tools let us take advantage to make more visibility to find for other users.
Great explain and good research.
Thanks,
wellsworth - Internet Business
You’ve made so many Great points here, these should be make into a checklist for anyone wishing to gain some ground in the organic side of the engines.
There are truly so many little points that add up to big factors, and when they’re not followed, your rankings just slip away leaving you wondering what happened.
Thanks for also offering so many links to resources to help in the process.
Binyamin
Really good article for Web designers…. I always say that to my designers: “Don’t use Flash for Homepage or menu”, but a designer prefer to use Flash :(
VR
This really was excellent!
Misty Beier
First time on this site and I’m very impressed. I’m learning about SEO also, and this article helps a lot! Thanks!
Bryan P.
This outline was very good for people are just becoming familiar with search engine optimization. Although this article is very clear, and concise, there are tons of techniques to improve a website’s position and search engine position.
Siva
Hi..
Very Useful Article………. Thx Man…….
haethen
help me give me flash lessons i am study this preogram I am from mongolia
Colin Miller - Freelance web designer
Excellent article, some really good points. I am in the process of ‘raising my game’ when it comes to SEO, so this is very useful. Thanks
SEO Factors
Good techniques for beginners, but there are lot of other factors which really need for good SEO.
esperto seo
Your post about seo is very cool! thank u my friend ;)
Tom
Actually, alt is wrong. You should be using longdesc for a description of the image, and Google definitely knows how to use longdesc. alt is the alternative to the image, not the description.
Moni
Nick, I absolutely love this article and agree with you full heartedly that a succesfful designer is one who’s at least knowledgeable in the basics of SEO. Really nice article, great detail as always! 2 thumbs up.
As for the tools you listed, some are out dated and don’t give exact results like on seobook, the ones i use (design/seo related) to help me optimize my designs are simple ones like the Spider Viewer, http head tool and a couple others that help me build one way links rather than reciprocal ones
shoutingzone.com has dozens of these exact tools for free too, thought you’d be interested (some readers might be also)
Keep up the great posts man! Cheers!
Seo - India
Very Practical info. Simple and common sense article.
Matthew 'Web Design' Adams
Cool Article! gotta keep SEO in mind always
Goldie
This is a great piece of research on the search engine world of intrigue but i have questions are the links more important or the text I’m a newbie and just getting things in the right order links or more developmental text .
Giuseppe
Seo is more important than people can imagine..however, when a site is done well, the effects are immediately. Congratulations!!
petnos
First of all thanks for sharing your knowledge about SEO. Today i read an article about SEO and now i complete all gaps with your post. From now i can make my web site a better one for search engines to get more visitors.
Nathan
Wow, can’t believe that 24% didn’t even know what SEO is. Thank you for this article and the links. Going to be using that Google Keyword Tool in the near future.
Daniel
Thank you very much for sharing these SEO ressources. tremendeously useful!
Best regards.
Daniel.
Web Design Company
It is interesting to see that 24% of designers did not know what search engine optimisation is. From a business perspective, I have seen a remarkable increase in SEO awareness amongst small businesses. We work on web design projects with diverse businesses mainly smaller businesses. Recently we have seen a big shift in awareness. Last year for some reason it took us a lot of convincing to make a small business realise the benefit of investing in an organic search engine optimisation campaign that we offer. However now a days often customer inquire themselves about how it can be achieved.
Michael Robinson
Thank you very much, I am pleased to have found such a great resource!
SEO - Search Engine Optimization Philippines - Perth Australia
Good design without seo is nothing. You need to optimize the site to make profit on search engines.
Egypt Web Design Company
yes SEO is required and very important
JImmy
Nick, That was a really helpful article. Thanks. Have a nice day :)
website design
it’s really useful for designer
Joel G.
Wow – what a great article. I’m pretty new to web development, in fact I’m really just beggining to learn the basics. This is some very useful information for anyone who’s learning web design.
Thanks!
Code It Red
Extremely useful information. I like the huge amount of coverage and very in depth explanations. I know not many people focus on Page Rank but I feel it is something that is always worth having :)
Chris Thomson
Extremely useful resource. Thanks for the guide. I’ll have to read it over again in the future…
Bookmarked!
zenit
thaks for this article.
it was very, very helpful. :)
Ryan
I agree having a good design and good products doesnt help at all, one must know about seo, no traffic = no money. Thanks for this in depth article.
seo egypt - Egypt Web Design Company - Egypt web design company
thanks alot for this guide line however i would like to add one important information.
there is a different type of keywords:
1- Keyword for browsing like if you wanna search for web designer
2- Keyword for comparing like “web designer under 21”
3- keyword for buying like “freelancer web designer in egypt”
search engines rank better the keywords for buying…
hope that helps and thanks
Mohammed
Calvin
Simply an Awesome blog post; thank you for posting it.
Kavita
Thanks. This was really helpful article. Your work ROCKS!
Lisa Noble
Very useful tips. I always feel a little overwhelmed when it comes to SEO. This article definitely helped.
Thanks.
seo egypt - Egypt Web Design Company - Egypt web design
Wow – what a great and useful for designer
flo
very good article indeed! I like how you bound the importance of design with the cruciality of SEO.
I think that far too many web designers aren’t profficient in terms of SEM and SEO and should probably take some sort of course to realise the importance of these domains. After all, combining knowledge of these techniques, applied with usable design will undoubtedly attract more clients, especially for small-medium companies and freelancers.
I wrote an article on this a while back, if you wanna check it out and leave me a comment:
http://www.dexthis.com/seo/how-to-design-seo-websites
Cheers,
F
Paul
Very good article. Thanks very much for the contribution.
SilkLink - Your link to the web
Very useful article.
I have noticed many comments on a site that refers to this document for the subject of Ajax overuse. I think they are taken out of context with the point you are raising.
Ajax/JavaScript/Flash can be used to create great functionality, but at the expense of being hidden from the (x)html viewing search crawler. Use of such technologies may be considered important for some designers/developers, but there should always be a great looking (x)html site beneath for the pure (x)html viewer.
Jurgen Jessurun
This article should be very useful for designer who would like to focus on SEO.
Rich
Great post. I’m a professional SEO and I was expecting to see an amateur take on SEO riddled with the nonsense myths that pervade SEO, instead I think that you pretty much nailed the important concepts, good job.
My one comment would be that since you haven’t mentioned Competitive Keyword Research, that what you’re describing in this article is Search Engine Friendly design, rather than any form of SE Optimisation. Yes search engines will have no problem indexing pages built the way you’re recommending but actually ranking well for anything but non-competitive terms is a lot harder than just building SEF pages. It’s a start but it’s not SEO.
Idaho SEO
i hate waiting. anyway to speed things up with the search engines?
freelance
you think you could do a post on credible sources for seo help, like businesses that specialize in these types of things at a fair price and quality work, rather than taking all your money and dissapearing with no sign of change?
would be a nice little investigative report. i’ve been looking for someone to help me out in this department.
Perry
Very informative article, thanks for writing this.
Julieta - RANDOM web design studio
Nice article, very useful! I used some of these tips while designing for my clients, but I’ll definitely add a few more.
Thanks!
Salman
This help a lot, thanks Nick!
Salman
This helps a lot, thanks Nick!
Tschirharts Custom Billiards
Thank you lots this was very helpful ill be sure to come back if i have any questions
~Katrina.T
Prasanna Jathan
Thank you very much. It helped me a lot.
Else
I agree with you, SEO is as important as you say.
Philip O'Hara
Thanks for your article. I have been looking for just this article. SEO is so simple yet the execution of the few things you are talking about with this blog post can make companies millions of dollars. I run the largest SEO company in the fourth largest city in the united states and I couldn’t have said it better.
Webflo Studios
This article is just scratching the surface of SEO, however it is a well written blog that just shows you how much needs to be done to insure your site is visible to the world at large. Without search engines crawling your content and relaying potential clients/readers to you, no one would know you exist. Thanks you for a great refresher in the world of SEO.
Dan Collins
Very helpful guide, cheers!
Zegran
wonderfull and usefull information…. thank you
Grafiko
very helpful article, love your work and site
Seo Dragos
Nice tipe, you are going to make me have no more clients.
shagdirty
nice read. always good to get a thorough article on search engine optimization. One thing to note is that Google is beginning to index Flash files (assuming the text is in them is actual text). It’s still nowhere near as good for SEO as a traditional site but it’s a step in the right direction. there are also some nice ways to get “html” text into your pages under a Flash movie using javascript. I know this can be dangerous if done sloppily but I have yet to have any problems.
Google Flash indexing
Sunlust
As always, amazing quality and content and thanks a lot for the links to SEO resources, really good to have them in one place.
Guillaume
Those tips are very useful and necessary to promote a website. I personally try to respect every little point of SEO so that I can get a high page rank and lots of relevant backlinks.
Your SEO results tells well about how much you took care of it !
Thanks.
Farid Abdulhadi
Really great article!
It’s one of the best I’ve seen for designers/beginners.
Great work!
DC web designer
Great information for all web designers, we should learn this and have in mind that the important thing in web design is not how beauty it looks, but how effective the website is. All the tips you give are very helpful, thanks for sharing this big imformation with all of us!
cheers!
Website design architekt
an excellant article and written in plain english, unlike others available on the internet, keep up the the good work
free online articles
Thanks for listing the resources, especially the seo resources.
Cheers,
Sam
seo
very good description thnkss
Search Scripts
I must say “You have excellent technical writing skills”. It is one of the best SEO tutorials I’ve came across from so long.
flash
Unfortunatelly Google can’t index dynamic content, so if you have a xml-based website you won´t get most of the content indexed.
Alisha
I need your help.
Your Article open my eyes.
May I ask you that I want to be a web designer and Seo Expert,
which course I go for first. design OR SEO ?
I will be obliged for your kind reply.
Diseño Web y SEO van juntos
Web Design and SEO always go together .. a good SEO does not mean your not accesible website is going to rank well and viceversa. Do both in any project. By the way this site has great design :P
Eva
Good to know! Thanks for the information; I had no clue about a lot of things…
Jonas
Thanks!
Great post. I bookmark this for my clients when he ask me to make a splash screen for a new site!!
Andrei Reounov
As a SEO expert I think this is a great article for web a designer. I’ve came across may websites that has a great design, but no one can find it. Website marketing, as well as on-site optimization is fundamental in website development.
http://www.superseoman.com
gungde
wow, simple but deep article regarding SEO, never thought there are som many elements to improve your ste to the world, a simple blog (with localised contents like mine) can benefit (probably not world wide hehe :) ) much from this article.
Thank You !! Gungde,
http://halopop.com
vinvin
it’s a great tips btw. really good for newbies ;)
majed alkamali
really so thankful for your efforts for this important information
Max | Design Shard
as a web designer you learn the importance of SEO and every design has be thought through to allow for this, SEO is one of the most important aspects of a web page especially for commercial use after all this is the google age.
Good post.
Max | Design Shard
rsrathnaraj
The article is very simple and very helpful not only to the web designer but also for those who are working in SEO too. Since i’m new to SEO, the article provides me a deep understanding about the SEO. Thanks for providing the excellent article.
Thanks,
Rathna
Rob
This is the best description/overview of SEO I have read :) thanks a lot!
lokendra
thnx it’s use full for me
Website Design Perth
Shocking stats! As of today – I can hardly believe it – almost 20% wither don;t think SEO is required or don’t know what it is!!! Sorry, but OMG.
Excellent article – I am working through point by point just to make sure I am doing everything I can for my, and my clients’ sites.
People Search Dude
Right on! I gotta implement these things for my site..thanks!
Dejan Petrovic
Wow… how long did it take to write this article? Great job.
Lee
Thank you so much for writing this :) Very Helpful.
Kudos ^_^
Nguyen
Nice Article, so some of point is old. Google’s algorithms is change so fast :D
richwelder
Good article, collectors.
booty movies
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Shweta Lotlikar
hi,your website is brilliant.thanks for sharing your valuable knowlegde
shweta
Patrick Moore (Set Sail Media)
Great post! One thing I thought worth mentioning is that some AJAX-driven web sites have overcome the SEO obstacles by implementing code that allows a SE spider to find the content, yet it be displayed to visitors within the same page without reloading.
For example, a JSON (similar technology to AJAX) navigation may use this XHTML markup:
a href=”second-page.html” id=”2ndpage”
Then use JavaScript to override the link:
$(‘2ndpage’).addAjax(‘body-container’,’fade’,0.7);
The original link is valid so that search engine spiders may crawl and index the pages, but the JavaScript that follows tells JavaScript-enabled browsers to load the content into a DIV named body-container without reloading, rather than treat the link as a true hyperlink.
Just my 2 cents.
PWM
paul
Everyone just loves to put it on the designers desk!
When I started waay back in 93 as a media designer, I was paid 35k right out of school. At that time I did a great deal of 2D design with a decent amount of 3D, which really set me apart. By 2001 I was making 120k, albeit after changing jobs 4 times.
What I noticed was the job description evolved to such a point that I left the trade shortly after the really cool job because I was more than a little freaked out…I had to know programming, hardware, software (2D and 3D), firewalls, networking, and dont forget every designers favourite- Orifice and the damn outlook express not too mention cross platform issues for all the above, and the newest postscript ridiculousness.
Bottom line: no, metatags and the like are NOT the designers forte, nor should they be. If a designer does turn out to be good at ‘…SEO…’ as you like to call it, they should get the heck out of that sweatshop where they are likely clearing $10/hr and go to work for themselves!!
augusto
Thanks fot this article… really helpful!!
aizerla
哇?好酷的网站呢,
呵呵。加油哈
Abdul
Its really strange for me that 24% people on internet and even reading this post are saying they do not know “what is SEO”.Amazing for me! Anyway well written and thanks for focusing on design mistakes. Thanks!
Nikki Patrick
I love this post. I am currently in the SEO business but got my degree as a designer. I realize now, after my time in the seo world that the schools these designers go to don’t even teach search engine optimization at all. I am not surprised at the results of the pole. I handle sales for my company and find I have to carefully explain SEO to the regular business owner all the time.
This is a great post and an awesome WP design. Kudo’s:)
'web designer' Kathaperumal
Hi friend, You have explained the importance of SEO knowledge for designers. As an owner of viswam infotech , web design company, I forced my team to read this articles. Thank you
by
‘web designer’ Kathaperumal,
viswam infotech
+919345104090
Kyle M. Fenske
I loved this article, great help. I spent all day reworking my seo. Thanks!!
i love the workpress design too.
cheers!
barry corrigan
Love the post just spent most of the night working on my SEO for a site im just finishing http://www.ballynahattyfasttrack.co.uk
Stephanie F.
This is a REALLY good article!
Liebling
Thank you for the good help!
Search engine optimization coaching for excellence
I learn something new every time I visit. Thanks for the great post.
trCreative Web Design
Thanks for the article! Great help/read as usual.
קידום אתרים
תודה רבה נעזרתי בייעוץ לאתר קידום אתרים
Thanks.
aliveli
Great tutorial, I’m a complete css novice but this was easy to follow and tweak to suit my needs. A quick question: should the -900% text ident interfere with positioning the menu on the page? I seem to have to rely on absolute positioning coordinates, for example to center the menu next to an image at the top of my page.
Thanks!
sbs
thanks and regards.
Montreal SEO
It’s true that splash pages are bad for users, SEO, and sales conversions. However, the search engines can now read Flash files (to a limited extent).
website design
i think even web designers must be aware on SEO. The designer should do this for his client. he should at least show care over his designs, besides, if the design went up to top spot on search engines, he will be one to be credited for it.
Mayor of Kentonville
thank you for the the article, very informative
gebelik
Thanks for the useful article.
web tasarımı
thanks for great tips.
Zeytin
Thanks for the article ..
David Henderson
Thanks for the article. Found it very helpful.
Consultor Seo
Thanks for making it so easy for us :)
Tushar
Thanks, This is useful for web designer
x7007 design
No it is not required – but it´s a good marketingtactic to find more clients for the own webdesigncompany ;-)
Jason Vandenbrink
Great article. I know that I’m not supposed to use the same title tag over and over again. However, my site was designed to have the same header above every page. The title tag is in this header. Can I delete the title tag from the header and insert a title tag into every page body of my website. Would this work?
patrickd
Very informative article!
Keep it up! :)
AdamA
Nice one!
Thanks!
David Henderson
Thanks. SEO is sometimes tough!
ziv Gal
Great artice. Full of good sense. I’m also shocked at the number of developers who never give a thought to SEO. Surely these days it’s an integeral part of the job description? Unless SEO and copy are covered by a third party company.
Dave Ellis
Unfortunately it’s becoming increasingly the case that on-site SEO isn’t anywhere near enough on it’s own and off-site SEO is a very grey area for most designers and even more so for clients. However at the very least on-site SEO should be sorted by the website creator.
Jonathan McNulty
Great article Nick,
I just wanted to let you know of a blog I started to help SEO and SEM with Web Design Integration. It is relatively new but there are some pretty good posts up there now. . .Could help with those looking to go a bit more in depth with some of the topics you mention above. . .
LightEcho – SEO, SEM Blog
Thanks and keep on truckin with the great articles!
Alex
Wow! Thank you!
As far as I recolect this is at first someone layed things out the way they suppose to be. The most accurate and proper one so far.
Umair Hashmi
Great Article, You did very superb job. It is really helpful for web designers. I was little bit worried about SEO, I just hear about SEO but now all things are cleared.
Thanks & Regards,
Umair Hashmi
Alanya Haber
Great Article, nice work
Google Chrome Download
Nice and nicly done!
Richard
Great Article! I work for the best web design firm located in NY called NoamDesign and it’s always great to stumble upon articles that help motivate, educate and inspire! Thanks!
Morgen
This was great information! I’m a graphic/front end web designer, and I just started taking an SEO course, and I love it. Your info was great reinforcement to my current knowledge and I know I’ll be back! Thanks, keep ’em coming!
chethan
I must really thank you for this i was searching this over the net thanks :)
Jared
The tips really helpful.
Although many are quite basic knowledge, while a lot designners does not obey or even know them
Chris
great work!really!!!thx
Sam Christy
Thanks for the awesome guide mate, you have really cleared SEO up for me and now I am confident about what it is and how it works!
Rajat
what you said is very true which normally people make them self to really web master but its not like that you have keep your doing good work like you thanks a ton BE Good DO Good
Brendon (inMotion Graphics)
Well, I think your websites are a prime example of how quality content that thousands, if not millions of people will be interested in, plus some good SEO practices can benefit your PageRank hugely. It is obvious to me that you have done a great job with your own SEO, and then you share information and tips, which has created a huge following, the result of which seems to be many important back links and high page ranking. Sometimes you have to give to gain… I love it! Well done man!
Nathan
Thanks for the advice. It really helped me!
svetainiu kurimas
great work!
Conrad Gorny
Wow thats something i have been looking for, easy and understandable. Goodwork.
Conrad Gorny
Freelance Graphic Designer
http://www.conradgorny.com
Alanya
Another great post from this page, thank you!
mauricio
Que Clase de articulo!!!! Felicitaciones ;)
Professional Lab
Excellent tips. Wish you could give some tips about for blogger.com hosted blogs also. [Oh yes! I m first time here and your blog looks really beautiful.]
Uniqmove
nice information.
thanks
gitika khurana
A very useful article indeed.
Tom
As usual great stuff!
Printshop in Orlando
http://www.kprints.com/
Ralph
A great summary about the topic “webdesigner and seo”. Ralph
sol
graciasssssssss!
Christine McKague
Thank you for the tips! I have made some changes and appreciate you sharing your knowledge. Your blog looks fantastic! It certainly adds credibility to your knowledge as does the fact that you rank on page 1!
Thanks!
Christine McKague
What’s In Store
http://www.whatsinstore.ca
Lorenzo
Great post! I’ve been working as a search engine optimizer for 4 years and I really enjoyed founding that designers are also interested with SEO (even if you found someone who does not know what it is about =) ).
Always remember that content rules: if you write useful and brand new contents, your popularity will automatically increase. And what about technical aspects? Just follow W3C and usability standards, you will be surprised!
Exdizajn
Nice article, very useful!
Lky
guat a fac!!!
japanese selfseo
Hi!
I’m japanese search engine optimizer.
The entry was a nice information.
Thanks!
bargains
thanks for nice articles :)
Lokesh
great article for Web Designers and Developer……..i will try to implement in my next site.
Thanks!
Frank
buena info!, aunque todo esta en ingles :-s, igual me servirá bastante.
Saludos
cazipx
kardeş siten güzel ingilizce pek bilmem pagerank artırmak için tavsiyelerin nelerdir
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Dreamweaver Contact Form
Great Post. You have given me a new perspective on SEO. I will use many of these practices in upcoming projects. Thank you.
Nigel
Very well written! I was taught SEO by an accessibility nut. I sort of had to adhere to these concepts out of the gate…. It’s great to see them presented from a design perspective. It has always seemed like good practice to me.
I am not exactly sure how I wound up on this page, I clicked a few links to get here. This site is quite cool. I love the graphics.
Dawn
A friend of mine forwarded an outline for a prospective job that asked for “very strong writing skills — particularly in the on-line world (incorporating SEO)” Since I didn’t know what SEO was I googled it and found this site. Thank you so much! I learned a lot and I will certainly use this site again– especially if I get the job. Wish me luck.
Carlos Hermoso
Great SEO Guide for Designers. Thanks
Blair
We are in the process of redesigning our web site. This information will be very helpful.
Thanks.
The Lanugage Lab Company
Blair
Of course that is supposed to be:
The Language Lab Company
Thanks again.
Yuuzaa
Wow…great…thank you for informations :)
bebo music skins
thanks for this i have a lot of click heres, il have to get rid of them
Di Kennedy
Thanks, it’s so important to build sites that search engines can read. I’m far from an seo expert, but i try to help out my clients when I build the site, and information is definitely in my bookmarks.
www.cclbanana.com
not bad,i like it!!!
visit my blog,
http://www.cclbanana.com
Sydney Web Design
Pure brilliance!
I really enjoy reading your stuff Nick, keep up the good work pal.
Jamie
www.cclbanana.com
study,thx.
Gloucestershire Web Design
This is one of the best explanations about SEO on the web! Its not surprising considering this website is one of the top 10 (imhp) best website out there.
Its good to see real info about SEO unlike other sites which either fib about it or are trying to sell you something.
Keep up the excellent work!
Beat wishes,
Duncan.
manS
Great Tutorial…TQ So Much…. It would helpful on my picture based website… TQ..
Taher
hello,
sir i have experiance for 6 mon for seo development so any requirement for that job, so plz tell me.
Cosmin
you should update the flash part of this guide, Google now indexes links embedded in Flash ;)
overall, great tut :)
Mobde3
This Article is very good which tell me about “SEO” , thanks for helpful information.
web tasarımı
firstly i wanna say “thank you” becouse this is an useful article. i have learned lots of thing from it.
Philips
Very Impressive article – Useful for many designers and developers.
Social Evil Inc.
Thanks buddy! This is some of the most honest content on SEO that I have found out there. Nice Work!
web tasarımı
thanks.. good
Sham
Awesome tips for beginners ,keep up the good work:)
Richard Clapp
Hugely informative. Thankyou!
Richard
Bhavya Technologies
This article was very useful for designers…
judy
very helpful, thanks!
yemen economist
I am so thankful for your article about SEO that help us
Webdesigner
am obliged
web gowns
very useful basic tips that even I can understand’ thank you
Joseph Curran
Thanks you this was a very helpful and useful article… For those of us who are a little new at this and still struggleing with the concepts, it seemed to clearly lay out the subjec in terms that even I could understand. Sincerely appreciate the time and effort that went into keeping it understandable and basic, for us beginners.
SEO Web Designer
Thanks for the efforts to wrote this wonderful blog about SEO for Web Designer. This really serve a min knowledge about SEO to all web designers :)
Internet Advertising Agency
Thanks for this excellent and informative post. As an advertising agency we work with lots of designers that don’t pay any attention to SEO at the design stages, which as you highlight in your article is rather a lot.
Gaurav Kasera
thanks for good information about the SEO
Miss Blossom
I’ve been reading a lot of articles across the web and this one by far is the best one for designers.
Miss Blossom
I forgot to mention I have had great success using a lot of these techniques for my site and have had a 950% increase in traffic in 3 months according to Alexa, which I think is due to a number of factors including hard work on my site, as well as research, and this article really helped so thank you thank you! I have even had some of my clients pointing out sites that have copied my site, which is upseting, but then I remembered how many people copy this site and I felt better!
Žaidimai
Thanks a lot for this information, i found out that i have done a few mistakes in my site as well, lol, going to fix it now .
KooWii
I agree that SEO is very important to webmasters. It can help to increase traffic, make profits, and help with the marketing. Thank you for this great post. It is really true that all webmasters should master SEO to succeed.
yemen
We got hit with a 2 point drop as well, from 6 to 4. We’re not about to remove our text links though until Google steps up and explains their reasoning behind the drop.
arunsakthi
SEO is a Techniques, its hard to give you a one liner or quick guidance but you can read link development and search engine optimization forums here at Digital Point and other material for a while to get some idea. after that if you have any specific question, feel free to ask and there are lot of people here would would like to help
Amberi andreuje
Hello all’s it is realy too good that SEO Guide for Designers and very useful infomation about the How Search Engines Work i feel that it is adopted work for each SEO Persons.
Web Design Company
Amazing article. Very detailed
freelancer web designer
Thanks a lot for this article , very intersting , time to change a lot of things in my website too
Thank you for letting us know!
Zaidimai
thanks a lot
it is the time to update my website, lol
regards
subhash chandra
Devanga Vivaha.com is an exclusive matrimonial portal for Telugu Devanga community people across India. The portal has the exclusive members who belong to Telugu Devanga community and is interested in matrimonial services.
eric
Any recommend reading?
Nick Julia
As a designer, I think this is a must have. What good is a website that no one sees? Thanks
-Nick
elfaize
I red a lot about SEO and SEM. Trust me you wrote a professional article. not only a complete description but also easy to understand.
Great job. Thank you.
Jessie
I enjoyed this post immensely! SEO was a lot easier to understand the way you put it! Found you through Dynamic Graphics Magazine! awesome!
Jessie
Ps. Can Search Engines get to information in Spry Collapsible Panels?
Ottawa Web Design
Informative article. Really surprised that most designers do not think this is crucial.
ELD
very nice SEO article, thanks
lokendra
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STail
SEO, as a profession, is bull. A well-designed site with well-designed content should stand on its own. A search engine, by its very nature, should be able to parse that site without aid.
The above are very good tips – practices which should be employed BY THE DESIGNER and BY THE CONTENT MANAGER. SEO should not be a job title.
Jeff Harvey
Jessie-
to answer your question, “yes,” search engines can get to content in SPRY collapsible panels. Just yesterday I addressed this question when creating collapsible panels for a website I’m working on, http://www.janeoforegon.com
Check out the collapsible panels by clicking here.
The content is static html (text within an html file) and is placed within a div inside the html file…it is as fully accessible as other text in the html file is. I believe that SPRY is designed for people to use these flashy javascript effects to create rollover menus, animated panels, accordion effects, etc. with as much css and html replacing the otherwise “bad code” (search engine unfriendly) so that SEO is retained. SPRY uses SEO friendly javascript, in other words. Hope this helps…
M Hendra Herviawan
wowowow, great poss for beginer like me
Kenny
Hi yea, It would be great if you had a place on your site to download a pdf of all the latest info, something of a newspaper come book, If it had a pay here buttun and you were charging 10 odd quid for it I would get it every so often thus I can read it when I have a pint at home. I sometimes find for educational purpose studying on the net is too much for me, I like to print n paper and have a good read and use highlighter etc.
regards
K
Guaranteed Houston SEO
Awesome information! I really appreciated it and looking for some new updates.
Nick
Excellent article….. Your writing skill has encouraged me. The way you have written is very simple and anyone can understand it easily. These tips are really very much useful for the new designers and developers. Thanks for writing such wonderful article. I will definitely share this link with my friends.
Free Search Engine Submissions
Only in the last 12 months has it become very clear to me that SEO is very important, so much so that I now spend a lot of my time on it. I have come accross several SEO guides recently, and this one is among the better ones, so thanks for compiling it. So many businesses and websites are scrambling these days to get generate leads and more and more are realizing the importance of SEO, so this post will likely become very popular.
Bob Williams
Excellent article. There are a lot of things I never even thought about.
Thanks for the links as well. Great job!
Bob Williams
Agent SEO
Nick,
This is a great article! This (in-short) details many of the intricacies of a good Search Engine Optimization Campaign. You can definitely tell you put a lot of thought, time, and effort into this. As a professional SEO, I must say you clearly know your stuff!
nadjeeb
nice :D
SEO Australa
Nice article
SEO is simply designing your website to the needs of your customers, tailoring the experience to their type of search. Before you start any website design project, you should understand your target audience and what they are looking for.
My 2 cents
Nicole Thompsen
When Breitling, which opened its doors for the first time is Switzerland in 1884, decides to release a new timepiece, the rest of the watch world, fans and competitors alike, pays close attention.
Well here it is. The Breitling Caliber B01.
WebCatalyst
Really very great article.
Very nice and informative.
Directory Submission
The article is very precise and very informative, it is useful for designer as well as SEO webmaster.
basant jena
After reading this content, i got satisfied about this. im am really really very happy. thanks you
Constant M
Thanks man! Great article!
Wedding Guru
Many things were not known to me earlier, thanks for the informative article.
dpi
Very informative and well organised informations for SEO.
Thanks mate..
Ali Reza
Thanks. Thats was a very informative article. Well written.
diyet
thanks it is very important info
Naruto Shippuuden
Very interesting article
quang cao online
I agree with you, SEO isn’t only for online marketers. As a web designer or frontend developer, most on-site SEO is your responsibility.
2009 Sbs Sonuçları
Thanks admin..Very good sites..
Oyun
everybody thanks
Oyunlar
wanderfull,realky
Çeşme Otel
i use these tips our site,
thanks,
Butik Otel
Akash Panchbudhe
Hi there,
i am also not a seo expert but the article like this helps alot to gain more amd more knowledge about seo.. great conent
veer
What an article?
Gained Good Knowledge
Self Expert
I am a newbie to all of this, and some of it sometimes goes over my head, but I am willing to learn and eventually become an expert in SEO. That’s why I created my self expert info blog
Sbs Sonuçları
Ohh very good admin
Carl - Web Courses Bangkok Instructor
Very useful thanks!
I do like the part about samantic code, its very important!
Thanks,
C
yapidekor
Thank you my friend …
Merlin Calo
Hey Bob,
nice article. I am really just learning SEO, and know how important it really. It looks like there are a lot of resources here that I will want to revisit at some point. Thanks for sharing your input on the topic.
Merlin Calo
http://www.coroflot.com/M3D
saç ekimi
Thank you my friend
shravan Mishra
Great article about SEO. very informative.
Chuck
Very informative article Bob. However, I think a major SEO analysis tool you missed was SpyderMate. It’s free with a lot of graphics and statistics, plus it gives you the option to compare your site against competitors.
http://spydermate.com
medyum
Great article about SEO. very informative
Thanks
seo london
Great article as usual.
mauco
Great post. SEO is something I believe every web designer must take seriously to be able to provide quality service to clients.
Komik Videolar
Thanks admin.
Mike @ Toronto SEO
Really serious and detailed article. I’ve read a lot of guides and manuals and by far this one owns them all =) SEO nowadays is very important …I’d call it VITALLY important thing so clear understanding of all basic rules and requirements is really what a great deal of SEO guys lack….
from other hand it’s like revealing secrets to your enemies =) I bet you know what I mean….good idea is to put some disinformation to all articles that will allow in SEO industry those who really have brains =)
Best regards from Toronto!
Mike / Toronto SEO
karl
SEO is something I believe every web designer must take seriously to be able to provide quality service .
cennetevi
Thank =)=)=) you http://www.cennet.gen.tr webdesignerwall Thanks
Aqeel Bilal Malik
Thanks for a great information. Being an SEO Professional, I have been looking for some core fundamentals of Development and design with SEO prespective. These guidelines are good enough to help most of us.
ewan SEO
Checking broken links through Google Webmaster tools is an essential as 404 will quickly negatively impact your rankings
end23
SEO is good, for now i look for CSS techniq
Marc
Thanks admin¡¡¡. Marc
Büyü
Great post. SEO is something I believe every web designer must take seriously to be able to provide quality service to clients.
YATES
Thanks for a great information.
Aamir
Great help. Much appreciated.
Juliet Brown
i would like to know if it is possible for me to design a search engine that load html pages on a specified area in another html page in the same site. if yes, please i want an answer to this question. if possible.
thanks.
Aaron
Excellent post, confirms most of my basic practices when building websites.
David
Nice article for Designer.
You can add also How to promote your website:
http://csssubmiter.com
For really good designer it’s perfect.
Link Building
Such, a nice post..yes, It should require the Knowledge of SEO by web designer because the person who are giving order for web designing may not know all this SEO basic, so it is better to have SEO knowledge by web designer to give best exposure of website, which may be client does not even know.– Best Regards,
– – Bhargav Bavarva
Karl Foxley
This is a very well written and informative post. Certainly worth linking to.
Regards,
Karl
pixelshots
haven’t got such relevant and wellwritten infos on seo from anywhere yet.. you cleared many doubts and am keeping in mind the things you said.. let’s see the change .. cu around
Aoobi
Really cool article. Great help. Much appreciated.
Paul Pruneau
Excellent post and great summary of SEO. I recently engaged some of the best practices you outlined in your post and I have lifted my online visibility and web site grade by over 33%. What’s even more interesting is that another designer I know who is a described web pro has a web site that is 80% less effective at SEO than my site. I will continue to implement these practices and hope to lift my online visibility and site grade even higher. Thanks again for your insights.
PP
bagsin
Seo is friendly for your site. Great info
TCW
very nice site, Thanks for your seo tips!
ELAMRI RIDA
Great Post on SEO , i enjoyed reading it , i would like also to emphasis the important of having a Valid W3C Pages from http://validator.w3.org/
Cyrus
Great , SEO Guide for Designers
Great article. CSS saved web design
Cyrus
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YATES
Very useful, complete and well explained. A great article.
30nema31
thanks very much for this poste
rx-1
Very good very nice site, Thanks for your seo tips!
Bangkok apartment
Thank you for good knowledge.
بنت السعوديه
thaankes for all
Benard
Thanks for such an excellent article. It really helped in outlining the best practices
John17
And the online catalog, in German or English, mystified me. ,
SEO
Great Post on SEO , i enjoyed reading it
rahil
GREAT ARTICLE AND GOOD RESEARCH!!!!
VERY INFORMATIVE ……I APPRECIATE..
kilo aldırıcı
thanks very nice design
Mike
Thanks for such an excellent article. It really helped in outlining the best practices, thanks
Benard
Real good stuff keep it coming
pankhuri
hey nice post. Really helpful. I have a query.. I made website for a dance academy. Now this class has a huge name (around 45 characters with spaces). while giving individual page titles, should i append the academy’s name at the end? Or should i simply not bother about it..? We also have a nice 5 character abbreviation for the academy. But its not well-known. Hence isn’t anywhere on the web. Should I introduce that on the home page and use it in Page Titles?
Maybe one can’t say for sure, but i hope u can help..
medyum
this is very nice blog,thank you for all
nubia
Great information, Thank you for sharing with some of us who have not a clue, but with your article the fog is starting to lift.
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noor
Hi,
Good work. Thanks for sharing.
vincentdresses
The designs showed here show what simple and tasteful design is all about. Another one to consider
seo
Really nice post. I utilize from this article.Thanks for the whole crew
Seo
Hi there
Good work. Thanks for sharing.
iam very glad
Maria
thanks for sharing very useful informations
egypt web design
a very nice posts, I like it especially “Your Job As a Search Engine Optimizer”
thanks
ewitttas
seo friendly website design will help search engine to crawl pages asap.
Seo
IraQseo
Service apartments bangkok
Hi,
Good work. Thanks for sharing.
this is very nice blog,thank you for all
Tanzanian designer
Very usefull. I’m in the process of working on SEO on some projects. Cheers
Jim
I have visited many web sites and I learned that most of people are not focusing on SEO while they are designing.Lot of highly ranked sites shows no results in Google search engine.Many web sites have a very good content but due to their ignorance about SEO.They failed to share their sites in search engine results.On the other hand Spammer are getting very good traffic.So Sad.
Watch Naruto
Hmm great article! Thanks.
seocontentgirl
This was very helpful information and very useful. I think every web designer or developer should have knowledge in building search engine friendly websites. Basic SEO is needed.
ANA
Really serious and detailed article.
Gareth
Thank you so much for writing this helpful guide! I have bookmarked this, and will undoubtedly use it as a reference in the future.
babloo
Hi Buddy!!!
I really appreciate for ahead to seo teaching… with guiders. thanks many meet again.
Web Development Company in India
babloodmax
Hi Friends..!!!
Thanks many for sharing seo free tolls list.. meet again.
Web Development in India
dsf ministatus
one online tool that could and can help webmasters is http://ministatus.com. it returns various results related to SEO and SMO as well as a price evaluation of the queried domain.
Asko
Thank god i was doing most of the stuff right! Nice piece of information ;)
Rob
Hi guys,
my company is looking for smart & brilliant w-designer and seo for a couple of websites. Hotel Market. I would be happy if you can get in touch.
Ciao
Rob
sağlık
monies earned through the internet increases, people in search engines to attract visitors to the site they wanted to raise. it has occurred as a result of the seo. For those who want to apply to the seo site was a beautiful expression.
sbobet
Thanks for a great information. Being an SEO Professional
Kenneth
Hey, great information for me i would have to say i would be shocked if i heard a developer tell me that they don’t know what SEO is by now.
DR SEO
Great Post. Look at this great seo too.
nilika
great stuff…………..
WebsiteReckon.com outstanding web analytic tools on the internet today. You can use it for FREE. More than website value calculation, are target specific Traffic, pageviews. Fantastic!
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Izrada web sajtova
Thanks for a great information. This is SEO Professional
Medya
It’s very good. I really appreciate for ahead to seo teaching…
Wellness Wismar
Wow, your webdesign rocks! Great article! Very interesting! Thank you very much
Schwaneberg
Thanks you for this great information. This is really interessting. It is possible to get this information as PDF or a presentation (to show my collegues)?
Mathieu
Very good summary , thanks
wedmaster
With genuine content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you — and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!
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smith
This is great! As a beginning designer, the idea of keeping up with SEO seemed a little intimidating until I read your fantastic article. Thanks!
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aakash
free check your website worth
websitereckon.com
thanks
Tauranga Web Design
Some excellent tips, I always get annoyed with designers coming up with designs that can’t be replicated, I wouldn’t even dare try to ask them to consider SEO but I guess I can only hope… one day maybe.
Oaktre
I found that when I wanted more information the links provided me with what I was looking for.
I would like to add something that might get into that 101 list, if you think it worthed.
Great ideas and tips.
IraQlife
wowowow, great poss for beginer like me
Fashion Jewellery
I always appreciate such article, please keep it up.
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seo
It seems to me that an ignored factor that makes the answers on SO better, is that that the questions are better. The subject matter itself creates a barrier to entry that weeds out most of the Yahoo Answers-level questioners
Rajesh
wow gr8 post….. happy to see this type of tips….
all the best guys
Thanks& Regards
Rajesh.Boddu
spor
it’s too helpfull, thanks
Jalil
I am designer.therefore i like it.
Sam
This is real fact and i think the SEO is the major part for the web promotion. Fat Burning Furnace Scam Review
SEOTrollverse
I got it! SEO is really important for Online business and in web designing too. Thanks for your great web seo guide and tips for desgners.
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Tri Mandir Prajapati
got the idea of SEO,
thanks
Eryaman hali yikama
Good information and good way your blog post. Good luck blogger man.
Phil
Please keep up your good work. I used to have a big discussion with my students in regards to a Splash page too. Have never really understood them.
Magic Piggy Market
Thank you so much! I’ve been passing your site around to my colleagues and they find it very helpful. I tend to garble everything in SEO speak which is hard to understand.
Hendy
Thank you so much for the clear explanation and information. It’s really helpful for me especially for the website that I’m trying to improve on search engine crawling.
– All The Best –
Cycling Review
An artistic mind (developer) coupled with the knowledge to make the numbers (SEO) is a powerful combination. Thanks for the post.
Külföldi munka
Wonderful read, and excellent points. Cheers
Chester8111
Yes for high page rankings you definitely aSearch Engine friendly website, lots quality content with tons of relevant back links. That is what SEO is all about. It works for web designers, SEO marketers and site owners.
Jill C
As a web developer I completely agree that we MUST know SEO to be able to create sites for today’s world! We do not need to be experts – but a strong knowledge of the latest SEO trends coupled with outstanding design and code can allow us to charge a premium for our services! This is an awesome article – thanks for some great insight!! Jill
Gavin Wisser
I’m just getting started as a web designer on the side. My HTML and CSS chops are pretty decent but I’ve struggled with some of the seo concepts. This article (particularly the keyword bits) has been immensely helpful. Thanks for taking the time to help a noob learn a thing or two. :)
Cheers!
Safi
Hi,
Thanks for the “SEO Guide for Designers” tips. I really liked it.
Safi
Ian
Nice post. I perform the SEO for the company and I work for and this is a lot of solid info. One thing on keyword density though, it actually isn’t measured by the search engines anymore. It is important to have a keyword appear through out your content but it is more important for your site to be useful to the user. So trying to maintain an a certain percentage won’t help you. Just make sure the content flows naturally and is as informative as possible. After all a user liking your site and sharing it/linking to it on their own site will have more of an impact on traffic than mentioning a keyword a couple more times.
emilio
This is one of the best guides that i ever readed, it is full of really good informations and tips; also, i believe that a SEO specialist must have acknowledges of web design, as much as a web designer must know hot to optimize his creation (horse=SEO, carriage=Website).
Great work!
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SEO is working from here also. so I like to write about my businees little bit. you can submit your webdetails in youtube.com, buddytv.com, like that.
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Really awesome post with clear explanation, best seo guide lines for every one
thank you… :)
Planet Voodoo
You have provided some great tips for SEO. I am also self-taught and so I am always looking to improve my sites usability for customers and readability for search engines.
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Really awesome post with clear explanation, best seo guide lines for every one
Quang ba web
thank you so much for sharing this information with us, it is pretty interesting.
seo
This is one of the best guides that i ever readed, it is full of really good informations and tips; also, i believe that a SEO specialist must have acknowledges of web design
valeria
Thank you for such a good article!, it was very useful for me. Although I was informed about some things, its a very clean and clarifier article.
medyum
The information you provided was very useful. Because of your help, thank you
Web Element Inc
Thanks for posting such an informative post. This post will surely be helpful for a beginer to an expert level. Web Designer and Developers will get a clear picture about how the websites should be designed from the SEO point of view.
Thanks for the vital informations…… :)
Web tasarım izmir
very useful and understandable article,thanks. And ı want to add that ” Seo is a race which countinues forever.the web sites are like babies,you should show attention to them always.
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Dear Friend
your post is very useful for that who is in-trusted in web designing.SEO is very useful technique.Am also working on SEO technique and the concept of SEO is clear in mind.
Thanks for sharing to us your post.
Nina Shylon
I think that yes Designing is the base of SEO. Without designing SEO has no meaning or I must say that without it SEO can’t exist.
Imroz
This post is a must to be read by all web designers, developers, seo and website owners.
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Many websites continues to use unfriendly URL. instead they could use mod rewrite and have SEO friendly URLs.
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ery useful and understandable article,thanks. And ı want to add that ” Seo is a race which countinues forever.the web sites are like babies,
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This post is a must to be read by all web designers, developers, seo and website owners.Thanks Marc
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Thanks for posting such an informative post. This post will surely be helpful for a beginer to an expert level.
cheapwebdesign
Awesome guide , the tips were very useful, Thank you for sharing
Capital4
Yes all are very true. thanks for providing such as useful information. It’s very good for website developer for making SEO friendly website
Mauritius Holidays
Websites need to use friendly URL so that is crawled easily by the engines.
Cesc
This a really good article, thanks for this info. that results very useful.
Dream Media Design
this is a really good article great info thanks
NZ Web Designers
That’s a great article. It covers all the basics of good SEO work without blinding the reader with too much detail.
Web Design Company USA
It’s an awesome article. These are things should keep in mind while you designing a website for easy promotion. Thanks for sharing.
Tom
Great article! Every designer should take something from it, because designs I see mostly shows how designer has no idea about SEO!
Vivek
This is a really good article I have ever read regarding SEO, thanks for sharing such a nice information. That results very useful.
TopanDesign
this article I was looking for because I’m seo contest
interesting article thanks
اليمن
For many times I get back to this article , it is so beneficial
Rich
Thank you for the tips here. Great advice.
Melvins
Really very important points whatever you have shared. If you would like to see your website on higher level in search engines then you must take care about all these points and also make your website more search engine friendly. Thanks for upgrading my knowledge on SEO.
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Henry Peise
The white iphone 4 hardware design hasn’t changed from the one we already knew about. It uses the same materials as the prototype: Black glass and stainless steel rim.
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Though white iphone 4 is at high price, but with all-powerful function, we can see lots of people just crazy for the latest white iphone 4.
Gene Tompkin
Aided me a lot, just what I was looking for …
Tommy
great article, i’m sending this along to our in-house dev and creative teams! the best part is this: SEO isn’t only for online marketers. As a web designer or frontend developer, most on-site SEO is your responsibility.
martin
increible! para ternerlo siempre en cuenta!
Kendrick
this really helped me a lot with a project in my web design class, thanks.
Andre Deats
Um, not sure I agree to what was mentioned. I guess everyone has their own opinion I guess.
carloi
Easy to understand and to follow. Recommended for SEO newbies and a good refresher to everyone! Thanks for sharing!
Christina Traffanstedt
This was a great article! Thanks for sharing! Although I have learned about SEO before, this was a great reminder and refreshing. I agree 100% that SEO is very important with the design & development of websites. Anymore there are so many ways for people to just get their own websites by using templates, but what they do not realize is they are lacking SEO. Offering SEO as a service can definitely give a web designer or developer and edge.
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web sites and nice works thanks
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increible! para ternerlo siempre en cuenta!
Nitesh
great article!!! very informative.Thanks for sharing this.
James from www.BestWebDesigners.us
So you think you are not an expert in the SEO field? Well, you are wrong!
Your step-by-step SEO guide is not only suitable for pros and newbies alike but it also features unique points not mentioned anywhere else.
Good job!
Thank you for sharing your SEM knowledge with the community.
Best Web Designers, US Team
James from www.BestWebDesigners.us
So you think you are not an expert in the SEO field? Well, you are wrong!
Your step-by-step SEO guide is not only suitable for pros and newbies alike but it also features a few unique points not mentioned anywhere else.
Good job!
Thank you for sharing your SEM knowledge with the community.
Best Web Designers, US Team
James from www.BestWebDesigners.us
Sorry about the duplicate, the wp php comment page was blank so many times, I kept going back and reposting. BTW your comments were not working for the same reason a few days back (blank wp page). Not sure if you are aware of the fault – I googled it and it looks like some wp update is needed…
James Morrish - Web Developer
Good article, but comment 4 isn’t necessarily true – there’s nothing wrong with using AJAX, as long as you make the content available on other pages. Just make sure that when JavaScript is disabled you can also get to the content – then google will also be able to find it.
Totally Bored
This was a great article! Thanks for sharing! Although I have learned about SEO before, this was a great reminder and refreshing. I agree 100% that SEO is very important with the design & development of websites.
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Great article.. iF.
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Wilbur Whateley
I found your article and posts most fascinating,informative and useful. Thanks so much.
Manish
How do i SEO a Search Page? I’ve designing a search engine for designers http://www.flevr.com . There isn’t anything other than a logo and a search box on the page.
Catch22
Great post. It really is about the hidden art of SEO. Seamless integration and working with the site to provide users needs first and Google second.
I love this blog.
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Another questionnaire, the participants’ problem identification and structuring, idea generation, problem elaboration and clarification, such as creativity, problem solving insertion sezkin idea which one’s preferred styles are evaluated. While participants preferred the style of non-disclosure and intellectual development of ADHD, with ADHD, participants chose to produce ideas.
About Web
Pretty cool article…it’s suited for beginners in SEO. What I want to ask is this: ajax menus are SEO friendly ? If not, then which kind of menus can be SEO Friendly and some kind dropmenu for a website ?
Kamil
Amazingly helpful article, just like all other ones I always read here. I found out that SitePoint also launched their own SEO guide book an offering free chapters. You can check it out and see if it is worthy.
ferruh lermi
good seo article. thanks a lot . ferruh lermi
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great seo guide for the designers. Thanks for the upload.
alex
Thank. Useful for beginners.
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Keyword density is an important factor to consider when writing an article. However, the real important thing is to make sure that the article makes sense, that is easy to read and most importantly, enjoyable and useful.
tytus
Search engine optimisation is tough cookie. I am reading everything I can get my hands on. I even wrote my own article Testing, Tracking & Optimization. I hope you are right about long waiting time cause I cant see any results. Thx for sharing.
AfreenShaikh
Thanks a lot for your information… its really very helpful for me.Can you give me some simple information on the On-Page Optimization.
Jim Blanco
Great post, very useful info…
Thanks!
Catch22 Marketing
I love this article. Even as a (self-proclaimed) SEO expert I still refer back to it often. Great advice, great resources and tools and well balanced input on SEO. Thank you
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Link wheel tactics can bring very good ranks in search engine position. My plaxo profile site links are few examples of link selection ideas.
Yanzen Designer
Nice trick to share ^_^ love it seo tips for my blog
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Whow, I did read your blog , that’s quality; a piece of cake now to get money online ??!!
Kari Jo
This is really good information. Web designers’ clients generally don’t understand the concept of SEO but expect that their website is going to get good search rankings. Web designers need to read up on this. SEO outsourcing is a nice option too. Great post.
Dallas Web Designer
Fantastic post!
I like the crash course style, and using your personal webpage as an example of why getting organic traffic is a good thing.
Also, I think the www and non-www is a very important thing that most people giving SEO advice tend to overlook. I know this is an old post, if only I would have found it sooner ;)
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hamza
i like !! grazie
Ken
In today’s world SEO is absolutely imperative. If your business can not be found online you’re losing out on potential customers. Grand Valley Marketing specializes in SEO and other online marketing aspects to help businesses get found by potential customers wherever they may be searching online.
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http://www.GrandValleyMarketing.com offers affordable, effective online marketing for small and local businesses.
SEO Consultant Don
I am a SEO specialist and authority in the field of search engines. I work transparently with web designers all over the US. If you need a reliable SEO expert to back your web designs, I am your guy. Great for your team!
Maxwell
Hello,
Just wondering if you design website and know about seo.I am a Life Coach and in the process of trying to get a web page designed.I would like to get the most out of my web page as like the talk in this forum.Do you have a web page with info I can view your work?
neal
http://www.regalwebsitedesign.com what would you do to get it highter on google?
thanks
Ben
I have worked on a load of web design projects for my clients and almost all of them were interested in ranking well inside Google, yahoo and bing. There is a lot you can do to improve the search optimisation of your website through the design, but also through the structure of the website too.
Web Design Stu
I think people sometimes see SEO as some kind of ‘dark art’ rather than just getting the basics right, which you’ve outlined very well here. Most design companies in my market get their best backlinks through leaving a credit on client’s sites, these backlinks having more influence if the client’s site is also well optimised. Success breed success
StarterWebsite's Design Pete
I agree with Stu, alot of our clients see SEO as some mystical practice. I think education is the key to helping them understand. This takes time but the end reward is a customer willing to spend money where they can see value.
SEO Specialist Philippines
SEO is a must for webdesigners coz it will help a lot if the designers/developers how SE work. They cant just put anything they like coz it might unrank website too
j_hatfield
Great article, there were some very good points made. One bone to pick, I would have liked to seen more information about picking a domain name. This day in age simply your URL could be do or die since its like your first impression to any potential customer, I found this article that explains it a little better:
http://www.back40design.com/news/m.blog/22/a-domain-by-any-other-name
Lee
Fantastic information I have just started up an SEO blog, non profit I am providing advice for free, I consider myself pretty good with SEO but I am always learning. Great content I really appreciate it thank you.
-Lee
Anthon
well i see that seo is the most important of a site to get traffic that’s why i choose http://www.buyfcbkfans.com to seo my site.
lovingPR
this is great information.. thanks for sharing with us! do you like me? :P click my name then :P
Nazim
Great job!. I am searching this type of articles regarding SEO. Thank you again dear Admin…..
Ladida Cafe
In my opinion, when the visitor meet a nice tricks about design they will come again to check the newest post, subscribe to it, or maybe share in social media.
Just keep posting and sharing nice designs and I believe it will get a lot of traffic ;)
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Great guide :)
Ryne
I apprectaie you taking to time to contribute That’s very helpful.
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Overall Im rather impressed with this blog and the article is excellent guide for me.
SeoPro
Wow. very impressive with your article, it mark down to very small details that a web designer should look out for in terms of basics to advanced SEO techniques.
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SEO Tahoe
I also consider that overuse of Ajax in site can surely cause decrements in ranking. Because if we make overuse of ajax to make effective navigation, Google will not be able to crawl site dynamic pages that results decrements in ranking.
[email protected]
Extremely well written post, I stumbled upon your article while I was checking some info on Keyword Density and how many times I must repeat a keyword in an article/post. I was under the impression that I can use 2 to 3% of keyword density, but it’s a news to know that it’s not safe to use more than 3 times in an article. Thanks a lot.
Sanja Lang
Hi,
I just want to thank you for sharing your knowledge. I hope one day I will be able to do the same. Thanks.
Kind Regards
Sanja
AAN
It’s Very – very good…
Awesome
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regards
muna padhi
hi,
i just want say it, thanks and pleasure, .
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It’s Very – very good…
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Craig Smith
Good post as always. I think your gave the skinny on SEO all in one post! I am sure you save many people countless hours of book reading and internet research.
Actually I think you highlighted just about everything you would get in an SEO book you buy at the store. If only I found this post years ago, haha.
SEO Paslaugos
I was under the impression that I can use 2 to 3% of keyword density, but it’s a news to know that it’s not safe to use more than 3 times in an article. Thanks a lot.
[email protected]
You spent a lot of time in writing this post. Certainly it does provide some useful insights for a web designer who wishes to design a search engine friendly website.
vivek
well as a beginner this article is informative for me….
thanks for sharing such a useful information..
arun
does my blog need any seo improvements if so kindly help me
eGurus
Superb article! Thanks for sharing this
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Extremely well written post, I stumbled upon your article while I was checking some info on Keyword Density and how many times I must repeat a keyword in an article/post. I was under the impression that I can use 2 to 3% of keyword density, but it’s a news to know that it’s not safe to use more than 3 times in an article.
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Broken links are very important. Many website owners forget that.
Many don’t give importance to internal links too. Thanks.
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Oh my goodness! Amazing article dude! Thank you so much, However I am going through troubles with
your RSS. I don’t understand why I can’t join it. Is there anybody having identical RSS issues? Anyone who knows the solution will you kindly respond? Thanks!!
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I stumbled upon your article while I was checking some info on Keyword Density and how many times I must repeat a keyword in an article/post. I was under the impression that I can use 2 to 3% of keyword density, but it’s a news to know that it’s not safe to use more than 3 times in an article.
Del
How we use SEO and social media have changed….
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I stumbled upon your article while I was checking some info on Keyword Density and how many times I must repeat a keyword in an article/post. I was under the impression that I can use 2 to 3% of keyword density, but it’s a news to know that it’s not safe to use more than 3 times in an article.
Carlos
Nice one! I recently wrote a fresh post about SEO and Web Design. Most of the things here still makes sense, but it’s an area where things keep changing, as search engines keep updating the algorithms.
Yates de lujo en Ibiza
I think your gave the skinny on SEO all in one post! I am sure you save many people countless hours of book reading and internet research.
Actually I think you highlighted just about everything you would get in an SEO book you buy at the store. If only I found this post years ago,
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thank you for writing this article. It really help me understand more that SEO is indeed important for creating a good website :D
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Ker Agelaga
Dear Sir,
I have another website, want to have your opinion on it (www.skylighttech.net) How can I be found on google when someone types “Web hosting companies in Nigeria” What about my:
ranking?
links?
analytics?
diagnostics ?
Thanks for all your help. How can I reward you?
Regards,
Ker Agelaga
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Thanks for the insight, I bookmarked your this article for further review on my site. Allow me to drop a link on my comment. Thanks for this!
Steve Newman
Good article. Most of the things you mentioned is about on page optimization techniques. These days off-page methods are doing great business for the sites than on page.Social media marketing has emerged as a great platform for online marketing
Angellweb
Interesting read that covers all the basics but, What if you to ‘SEO’ a website that sells ‘SEO’ ? Where do you start??
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A brief introduction on seo, this introduction contains all the information about seo. Can you tell me what are new technologies uses in SEO.
Fraakz
Knowledge about SEO is very important for web designers. Creating search engine friendly websites with eye catchy designs helps improve search engine exposure and better rankings.
StanDMan
Most Interesting and valuable information. I do love the fact there is always a wealth of free valuable information available if one is prepared to do a little bit of work i.e. search for it. All of the fore mentioned is great advise for the experienced and novice alike. I would only add – never lose sight of the fact: People are on your page because they believe you just might have Relevant, valuable and quality information in relation to what they are searching for. That is your priority task and then all of the seo worked mentioned on this page to complete the job. Which is an ongoing job along with regular updates to your site’s content.
As mentioned earlier I do love to use a combination of free and premium tools for my sites on and off page seo. One you may find of interest is: ‘Webfire’ Short film and additional information can be found here: http://seoawebsite.org/index.php/webfire/
In closing, even though you can use free and premium tools to help you promote your site you must prepare yourself for extensive effort and commitment if you wish to succeed!
StanDMan…
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I have another website, want to have your opinion on it (www.skylighttech.net) How can I be found on google when someone types “Web hosting companies in Nigeria” What about my:
Mindaugas
Good post! In nowadays, SEO and UX are very related. UX directly impacts dwell time, bounce rate and the most important – Conversion RATE.
Jonathan Strong | Big League Consulting
One resource for SEO that really should be listed here is Source University. It’s one of the few courses out there that have teachers that make their money from their own skills versus just teaching and it has the most success stories compared to any other courses.
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Interesting read that covers all the basics but, What if you to SEO a website that sells SEO ? Where do you start??