SEO TIPS: SEF Websites

Many web design companies will eagerly tell you that they create search engine friendly websites – you've likely heard that line before. When you talk to SEO companies and SEO professionals, they will  remind you in no uncertain terms that you should have a search engine friendly website. What exactly is a search engine friendly website though and does it make a big enough difference to pursue having one?

Creating a search engine friendly website is keeping it clean and simple! It sounds easy, yet so many webmasters get it worng. The factors you should be looking at when attempting to that make your website into a search engine friendly website include your URL structure, coding, tax, script and text. On their own, they may not seem like much, but when you add them up you can create a website that is highly search engine friendly and that is a pursuit that is well worth the efoort. That means it is easily crawled indexed, and categorized as relevant to your niche by the search engine spiders. The happier you keep the spiders, the happier you wil be.
The first thing you need to look at is your URL structure as it is crucial for making your website into a search engine friendly website. You have to be consistent and use correct URLs throughout your site. To not do this is to lose big points, and you're always fighting for all the points you can get.  similarly, the coding of your website should follow all accepted standards laid out by Google which can be found via webmaster tools.

Poor coding will make your website unfriendly to search engines which starts you off with a handicap. Keep in mind that tags are important – these are things  your visitors see so you can't discount what you do to improve the visitor experience. Take advantage of tagging at every opportunity – photos, videos, articles and anything else you can imagine. Just make sure your tags are accurate or you have a problem.  What your visitors see is a part of what makes your website search engine friendly to a degree. It is f

ar from everything though has a lot  has to do with the codes at the backend which matter to the search engines. You cannot neglect either because each carries value and has an impact.

Your website should above all be XHTML compliant. All errors need to be corrected as soon as is possible. An XHTML validation service can help you stay on top of this so that you don't get caught by surprise. When you design a website, or have it designed for you, XHTML errors often pop up, so having it checked and fixed will help your website be much more search engine friendly. Include both XML sitemap for search engines and a regular HTML sitemap for the users.

Avoid Flash, Frames andJava script as much as possible as search engines have problems with crawling websites with frames, don’t like Java Script and can’t read Flash – just the text around it. It looks nice, but it is wasted when it comes to getting your site crawled. This can't be made any simpler – say no to Flash!

– Keep pages short so they load fast – load time is a factor that is all too often overlooked. Pages that lag are penalized and they don’t make visitors too happy either.

– Make sure that all of your links are active.  All broken links and 404 errors will affect your website’s ranking. The bigger problem is they will aggravate visitors and no matter hnow much the SERPs love your site, if visitors hate it, your site has little if any value.

– If you can avoid drop down menus, do it! Search engine spiders are often unable to index then properly if at all. Static menus work much better for website navigation, yet so few webmasters use them.  It should never take more than four clicks to reach any main page on your site. If necessary, make use of breadcrumb links to help visitors get around.

The biggest thing may very well be to choose a reliable hosting provider so that your website has the highest uptime possible. A cheap hosting package is costing you if it has a lot of downtime because you lose traffic and conversions.  Do add fresh content on a regular basis so that Google will continue to return and re-index your website. In order to remain relevant, you need to remain up and running and active. Follow these tips and you will be enjoying more success in no time!