Search Engine Friendly Websites
Search engine friendly websites can bring you a lot of success, because they are easily found by Internet searchers. A good search engine optimization (SEO) specialist improves your web pages so that search engines find them faster and index them higher in their result pages .
Of course, such an SEO expert doesn't underestimate the importance of your site visitors. They are the audience you're looking for. So, you should use search engine marketing methods to help searchers find your site while you help your visitors find what they find at your site.
User Friendly Websites vs Search Engine Friendly Websites
For a website visitor, the important thing is to find what (s)he's looking for at your site as soon as possible. In other words, good content, informative sitemap, site structure, page layout and navigation schemes are indicative of perfect functionality.
For a search engine, rich content in form of text and links are important. Search engine friendly websites provide this for them. If a search engine ranks your web page higher in its result pages, Internet searchers will find it more quickly. They should reach a balance to keep both sides happy.
Search Engines use their own peculiar softwares called spiders to check out the websites on the net. They require web sites to be spider-compatible. It means that they like the websites which lack broken links, have meta data, title tags, alt tags and other elements.
If your site meets such certain requirements, it will be a search engine friendly website. This leads to a higher position in the Search Engines' Result Pages (SERPs).
The Requirements Needed to Be a Search Engine Friendly Website
Search Engine spiders work based on the algorithm defined for them. Such an algorithm is revised from time to time according to the search policies. To make a search engine happy, you have to make its spider happy.
A happy spider is the one who sees your site
- doesn't spam it by different methods,
- has got efficient navigation route on the pages most needed,
- doesn't merely use JavaScript for its navigation route,
- follows a correct file structure and file number at its directory,
- uses its own highly effective well-researched keywords,
- includes sufficient keyword-rich text for its pages,
- applies efficient wording in links and navigation menu,
- uses its keywords and key phrases as they are,
- uses its keywords in key positions without spamming,
- hasn't used any hidden text or link,
- includes proper sitemaps for both visitors and search engines,
- updates its sitemaps when the site structure changes,
- doesn't have slow page taking time to load,
- uses reasonable number of graphics in each page,
- uses acceptable file formats for its images,
- uses acceptable size for its images,
- doesn't have old pages,
- doesn't have internal or external broken links,
- uses a robots file for directing search engine to other pages of the site,
- doesn't use search boxes or forms as the only ways to get access to its content,
- uses proper titles for its pages,
- uses unique meta description for its pages,
- receives a reasonable number of incoming links from other websites,
- receives links from quality pages of other websites,
- receives links from sites with similar themes,
- provides links at all the internal pages to its home page,
- uses Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS) throughout the website,
- places script codes outside the web pages where they are used,
- inserts DOC TYPE tag at the top of all its pages,
- applies design techniques so that it appears correctly and the same on all browsers, etc.
Do you have a search engine friendly website?
Now you should know if you have a search engine friendly website or not.
If yes, good for you! Well done! You must have a great website! If no, don't worry! There are SEO services out there to help you with it. Just make sure you do something about it.
Written by Rahman Mehraby
Expert in Organic SEO & Website Promotion
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