• Section: Increase Traffic - Category: SEO/SEM
• Written by Paul Steven

Why would you build a website that can't be seen by the search engines? Why would you pay for a website that can't be found in the search engines?

The web designer's answer would go something like this "I'm here to design, you want optimization you goto an SEO Company". The client will only trigger when the promised leads or sales from the new website never come-to-pass. Things are changing however, more and more designers are switching on to offering their paying clients search engine friendly websites. So, we're making a little headway. We now have designers that actually want to give their sites a helping hand when they release them into the World Wide Web.

But here's the rub. Most designers have read a few pages from a few websites and suddenly they

know everything about Search Engine Optimization. In fact they know so much that they'll even promote the service on their websites and suddenly we're back to the bad old days again. So tell me, I hear you ask, what can I expect from a "Search Engine Friendly Website"? Read on and I'll tell you what you should - at the very least - expect and look for when buying this service from a web design company.

Validation: The first check is to make sure the website validates under any of the W3C Validation certificates. This check makes sure that the HTML written to design your site is valid and any visiting search engine bot or spider can cleanly access all the content and links contained within.

Title Tags: Your designer should make sure that all title tags are themselves unique. Whether your site is static or dynamic, it is of the utmost importance to have unique title tags for each page. Sites that have similar title tags will find search engines like Google placing their pages in their Supplemental Index (not a good place to be). Another hint with title tags is don't place your company name at the beginning. Importance of this position belongs to the most prominent keyword phrase of your page not your company's brand name.

Semantic Markup: All main headings should use the Heading1 tag and sub-headings the Heading2. These can be styled using CSS .

Images, Flash, Frames, Counters and Animated Gifs: A brief description on the alt tag to describe an image is best for those that use screen-readers. Never design 100% Flash based sites

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