SEO Tips - Site Design (Tip Sheet 2)

Don't Let the Tail Wag the Dog


Why We Do SEO

Search-Engine Optimization is a definite task with a definite goal: higher placement in search-engine results for words and phrases we consider pivotal for our sites. We all sweat and slave for better SERPs.

That is well and good, and is rightly the focus of this and other like sites. But it is all too easy to forget a crucial matter: better SERPs are not an end in themselves--they are another link in a chain that only starts with SEO.

We do SEO to get better SERPs. We want better SERPs because? Because they bring traffic to our sites. But what then?

This is not a children's contest, in which he with the most incoming traffic wins. We want to bring traffic--people--to our sites for some definite reason. Typically, that reason is to buy something we are selling on our sites, but it may be for other reasons; but it is certainly for some reason other than just having them land on a page of the site.

That means that while we have to design our sites and their pages with a sharp eye to SEO considerations, we must never forget to also design them with an at least equally sharp eye to getting those folk we have worked so hard to bring in to actually do whatever it is we brought them in to do.


They're Here: Now What?

That means, in turn, that we must make sure that no matter which page of our site a new visitor first lands on, he or she will find it interesting and attractive, will be motivated to explore further pages, and will find it easy to ascertain which pages those are and how to get to them.

An awful lot goes into those few spare statements, and an awful lot of that lot is grossly ignored by webmasters fixated on traffic counts. But traffic counts don't pay bills. What are some of those factors? There are many, but here are a few (conveniently numbering a round 10).


1. Your page text needs to be simple, clear, inviting--and (shudder as you may) in sound English. The basics of the art of writing simple English prose--once pounded into every 12-year-old--are become moribund. Prose that looks acceptable to you, if in fact riddled with errors of grammar, spelling, style, and idiom, may drive away a surprising (to you) fraction of your visitors, whose logic is that if he can't even write sound, basic English, why should I believe he knows anything? Spell checking is so obvious a requirement that it would seem impossible that not every webmaster would spell-check every page, but one sees grotesque howlers all over the place. Style and grammar are less immediately checked in any mechanical way, but if it comes to that, pay some pro a few bucks to copy-edit your material. Most copy editors work free-lance, and are probably not unreasonable in cost .

2. Keep your images small, few, and essential. Are you selling wine or wine bottles? Graphics are really, like, kewl, man--but never forget that the sound webmaster assumes that his average visitor has a 28.8K dialup or worse connection, a badly adjusted 15-inch monitor, and a slooooww CPU chip. If you think lots of megabyte images enhance the viewing experience on such a visitor's system, go right ahead and plug them in. Otherwise, try to use words--you've heard of those, right?--to describe what you're offering. Where images are vital, as perhaps in real estate, stick to thumbnails that are click-ons for expanded images your visitor gets to choose whether to see.

3. Consider all your visitors. Don't arbitrarily throw away some nontrivial fraction of your hard-won visitors through inattention. Estimates remain in place that suggest that as many as 15% of web users are using text-only browsing. What does your site look like in a Lynx browser? Do you know? If you don't, shame on you. (There are sites available that will show you your site as seen by Lynx.) And, even if you aren't using many images, surely you are using some colors? Background, text, links, emphasis, and so on. Have you any idea what fraction of the population is wholly or partially color-blind? Do you have any idea what your site looks like to such folk? Again, no excuses: there are sites that will show you. To the wise webmaster, universal interoperability needs to be more than a catchphrase.

4. Be fast, fast, fast.Remember that slow dialup visitor? How long will she have to wait for your page to appear? Do you know? Page length (including SSI includes but excluding images) ought not to exceed perhaps 50K bytes; in any event, it should never, ever--even on a slow connection--take over 15 seconds to appear in full, and preferably not over 10 seconds. Survey after survey shows that in this Short-Attention-Span-Theater world, few visitors will not click off to somewhere else if they have to wait over 10 to 15 seconds for at least the text of a page to appear (with a few obvious exceptions, like large tables about which the visitor has been warned in advance). And, besides your page length, how fast is your host? Hosts are not commodities: there are big differences. Look your sites up on Alexa and see what it says about their speed (for mine, they say Speed: Very Fast (98% of sites are slower)--how do yours show?)

5. KISS ("Keep it simple, stupid"). Jazzy effects--JavaScript is so kewl, man, all those nodding bobbleheads and blinking eyes, an' stuff! Right, all invisible to those many with JavaScript disabled. And popup windows that the ever-increasing number of visitors with popup blockers on will never see.

6. Write standard HTML. Remember blinking text? Its descendants surround us every day. Do not cater to any particular browser or browser maker. Always run each page through a third-party code verifier (the W3C has an excellent one). Even SE robots are said to have a distaste for nonstandard HTML code (it makes their job of deciphering your page harder yet). Stick to W3C-standard code, preferably XHTML Transitional 1.0.

7a. Frames: don't. The end.

7b. Flash: don't. The end.

(If you really need to have those things explained to you, Google around the net; I simply haven't the patience.)

8. Link well, wisely, and often within your own pages. Visitors here should know enough about links in and out to other sites. But don't scant named-anchor links within your own sites just because it may not have any great SEO value--it makes life easier for your visitors. Link within pages: send your visitors to the exactly appropriate spot on the same or another page of your site, not just to the top of the page whence they have to search for the point of interest.

9. Do an outline. Logic: this is hard to set exact guidelines for, but for pity's sake give thought to logical organization of your directories, your pages within directories, and your text on pages. Hark back to high-school days--pretend this is an essay you are wrting for a grade. Make a site-and-page Outline. Organize.

10. Enhance your text. Use effects--italics, boldfacing, "teletype", blockquotes, the whole neat arsenal that plain, old HTML makes available--to do what you might, if lazy, rely on graphics for. If a picture is worth a thousand words, why do people still buy and read the novel War and Peace instead of the Classic Comics version? Think about it. Humans rely on words for information. Use words, but enhance those words for effect. (Just don't overdo it--the equivalent of blinking text).

You worked hard for those visitors--make the most of their visit. Be sure your site design will bring them back.

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