Humans V Robots V Search Engines - The Website Design Challenge

When it comes to web design there are two main considerations, how visitors will see it and how search engines will see it, and unfortunately what makes a website fantastic for one may weaken its success with the other. All singing and dancing graphics and navigation, words or images that move around and lead capture pages may all help grab the attention of those who visit your site but these dynamic web> features are often hated by search engine robots which may struggle to read them the way you intended, and the resulting low position on the search engines may mean that very few people actually get to come to view your website in the first place to see the fabulous design that you were so proud about.

Over the years I've found some incredible websites with stunning designs, but a quick look at the source code behind it and it is a complete disaster, with excessive coding that a search engine would hate. Keeping your html or php code as clean and clear as possible is important for getting a top search engine position, and try to avoid too much JavaScript as some browsers as well as search engines can struggle with it.

Visitors view at a website much the same way they look at an advert or a poster, top left to bottom right, so this line of sight matters on your website page, which is why top and left navigation is the best to use, especially as right panel navigation can disappear from view altogether on a screen with limited size. But, the right panel is more search engine friendly because it comes after your page content and therefore means your keywords appear higher up in your website code. There are two ways around this problem, first is to put keywords in your navigation button names, the more complicated is to set up your coding in such a way as for the main content to come immediately after the header and titles, and before any navigation. Speak to your website builder or web design company on how to get this done on your website.

Turning off the images on your browser for a moment is a clever way of getting a snapshot of how some search engines will read your page, if there are bits on there that make no sense then you might want to make some changes.

In the end, however much you attempt to solve the problem between website visitor and search engine, your web design is likely to always lean to one more that the other. If you have a new website, a new business or require a lot on new website visitors for your business then your decision is easy, you have to make your website as search engine friendly as you possibly can. For a more established business, one that will mostly be visits by returning clients who know where to find your site then how it appears to people will be the principal priority.

Article by Roy Strong of Strong Marketing Ltd