Day 4: Web Design That Google Likes
Written by Jaren Green | 19 April 2010
Like the people that visit your website, Google will judge your business based on what it can see. Here are two designs that will hurt your visibility in the search engines.
Two of our 10-Day Makeover clients had web designs that looked fine on the surface, but the code underneath created a blind spot for Google and other search engine crawlers. Avoid these design mistakes and enjoy better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results.
SEO DESIGN MISTAKE 1: Frames
There are a number of design advantages to using frames that have been used for years to create attractive, appealing websites. This kind of design is really just one web page being displayed inside a frame that is located on or nested within another web page.
Google does one of two things when it comes to a page containing a frame. In the first case, Google ignores the nested page which means that no one will ever find your content by doing a search on Google. In the second case, Google indexes the nested page alone, without the surrounding information. People may find your page, but when they click through from the search engine, they will see only the sub-page, without the navigation or surrounding context.
SEO DESIGN MISTAKE 2: Flash
There are methods for creating a Flash website that can be easily read by Google, but most designers never bother. Some truly amazing things can be achieved with Flash, but Google is generally unimpressed and will often ignore all but the home page. And, if the home page does get indexed, there will be very little content, because Google cannot ready the text in a flash presentation.
Without a proper listing in the search engines, your website will receive very few visitors. And if there are no visitors, then no one will be impressed by your amazing Flash website.
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