Website Design Affects Search Engine Optimisation: Myth or reality?

Does website design really affect search engine optimisation prospect? This question has been thrown open often in numerous forums and has been widely debated with people taking extreme views on the subject.

Without much ado, let’s get this straight – website design does indeed affect the search engine optimisation prospect.

What is not well known is that a search engine unfriendly website design will hamper the site in its run for the top positions in the search engine listings. Most websites are designed without applying any attention to SEO principles. Website owners usually focus mainly on aesthetics while creating a website, SEO is thought of only after the website is up and running. Sidelining the SEO principles during the website design and development stage is a big mistake.

Most search engine spiders or robots have been developed to recognise HTML and index websites as per their pure text content. Hence formats like Flash (in which most of the animation is done) are not recognised by search engines and are best avoidable though they provide a rich experience to the user.

Text content is very important as that is the most recognisable part of your website for spiders. Therefore be generous with your text content. For e.g. if a website offering real estate services in UK is gunning for top position in engines, it must have rich content with keywords like real estate UK, quality real estate in UK, finding real estate in UK and others. For the spiders or robots only these keywords matter, the images whatsoever they may be don’t.

If images are coming in way of your content, remove them without the slightest hesitation. Visual elements are insignificant from a search engines perspective.

Some of the other factors like site navigation, tags and layout affect SEO friendly website design. We shall delve into them deeper in Quick fix tips for SEO friendly website design