Role of Design in SEO and Indexing
Often times, it becomes a questionable thought whether design matter in seo and indexing rate. Often times people double guess themselves and leave the design part out. Often because a quality design costs alot. Perhaps, that is a personal choice, but in reality does it matter or not?
This question was raised by a MOGÂ at Digitalpoint:
I believe that YES the design matters in increasing the index rate and a better SEO. A smart SEO Company once taken a project, make adjustments toward the design and how the content is organized to shape it in a way so it is both user-friendly and Search engine friendly. While many webmasters due to various reasons could not get unique custom seo-friendly designs, but here are some advices that you might want to be looking into unique, or free designs when you get them.
Believe it or not, but the design does not have to be tableless. It helps the bot crawl faster if the site is tableless, but the structure of the content matters the most. Using the effective <h2><h3> tags respectively plays an essential role when you have the content organized.
In all cases of design how ever it looks, in the coding, the content should appear above everything, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the sidebar. Why? Because sidebar tends to contain multiple links, Site Navigation link, Sponsor links, Partner links, and such.Â
Even if the design is coded completely tableless, it can have the sidebar before the content. Various ways to go about it and fix this issue. Always keep the content on the left side and sidebar on the right side and that solves the problem easily eh. Make sure when inserting the <td> or <div> it comes after the content <td> or <div> tags.
We can’t all have sidebars on the left hand side, because then all websites will look the same. Well now you need a good designer because their creative minds work miracles. They can have the sidebar on the left side using the div properties, or the Master Table law to make the design SEO Friendly. In all cases you must have a valid .css file. To check the validation feel free to use the w3 services because they exist for a reson.Â
Div Properties
Div properties allow the designer to use the div tags with special css float properties. These may or may not require to make parent ids including wrapper, wrapper container, or whatever the designer calls them. By using these tags wisely, it is no problem for the designer to make the content appear before the sidebar in the source file.
Master Table Law
Master Table law is a sleek SEO table trick. It is very briefly explained at Larry Swanson’s Website. I would like to summarize what the page says.
Basically when you start making tables for the content and the sidebar you make it in one big table, so instead of having two tables, you can have three tables and use padding function to make it fit your needs.
Follow the demonstration:
<HTML>
<BODY><!-- HEADER/LOGO TABLE -->
<table width="100%" bgcolor="#666699" cellpadding="5"><tr><td>
<p><bold>[ header/logo ]</bold></p>
</td></tr></table><!-- BEGIN SUPER TABLE -->
<table bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td valign="top"><!-- CONTENT TABLE -->
<table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" align="right" width="80%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0">
<tr><!-- MAIN CONTENT CELL -->
<td width="70%" valign="top">
<p><strong>Main Content</strong></p>
<p>Your important main content is right here near the top of your HTML code. </p>
</td><!-- SIDEBAR CELL -->
<td bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="30%" valign="top">
<p><strong>Sidebar</strong></p>
<p>Sidebar content comes second, after main content. </p>
</td></tr><!-- FOOTER ROW -->
<tr><td width="70%" align="center" valign="top">
<hr size="1">
<p><a>home</a>
| <a>site map</a>
| <a>contact</a>
</td>
<td width="30%" bgcolor="#eeeeee"> </td>
</tr></table>
<!-- END CONTENT TABLE --><!-- NAV TABLE -->
<table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="20%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0"><tr>
<td bgcolor="#eeeeee" width="100%" valign="top">
<p><a>Nav 1</a></p>
<p><a>Nav 2</a></p>
</td></tr></table><!-- END SUPER TABLE -->
</td></tr></table><!-- BOTTOM TABLE - OPTIONAL -->
<table bgcolor="#666699" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0">
<tr><td>Â </td></tr></table></BODY>
</HTML>After using the following text, you should not have any issues with indexing.Maybe now a few of you (or atleast i hope a few) will think twice before saying Ah, lets just start a site and get the design later.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
[...] Another big think with SEO is the structure of the design whether the content comes first or not. More about this issue in this post. Once this step is fulfilled you need to look at your options in advertising methods. I have shared [...]
[...] into the directory, so your investment is not going to waste. Next thing you need to look in the design is the seo friendliness. Make sure that the content is above the other things because you want your site’s [...]
Nice post Syed. I’ve seen some themes which really abuse the tags. I didn’t bother untill now. Now I’m more aware thanks to this post.
Thanks for this very interesting post. I really enjoyed reading this. I like the idea of the code that you put in there also.
I really confused with the code above.
syed can you give me a wp-themes seo friendly, because I really need it to follow the seo contest in my country.
thanks before his syed