Whether you plan on designing a web site yourself or hiring a professional, here are some tips to keep in mind (and make sure your designer follows your suggestions as well):

•  Flash design should be kept a minimum. Search engines will have a difficult time ‘reading’ a page that is entirely made of flash animation. Flash should be an embedded file that does not consume the time of a visitor (in other words, having to wait to navigate or click on other pages because of the flash).
• Avoid introductory home pages- these are blank, ‘click here to enter’ pages that a visitor has to view before even seeing the site. Worse, some designers do flash ’splash’ pages thinking that a cool animation is a great asset to a web site. This is actually a BAD thing for both search engines and visitors who don’t want to wait or click.
• Make sure your text on the site is actual text. There are still designs out there where the text is placed into graphics. Some times designers do this in order to use different font styles for an appealing look. Unfortunately, search engines cannot read the text in this form (and therefore cannot index or ‘rank’ your web pages).
• Missing contact information- nothing is worse than a web site that does not have email, phones or contact forms.
• Consider not using excessive Java, flashing, blinking text, scrolling or trailing ‘mice’ or loud music that distracts visitors.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.