| Designing
a good looking web-site is not enough - one must ensure
that quality customers visit it regularly. Search Engine
being one of the most important sources of traffic to
any web-site - web designers should pay enough attention
to make their creation search engine friendly.
To understand search engine friendly features of any
web-site, it is important to examine how a search engine
works. There are essentially two kinds of search engines
- directory and spider based search engines.
Directory
Type Search Engine
This type of search engines
list websites under categories (sometimes called category
database). They have large number of categories to fit
all kinds of web-pages. Largely managed by human beings,
the two outstanding features of any directory are accuracy
and selectivity.
Directories are extremely selective about web-pages
to be accepted. A directory will not list your URL and
will never become aware of your site unless you register
with them. They do not make use of spiders or robots
that crawl the web looking for new sites.
Examples of Directories are Yahoo, DMoz Open Directory.
Look Smart etc.
Listing of a web-site in a directory type search engine
depends a great deal on editorial policy of concerned
directory. For example, Yahoo charges USD 300 to examine
a business web-site within a specified time. The web-site
is indexed if Yahoo editor finds it list-worthy. On
the other hand, DMoz open directory works with voluntary
editors and does not charge any money for inspection
or indexing. However, the listing process may take long
time.
Designer should check requirement of individual directories
to decide on categories, title, meta tags etc. Submission
for such directories should always be manual - one should
not try automated submission for directory type search
engines.
Listing in a quality directory is usually difficult
and time consuming. However, the respect and page rank
it provides is worth the effort.
Spider Based
Search Engines
Unlike directory-type search
engines, spider-based search engines (also called crawlers,
robots, worms) seek out web-pages by 'crawling' through
the WWW and automatically index sites using its own
indexing rules or algorithm. It will not wait for you
to submit, but try to seek out as many web-sites as
it can find and index them.
By simply telling the search engine what your URL is,
its software robot will go there automatically and index
everything they need. How much it will index and to
what degree depends upon its algorithm - usually a closely
guarded secret.
Overwhelming number of search-engines in the WWW are
spider-based. Examples are - Google, AltaVista, Lycos,
InfoSeek etc.
Getting listed in a spider based web-site is not difficult
- all it takes is to submit your web-site URL - manually
or through an automated process. However, position of
your web-site in search result (popularly called ranking)
will depend upon many factors - some within your control,
others beyond. We shall discuss these factors in detail
in a future article series
How to make
a Web-Site Spider-Friendly
While listing in a directory
or high ranking in spider based search engine require
special effort - certain design features can help you
considerably. Besides, there are certain negative design
features that can create difficulties for search engine
spiders, keeping your web-site outside the reach of
search engines.
Frames
Frames is a technique
of splitting browser's screen into number of windows
for displaying various kinds of information. It used
to be a popular technique of web-designing in the 90's.
However, frames can confuse a search engine spider so
much that it may abandon the web-page or index it wrongly.
It is better not to use frames. Even search engines
capable of indexing a site through frames don't recommend
it. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using frames
can usually be done with the help of Cascading Style
Sheet (CSS). Some browsers are not frames-compatible,
so there is additional danger of visitors not being
able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual
pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthy
scripts being written.
Flash/Graphics
Based Web Sites
While web sites that
offer visitor more esthetically-pleasing experience
may seem like the best choice for someone searching
for your product, they are the most difficult to optimize.
Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics
or animation, what they see may be just a small amount
of text - and small amounts of content may not result
in top rankings. If you really must offer the visitor
a graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider creating
an html-based side of your site that is also available
to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote
on the search engines and your new found visitors will
also have the option to jump over to the nicer looking
part of your site.
Dynamic Web
Pages
Content in a dynamic
web-site resides within a database - outside the reach
of most spiders. URL of dynamic pages from such databases
are usually long and have characters such as ?, #, &,
%, or = along with seemingly random numbers or letters
- enough to confuse any spider. As a result, search
engines may leave a dynamic web-site or at best index
it partially.
Improper Use
of HTML
Inefficiently designed
web-pages that use large amount of html codes for fonts,
colors, lines etc. - specially in the beginning of the
page can cause negative impact. What search engine robots
see in such poorly designed pages are clutters of font
and formatting tags, very little text.
If possible, designers should avoid too much html tags,
javascripts etc. in the beginning of a web-page. Efficient
designers write codes in such a way that such elements
do not form part of web-pages (e.g. using CSS). Hand
coded HTML to design sites is also a good method for
proficient designers
Meta Tags
Meta tags is a way of
storing information about a web-page. Information stored
in meta tags is usually not visible by browsers but
easily accessible by search engine spiders. It is a
way of informing spiders about content of the web-page,
relevant keywords, how to index etc.
In the absence of meta tags, spiders may index web-pages
in its own way - which could be quite un-predictive.
It is far more prudent to guide the spider with desirable
information so that the web-page gets indexed under
right keywords.
Conclusion
A few simple steps in
the beginning of design process may go a long way in
making sure your web-site attracts customers. Success
of a business web-site is gauged not by its look - but
how much it helps in business.
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
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