3 Web Design Tricks to Boost Your SEO

The way websites are designed has changed significantly. Web designers have become more aware of the different web design tricks that will boost search engine rankings. Designing the perfect website now also taps the SEO potential of the back-end structure. This is to accommodate the dynamic changes in search engine optimization. If you are not familiar with the back-end SEO top secrets yet, then this article is for you. Below is a short and easy guide for SEO-friendly web design tricks.

Code Your Way In

- You need to work hard on your code with the aim of making it as clean as possible, mainly for crawling purposes. The more streamlined your code is, the easier for web spiders to crawl your website quickly. A great understanding of HTML will help you identify unnecessary tags when designing and developing your website. With this, you can avoid code bloat and simplify your back-end as much as you can without hurting the front-end. And if you are trying to beat a tight deadline, you can use Adobe Dreamweaver for a faster clean up.

- Another quick way to ensure that your code is neat, try validation using World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. This validator tells you if web pages are W3C compliant and are healthy and search engine spider-friendly. W3C validator also comes with many tools that can detect design elements that are causing SEO issues.

- The loading time of your pages is also key in boosting your SEO. To achieve this, you have to externalize your JavaScript and CSS to reduce your file significantly. Smaller file size makes your pages load faster and increases your content-to-ratio score that is helpful in optimization.

- For beginners, it is possible to achieve a clean code just like the pros. Use HTML5. It is more SEO- friendly than Adobe Flash and is much easy to work on for newbies who are trying to create their first website.

Content Structure Makes A Difference

- The architecture of your web content is crucial in SEO. Experts even call it the "heart of SEO efforts." Structure the website by categorizing content in themes. This technique is equivalent to a user-friendly navigation that makes browsing more intuitive. Set up your content in a way that it is meant to be found by relevant search engine queries. Think of your target audience on how they can benefit from your navigation features and apply it in your web design.

- In your efforts to make your content search-engine friendly and user-friendly at the same time, don't forget that you can make your navigation elements more SEO-friendly by using keyword texts instead of images.

- The way you structure your individual web pages matters too. Make sure to use Meta tags (Title, descriptions, keywords) in your Head section. Be concise and help the spiders understand what the page is about.

Stable Back-end Support

- Evaluate if your server is delivering your website to the user quickly. Google's algorithm considers site speed a legitimate factor in search engine rankings. Lastly, make sure that you are using a top-notch content management system (CMS) that is SEO-friendly and generates clean code. Choose a CMS that has the ability to manipulate the directory, offers easy web page customizations, and the power to externalize CSS and JavaScript.

Remember that every website has its own goals, and it is up to the designer on how to incorporate these web design tips to boost SEO. The results will not appear overnight but rest assured that they are long-term. Apply these and start making huge changes in your search engine rankings.

Erik Gaandt is a freelance tech writer and SEO enthusiast. He enjoys sharing his insights on various blogs. More than 90% of webmasters read reviews when deciding on webhost. WhoIsHostingThis.com is home to hundreds of reviews on the most popular webhosts such as Dotster, iPage.com and BlueHost.