How Your Website Design Affects Your Content

Often times in website marketing, the merchant believes that website design and Search Engine Optimization are two unrelated processes. True, they are different as night and day, but the two distinct processes must meet if you hope to run a successful web marketing campaign.

Consider one of the most common mistakes in web marketing: the Flash-heavy, superb, award-winning website that actually has very little text content. So what? The site has numerous paragraphs of copy and informative content via Java animation and video tutorials. Unfortunately, for this ambitious web designer, all of that content will be wasted if searchable text content is neglected.

According to keyword research performed by SEOMoz in 2011, the top search engine rank factors included keyword repetition and keywords used in the domain and page title. Flash animation is a great way to lure viewers in, no doubt. However, this animation is not searchable, because spider programs cannot index this content. Flash and Java “special effects” may look like words and paragraphs, but to the all-important search engine algorithm it is an empty page.

Video tutorials, commercials and sketches are all great ways to help retain your customer’s interest. However, video and search technology have a long way to go before they are up to par with search indexing technology. Many videos online are actually searchable by using meta search engines, which Google reminds us, are not the same as an actual brand name search engine, since they send user requests to several other search engines to “aggregate results into a list.”

For the best results, write your entire site in HTML text. All other content must be bonus material to complement the indexable text. All of these special animations are “invisible” to search spiders. Remember that Javascript links are also invisible, so if you are attempting to build links, links should be in HTML language.

Last but not least, remember that a little “flash” (as in Flash animation) goes a long way. If you make your website one huge Flash party, you could actually slow the loading performance of your website, much to the frustration of Internet viewers. Remember, while we are living in the age of high speed DSL, we are also living in the age of web-ready cell phones, 3G, WI-FI and (gasp) yes, dial up ISPs. So keep an eye on Flash effects, very large images, videos that auto buffer and other taxing features.

Maximize your website by making sure content stays king.