A Compromise

So if we consider that a website audience will comprise of search engine robots who are primarily interested in text content as well as humans, we could go ahead and write a few paragraphs and that could be our website. Unfortunately, our human audience are not going to be very receptive about a page full of text, they also want design, a bit of colour, some pictures, some personality.

So making a successful website for both man and machine will always be a compromise but we can ensure that the website is SEO-centric. To achieve this we need to be frugal with design elements, look at the ‘washed out colours’ in the Apple sites or the minimalist design in Ebay or even Google. These designs are not only ‘uncluttered’ and ‘simple’ they are also absent of bloated backgrounds and other design elements.

When you do use pictures and design elements ensure their file size is as small as possible (under 20k ideally) make sure you use Alt tags because ‘Robots’ can read them and name your pictures with relevant titles to your keywords.

First Considerations

The first consideration when designing or optimising a website is to consider the audience, who is going to view the website?

I remember an exchange I had with a personal tutor at Uni, this dear old lady often asked me what I was trying say in my latest essay – to her my gibberish didn’t make sense. I would often assert that my text made sense to me, but she rightly pointed out I wasn’t going to mark the work and it had to make sense to others too. Of course she was right and the same applies to websites.

So when asked to consider the question of audiences, most designers and website owners automatically start thinking about customers, clients, friends or other interested parties. However, in the SEO world it is the Search Engines and their Robots (website crawling software) that is the main audience.

And guess what, Robots can’t see pictures or pretty themes they see text.

Getting Started

Welcome to my new blog. This is a bit of rhetorical statement because I don’t expect anyone to read it for quite a while except me so I am really just greeting myself.

The purpose of my blog is to share my experiences researching and applying Search Engine Optimisation techniques to my own website findmywebsite.org.

A little about myself, I am a self taught web designer and the website I am trying to promote is about SEO techniques. However, as this is a new site and a new venture for me I thought it would be interesting and fun to share my journey with others.

My aim is to get my website found on the first page of a Google search, I am confident I will get it there as I have had some success with other sites. So visit my blog regularly and I will share my techniques with you, answer any questions I can and listen to any advice you want to share.

Martin