Web Design
The importance of website coding
Web coding standards and strategies have evolved quickly over the last couple of years and search engines are driving the changes. In this article, we talk about some of those changes and why it might be important to follow suit.
In the last couple of years, search engines have gotten more intelligent and aggressive in terms of what they include in their search algorithms. While some aspects of their algorithms are public knowledge and some inferred, it is obvious that search engines are looking for sites that are easy to read, intelligently structured, and implementing current technologies. The following is a quick rundown of some of the most important standards search engines like to see:
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – CSS is an HTML (web page language) coding style that helps search engines understand which content on a web page is most important. Since search engines read content on a page from top to bottom, the technique isn't rocket science as pages are setup such that the most important content is at the top and least important at the bottom. Prior to a few of years ago though, it was likely that a website was designed using tables that sectioned areas of the page in a seemingly random fashion rather than a top to bottom format. The result was the difficulty for search engine robots to know what information was most critical because there was less logic to how pages were built. Over time, designers have found better ways to position content in line with how search engines actually read pages, and subsequently, sites that are now optimized this way (via CSS) are getting preferential placement with all other factors being equal. It's not a punishment situation but more of a reward for structuring content in an easy to read fashion.
- Site Structure – Search engine algorithms reward sites that spoon feed them information regarding how the search engine should perceive the site. Specifically, they like to see a page for each topic and they like to see consistency and repetition (although not in a spammy way) in the keywords and phrases on a given page. For instance, they like to see the URL, page title, headers, links, and content all using the same or very similar phrasing. The better a site does that, the easier it is for search engines to know how to categorize pages. Prior to a few years ago, this wasn't as important and most websites weren't structured this way. Most sites grouped their entire product and service offerings under one page called something like the “services section”. As more companies and industries came on-line, it isn't hard to imagine how difficult it became for search engine to classify content when 85% all sites on the web also had generic “products” or “services” sections in the URL, page titles, etc. While search engines have always been able to tell the difference from one site to the next by the content on the actual pages, search engines have nonetheless slowly started rewarding sites that get more specific regarding what services they offer and how the site is structured on a page-by-page basis. It's not collusion; it's just an evolution of the internet trying to do a better job of giving users what they want, and to some degree, that's common sense.
- Images vs. Text – Search engines can't read images so they reward text to a far greater degree. While images usually have descriptions associated with them, search engines still choose to evaluate those description with a grain of salt. To use a very simple example as to why, it wouldn't be too hard to manipulate a search engine by describing an image of a dog as a picture of a cat. For that reason, text and real content is king with search engines, and they're rewarding sites that use all the modern tricks. Prior to a few years ago, the best sites on the web used images in their navigation system and put Flash animations on the homepage for impact . After all, it looked great and it was what the industry knew at the time. Nowadays, a well-designed site must use a text-based navigation and dropdown system as it is a critical way to tell search engines what they can expect to read past the homepage. Furthermore, Flash is becoming less viable as new technologies called Ajax and HTML5 are able to do many of the same dynamic functions using readable text (Flash isn't readable).
- Speed & Rich Media – As the internet revolution becomes more interactive, search engines are rewarding websites that are proactively participating. Two of the most important aspects have to do with blogs and videos. Where blogs are concerned, search engines recognize the software when they're crawling a website, and the conventional wisdom is that their attention picks up when they detect a blog. Since most blogs are updated regularly, SEO experts (us included) are convinced that a search engine's algorithm crawls a blog more regularly and speeds up the pace at which it indexes the pages of a blog because of an expectation that new information is more valuable to readers. SEO experts are also convinced websites that implement video also get some preferential treatment. Video is by far the stickiest form of content on the web and search engines are working overtime to find better ways to read video content. After all, Google bought YouTube for a reason.
If it has been a few years since your current website was built, you might want to consider the benefits of implementing modern coding standards with a strategic slant. To be up front though, recoding a site isn't something that is practical to implement within your current design because the time required to do a "recoding" is relatively similar to that of a complete redesign. Even so, perhaps doing a redesign is a good idea too if it has been more than a few years. In addition to the search engine marketing benefits of having improved coding standards, there are exponential benefits to having a modern looking website to go with the increased exposure. Please contact us if you'd like some web design help.
