Planning Websites

There are billions of websites on the internet, and most people find them using search engines. Here are some tips on how to make your website searchable:

Make your content searchable

Create lots of keyword-rich content to make your website searchable. Search engines read code and text, so you should take time to write meaningful content that is relevant for your visitors and naturally includes keywords that people are likely to search for. Search engines can’t “see” what’s in pictures and graphics, but if you name the image files with appropriate keywords, give them good ALT tags, and include captions or put the images right next to related content, it will help make your website searchable.

Use links to make a website searchable

Search engines find websites by following links. If you don’t have many incoming links, the search engines can’t find you, and you aren’t likely to show up in the search engine results. It’s important to get quality incoming links; Google recently cracked down on websites with large numbers of links, which in turn harmed some of the websites that those big websites had linked to. Submit your website to quality directories that are related to your website; create a Facebook page; consider starting a business blog on its own domain so it can link to your main website.

Make your navigation searchable

Link to your most important pages or sections prominently, in plain text links. Avoid JavaScript and other dropdown menus because search engines often cannot follow these links. Use clear, keyword-related names that are easy for visitors to understand. (Don’t forget about your visitors while you’re working to make a website searchable.)

Clean up code to make a website more searchable

Use the W3C Validator to check your code for standards compliance, and fix any errors you find. Minimize JavaScript and JQuery for several reasons: search engines often won’t see any of that content, they slow down page loading, and your visitors may not be able to see that content. Also minimize the number of includes or page requests on each page. Use semantic code and CSS instead of outdated frames or tables so that your website loads quickly. The faster your website loads, the longer search engine crawlers and vistors will stay, and the more searchable your website will be.

Follow Google’s suggestions

Since Google drives most search engine traffic, take the advice they freely give in their webmaster guidelines. Avoid no-nos like duplicate content, keyword stuffing, small text, and text that is invisible or has very little contrast with the website background. Follow best practices such as submitting an XML sitemap to make all the pages in your website searchable.

Use Google’s tools

Google provides several valuable tools to help you make your website searchable. Use Webmaster Tools to find problems and suggestions. They tell you about errors they found, as well as how long it took them to download pages on your website and how that compares to other websites. Use Google Analytics to analyze your visitor traffic and diagnose other potential problems that may be making your website unsearchable.