Characteristics Of A Web Design For Search Engines

By Alexis Cox - Search engines have become an integral aspect of Internet browsing. Most Internet users rely on search engines to find and retrieve information about a product, a person or anything that they find interesting. 

And most importantly, online visitors consider the top list of search engines' result page as the most credible references for the information they are seeking. That's why it's crucial to create a Web Design that adheres to search engines' protocols.

The simplest way to understand how search engines work is to compare them to the system that libraries commonly apply, the Dewey Decimal System. A library catalog is present in all libraries. 

A library catalog is a systematic list of all bibliographic items found in the library. Unless the book that a researcher is looking for is already in the library's database, researchers will not find the book even though it is physically present in the library.

The same goes for search engines: Unless a businessman submits his website to a search engine company, not much people will know about its existence in the World Wide Web. This is because spiders recognize only the information (found in a particular web page) that has been indexed.

But to generate traffic to a website, it's not enough to create a web design that adheres to the ranking standards of search engines. A website needs optimisation so that it will land a consistent spot in the first page of search engines result list.

So aside from the visual value of the web design, websites also need to contain relevant information for it to become favorable to spiders. Relevant, key word-driven and regularly updated web content helps companies drive quality traffic to their website.

Nowadays, to design websites for search engines means mastering the site architecture and its content. Mastering web optimisation is not a one-time process, however. It needs maintenance, monitoring and even continuous testing to ensure that the website is accessible and retrievable.

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