importance of having a "Search engine friendly" website

What does "search engine friendly" mean?

A "search engine friendly" web site should have clean code (efficient, well structured) that does not block search engine 'spiders' from crawling it; it should not have anything in the way it has been built that search engines may have a problem with, such as the following:-

Some reasons why a web site may not be search engine friendly:

• The site has been built using the frames method (still common with many old sites).
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and/or javascript contained within the code behind the pages.
• URLs are 'dynamic' with lots of parameters in the URL, e.g. online shops, forums, sites utilising content management systems (CMS) and blogs like WordPress, or any other database-driven website.
• The web site uses session IDs (a new session ID is created with each new visit by a visitor or search engine to your site, meaning that every time the latter visits it is, essentially, fed all new URLs. That means the search engine won't be able to index the pages properly in its search engine database).
• The site contains unwieldy or extra code which search engines have to trawl through before they get to your real content.
• The site has navigation search engines are unable to follow.
• The site was built using some kind of template site builder (e.g. software 'out of the box') that doesn't use proper code, or allow proper search engine optimisation.
• The web site has been build with lots of Flash content, or purely from images, which search engines can't interpret.

Content also affects a site's search engine friendliness

Search engines will also be turned away from your web site if it has poor content. To keep search engines (and visitors!) interested in your site you need to have enough informative and up-to-date content - content that is relevant to the theme of your web site.

Make sure you strike a balance between text and decent-quality images. Nothing is more boring than a web site that comprises only text, or text and poor-quality images.

Do I really need to bother if my web site isn't search engine friendly ?

Just because you don't want to hear your site has problems doesn't mean it's not true, or that the problems are going to go away! Yes, it might take some work and money to fix, and sometimes it's more sensible and cost effective to have a new site built, rather than build on 'dodgy' foundations, or to try to 'unpick' a site to put something right.

If you aren't sure if your site is search engine friendly contact us now to find out and address the problem. As search engines continue to tweak things and demand more from sites it is something you can't afford to ignore.