Optimizing the website

Optimizing the website
It is important to create a friendly user site if you want to have success. The design of your site can raise or lower traffic so it is important to create it without mistakes. It is very hard to correct the mistakes made in designing the site so it is best not to make any errors in this process.

Let's analyze the most important points when creating a website:

The importance of text
The first internet pages contained only text. The technology couldn't allow more, so they were created in that manner. The first search engines that were created used the text to identify and rank the sites. Then as the technology evolved so did the websites. Besides the text, images, animations and other things similar to these were used.

The search engines however remained almost unchanged, meaning that they still used the text to identify the websites. There were some search engines that were later created to identify the images and the animations from a page, but most of them used only the text. And they still do, so it is important to use as much text as possible in your website. That will draw the search engine's attraction, not the images and the flash animation. However you don't have to remove the images and the animations from the site because they improve the sites appearance.

Don't keep the non-HTML code in the internal files
Don't place the code used for the text on top of your HTML because it is a bad idea. Many web operators do it, mainly because their site uses JavaScript, or CSS. This won't help you, mostly because the spider has difficulty getting to the essential parts of your site. But the updated spiders can read the HTML when they want to get to the essential information and they can find information about what kind of CSS and JavaScript you use.

The use of a robots.txt file and placing the code in external files will stop the spider from doing so. This problem is contradictory, because you wouldn't have a reason to hide your CSS and JavaScript; unless you would do something illegal that is. The main reason why most hide the CSS and JavaScript is because the search engines have different opinions about them: some say it is ok, others consider it spam. So they prefer to prevent some problems if they were to be happening.

Frames, tables, or CSS?
The layout of the site can also decide the position in the search rankings. There are several types of layouts:

The Table Layout
The table layout usually does not cause any problems to the search engines unless the navigation menu is displayed on the left of the site. The search code will place the content of the menu before the content of the site and that might make your site to drop a few spots in the rankings.

This is because the text in the top is considered more important by the search engines because that text usually reveals more about the content of the site than the text from the middle or from the bottom of the page. So instead of analyzing the middle text, the search engines will try to figure what your site is about by analyzing the menu's content. There is a solution to this problem so you don't have to worry too much.

The Frame Layout
The frame layout is not as search friendly as the table one, but there are some tricks to make it approved by the search engines. Some web sites optimizations can do that. On the page that uses the frame layout insert the <NOFRAMES> tag. The tag should contain the same content as the frame page but without the flash and the Java Scripts. The search engine will be able to index your page much easier this way and will give the users that use an older browser the possibility of accessing your page.

A usual problem with frame layouts pages is that the content is separated from the site navigation. They are in separate frames and often when the visitors access your page they won't be able to navigate on your page. The following java script will take care of this problem: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
<!--
if (top == self) location.replace("FILENAME OF YOUR FRAMESET PAGE");
-->
</script>

All you have to do is cut and paste the frameset page between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags in your HTML (before placing it into the script), but placing the HTML into an external file would solve the problem much faster. The script will load the frameset if it's not loaded giving the visitors the opportunity to see the navigation bar, thus giving them the opportunity to navigate your site. The script also has some problems because while it loads the frameset it also loads the homepage, meaning the visitors will be redirected to another section of the page.

The <handling the issue with JavaScript> article can help you solve this problem because the script presented there are far more superior than the one mentioned above. They are not 100% perfect, they have some flaws, and they require more skill but the results make the extra effort worth it. Use these instructions and you will have a frame based site that works well with the search engines.

The Cascading Style Sheet Layout
The CSS is the best layout to use because it gets along with the search engines plus it gives the owner of the site the possibility to arrange the source code. This feature will help the owner direct the spider to the most important content of the site, without having to make layout modifications. The disadvantage when using the CSS layout is that it will only run with the newest browsers. The older browsers may cause some problems, and it is advisable to use the table layout until the problem gets solved.

Do not use non-HTML files
Many sites use files created with Adobe's Acrobat, Microsoft's Word, and Excel because of the increased popularity of these programs. Even if they are great programs they can make it hard for the search engines to list the information.

Google is the only search engine that can read .PDF (Acrobat), .DOC (Word) or .XLS (Excel) files, meaning that the rest of the search engines can't list the information displayed in such manner, only in HTML. FAST has been improved, being now able to list the information written in PDF.

The use of CGI script can make even the HTML files very hard to be read by the search engines, but fortunately an answer to this problem exists.

Final Words
The design of the site is just as important as the use of Meta words and Meta description. It is great that the design can be changed but this process requires some effort. It's not sure how hard it is going to be in the future to optimize a site so if you want to do it, you better do it now.