Today's Web Designer Needs To Know What Works For Google Too

from the it's-a-new-type-of-job dept

Sun, Sep 21st 2003 11:39pm — Mike Masnick

With the increasing importance of showing up in high places on search results, companies are no longer just looking for someone who can design them a nice website. They want someone who can design them a nice website while also optimizing it for search engines. There have always been web designers, and there have been "search engine optimization" experts for a while - but companies are now looking for the combination of both skills. Of course, it does make you wonder if things are moving in the wrong direction when people are designing websites for search engines, rather than the other way around.

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Ed Halley, 22 Sep 2003 @ 9:25am

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I don't see how this could be designing in the wrong direction.

Remember your school days and English composition? Good informative pages include some introductory preamble that orient the reader to the subject at hand, rather than skipping ahead and launching into arcane details. They may assume the reader has a cursory understanding, but if it may be read in isolation, it should recap a few points that help the reader know what you're talking about.

Google just happens to (1) try to find relevant pages based on the content early in the page, and (2) show search results with blurbs in proximity to the searched terms.

If you're writing informative pages, then good composition will pay off at Google as well. The key concepts that people seek won't be buried below the fold (or five screenfuls down), they'll be mentioned near the introduction to the thesis.

When visiting a result with keywords higlighted, it's ideal for the first highlighted words to be in the middle of the thesis, and still quite good if it's within a paragraph.
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karthy, 16 Apr 2006 @ 11:40pm

just one information to web designer
Don't worry i will come later to help you for designing the web page
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