I  wanted to talk a little today about SEO Design: humans versus spiders.  To put it another way, I want to address some tactics you can use to help both of these site visitors get what they want. Here is what I mean.

Let’s talk about website page crawlers or spiders for a moment. The nice thing about them is that they could care less about fancy graphics, stunning pictures, and viral video. They would also have no plugins, no banners, no ads, etc.   The easiest page in the world to crawl is one that has no graphics, no javascript, and no tables. It would be pure text. This is what search engine crawlers and spiders dream of (if they could dream that is.)

From a human perspective, such a website would be guaranteed a place in antiquity forever.  Our graphics and video heavy society would find the page extremely boring, and move on at lightening speed. We want fancy logos, streaming video, and pictures. In fact, those type of attractions will often get an article read.  Don’t even get me started on video. The number 2 website in the world is Youtube. We love our video.

 So, can we meet in the middle, somehow, over the SEO design issue. The answer is yes. Here are some things that you can do to keep both parties happy.

1. Put your keywords in normal type at the very top of your website page, then start your picture of videos. Make the type small, but clearly visible. Say, a 9 or 10 pt type.
2. You can put keywords in the ALT-tags of your pictures. You don’t always have to have the URL there. Both can have a benefit of making it easier for the search engines to find your site.
3. Have around 750- 1000 words on your front page, that can be well crafted. The page should also have your keywords used at a 1-3% keyword density rate.  More importantly, don’t hire some GURU expert for $10 to write the content, and just stuff it full of keywords. Don’t insult the intelligence of your audience.
4. Reduce the number of images and elements before the main body text. I typically try to keep that to just one.
5. Try to get your video in the middle of the road section on your page, but visible on the landing page. My rule of thumb is: if I can’t see the video on my monitor, then it may be too far down. I’ll be depending upon the good will of folks to scroll downward.
6. One simple way to test the design is to look at how long people are staying on your landing pages, and how low you can get your bounce back rate (the measure of how many people leave your website from the very first page they hit, without looking at anything else). Google Analytics can help you measure this type of data, and the account is free.

 You can win the battle of SEO design, and make the humans versus spiders issue work.  It just takes a little planning. It is well worth, though, to have a landing page that really lets the public know what your website is all about.