HiddenPixels.com : Basic SEO Tips Web Designer should Follow

Here are some basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips which every web designer should follow; it is good practice to design websites using this basic SEO Standards. (reposted from: HiddenPixels.com)

• Use Correct Doctype: Document type defination(DTD) is also know as Doctype, doctype informs the browser how to interpret the content of the page. If the the doctype is not declared, the browser assumes you don’t know how to code, and goes into quirks mode. If you know what you are doing and include a correct HTML doctype, your page will be rendered in standards mode.
  
  
• Make the code prettier than the design: When building the front end of your site, make sure to use semantic code. By using descriptive tags to structure your pages, search engines will be able to read and have a better understanding of your content. This will also make the process of styling your site much easier and cleaner.
  
  
• Use Meta Content and Meta Keywords: Use proper keywords and content relate to your web site,
  that helps search engine to crawl your web site.
  
  
• Use Unique Page Titles: Each page on your web site should have a title attribute, and each title should be unique. If you use the same title for every page, search engines will think that every page on your site is about the same subject.
  
  
• Use SEO Friendly Page name or URL: The page name or URL must consist of the relevant keywords as it gives an idea of what the page is all about, Try to maintain a suitable length for the page name, The words in the URL must not be joined. Try to use hyphen between words in the page. The robots can easily index the URL’s with hyphens. Try to avoid using underscores.
  
  
• Use Alt tags for Images: Specify alt tag for image and that alt tag should be a keyword related to web site, because images you have placed on site can be seen by visitors but not by search engines, so alt tag help search engines to read, with the help of alt tags search engines display the image results.
  
  
• Use Heading Tags: Use your main targeted keywords in H1 or H2 tags. These robots give a lot of importance to H1 tags.
  
  
• Use Valid HTML and CSS code: Validate your html and css code and make your code w3c standard.
  
  validate your html code here: http://validator.w3.org
  
  validate your css code here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator
  
  
• Make your web site load fast: Don’t mess up your site with heavy images that makes your site heavy and slow, try to optimize images that reduces weight and helps to load fast.
  
  
• Make a Detailed Sitemap: Make a detailed sitemap of a website. The search robots can easily go to any web page from this web page.
  
  
• Use Footer links: Footer link must be designed properly so that search engine robots can easily navigate through the web pages.
  
  
• Use DIVs instead of Tables: Try to avoid using tables. There are too many codes in tables and takes times to load page. Hence, try to use DIVs structure, which has less coding and takes less loading time. It has become highly search engine friendly because the robots can easily index it.
  
  
• Use External JavaScript and CSS files: Maintain an External JavaScript files for scripting and Use External CSS rather than coding it in the main source file.