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Sunday, 13 April 2008 09:33 |
Optimized Search Engine Layout
This week's search engine optimisation tip is going to be about semantic web layouts and how they can help with the optimisation of a website. This is a a very good technique that I use for a lot of my clients. Completely removing all of the design aspects from the website template and then optimizing content and heading tags in the body works wonders and is a fantastic basis to start working on a search engine campaign.
What is the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Design
"The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing." - WC3 Web Semantic Activity
For what we want to do here, a part of Semantic Web is basically the process of separating the information in a web page from its design in order for a machine, computer or search engine, to be able to read this information and data in its purest form. What this means is that the Semantic Web Layout of the web page is done in such a way that is best suited for a machine but still visually appealing for a human being.
Examples of Semantic Web Design from drboblog.
Read more about Web Content Architecture:
Benefits of Semantic Web Layouts
The main benefit from is the better indexing of your website by search engines across the Web. Having better valid code for search engines to read and index will give you better search engine results. In this example of bad semantic web design, we see that a lot of the bad semantic code doesn't related to the site itself. This in turn hampers the content relativity and thus decreases search engine optimization.
Another benefit is that its a better basis for optimizing your web site. Having a clean layout means that you can enter in more keyword phrases through out the content and in heading tags that the search engine will recognize nicely. This will in turn bring in more of that particular and very targeted web traffic that you're looking for because the better targeted the traffic the more likely the there will be conversions and leads.
How is a Semantic Web Template Made?
Semantic Web Templates are made by using valid XHTML code and using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The importance is to separate all design elements from the HTML and place them all in to the style sheet avoiding unnecessary comments and code that will hamper the relevancy of the page. Having relevant and correctly written title tags, and meta tags, blockquotes and heading tags through out the content. All of these have to be looked at to make sure the web design is using proper semantic code.
Examples:
Conclusion
For anyone getting a website developed or redesigned, it's in their best interest to have the design of the site semantically done in order to gain the most benefit of the site design even before the content is place through out it.
Its just one extra step that can make a world of difference.
More Readings and Resources
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