SEO and search engines rankings have become so important that even the minutest of factors in a website are analyzed under microscopic lenses by SEO experts. And why not, so much is riding on a website’s position on Google search rankings. Most of the companies big and small have taken their business online. Internet has become a major source of clients and revenue. Any factor that can influence rankings has to be managed with utmost care.

A website needs redesigning from time to time. There could be many reasons which compel website redesign. Every few years web design trends change. To keep up with the Joneses, a website needs to be contemporary. Many times, new technologies evolve. These cases also demand redesign so as to improve business efficiency. A lot of times, a site needs to grow and have more features, application etc. warranting website’s overhaul.

Whatever may be your reason for website redesign, you have to be ultra careful if you have decent search rankings or if your business depends on traffic from internet to a large extent.

In case your business has not yet taken full advantage of internet, we redesign present you a great opportunity to make your website more search engine and user friendly.

If you have decided on redesigning your website, here are some guidelines which you should follow to minimize any negative results and maximize your SEO efforts.

1. Use of JavaScript and Flash: This is one area where even the best of the designers falter. Menus created in JavaScript or Flash are simply not readable by search engine bots.

By using these technologies for designing your menus you are essentially creating roadblocks for search engines. The result is search engine bots cannot browse your website. Web designers usually feign ignorance about SEO but the fact overuse of Flash or JavaScript is also bad from the point of view of a user.

A site developed in Flash may not be accessible for a user who uses an iPad or a browser with no Flash!

If you have to use JavaScript then use external JavaScript files so that your main pages are not cluttered with code.

2. Search Engine friendly URLS: How many times have we seen cryptic, long winded URLs with too many variables! Even after much advancement, search engine bots still have great difficult reading such URLs.

If a bot cannot browse your site, it means that your website cannot not be analyzed properly by Google due to lack of data and hence it will suffer low rankings.

Make URLs such that they are readable by human. Most of the times it will do the job for search engines also. A readable URL with relevant keywords, no space and hyphens is much readable to human and search engines then a URL with spaces or underscores.

3. Website content: Many web designers use images for content or embed text in Flash. This mistake still happens with alarming frequency. Such content is not readable to search engines. In such cases, a search engines has very little clue to what a website is about. If your website has content embedded in image or Flash and doesn’t rank well in Google, then now you know the reason!

The content should always be text. Also, the content should have a fair bit of sprinkling of keywords relevant to the page. I would not suggest any keyword density but remember to write content in a natural way. Too much keyword stuffing can signal Google that an attempt to spam is been made.

The content on a page should be substantial, original and insightful. With recent Panda update it has become even more relevant then ever.

Content should be wisely divided in to sections with "call to action" buttons to prompt user to take some action.

Rest of the guidelines, we will discuss in Part 2 of the article