SEO 'should dictate site design'

23rd April 2008

The earliest stages of website design should be driven by search engine optimisation (SEO), according to new advice.

A blog post on Search Engine Watch recommends that companies prioritise SEO from the very beginning of their site overhaul strategy, rather than attempting to optimise their web presence after its construction.

"Your website structure, design and content has everything to do with whether your site will rank in search engines," the post asserts.

Content management systems should be checked to ensure they are SEO compatible, according to the blog, which advises designers to check that sites currently running on the platform have good organic rankings.

Homepages should reportedly have some 400 words of content, while 250 words are said to be a target for internal pages.

Keywords should reportedly be build into the site from the first stages of information architecture development.

The advice follows that of John De Groot, managing director of Startup Co, who said that domain names on small firms' sites should be made as short as possible.