How to be Creative in Your Next Web Design without Affecting Your SEO Optimization
You probably learned from school different ways how to become creative when in comes to designing your web pages. Although it is possible to use creative graphics to design the text or title of your web page, doing this might not be a good idea because in the end it will not get good rankings in the search engine. It is even possible to develop beautiful brochures in photo format and slice it to different parts before uploading it on your web page, or better yet, convert it into Portable Document File that can be downloaded by the user, but all of these will only have little positive gain in the search engine ranking of your site.
The content of a web page is useful for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes if the content can be read by the search engine robot, otherwise, it will have no value to your SEO goals. So being a creative designer is not all about how you will make your site appealing to the eyes of your visitors but it is also important that you know how to incorporate your creativity with your SEO objectives.
These are some of the most common wrong practice in using graphics and photos in designing a web page.
1.) Using text in Jpg format. Using text in jpg format has been in practice ever since. But now that there are at least a million sites competing from each other even in the most less competitive niches, using text in jpg format would not be advisable anymore, instead, jpg or gif photos should be used along with the text of your site to increase keyword density. This can be done by using keywords in your <alt> tag. Pages with less text can benefit from these technique since although search engine robots cannot read non-text elements in your web page, the alt tags, on the other hand are readable.
2.) If you are providing a brochure or an e-book in PDF file, it is most advisable that you’ll have an on-line version of the PDF file in your website. This will bring in more content to your site that would be beneficial for your SEO strategies.
3.) Flash sites. Flash sites do not favor search engine at all. Some have already considering converting their flash site into a text based format for SEO purposes.
