How to Design a Blog Template for SEO and Search Engine Friendly

Blog templates play an important role in SEO. So when you design or arrange items in blog you must take special care to make its template search engine friendly. In this article I will provide you the simple steps to make your blog architecture search engine friendly.

Important content should be placed above the fold

The research has shown that 80% of users stay above the fold and only 20% of users come down and stays down the fold. So your important contents should be placed above the fold where it get 80% of users attention. I have seen many templates using big sliders in top of the page. I think it is not users friendly and make your visitors confused. If you want to include sliders in your page place in an optimum position where it doesn't disturbs your visitors.

Google recommends 100 links/page for SEO

Google recommends you to limit the links in the page to 100. This is because
Google index only 100 kilobytes/page which is approximately about 100 links. But some SEO experts are recommending a maximum of 200 links/page. However if you add many links in a page, Google may think that you are an spammer just to make some link juice and may even ended up in De-indexing of your blog.

Ads, Ads and Ads but SEO?

OK you may have created blog for earning money online. So you will put ads on your blog. But never fill your page with full of ads. According to the recent Panda update from Google, it is a negative mark for your blog if you arrange many ads above the fold. It is a proved fact that the CTR of ads above the fold is high but not include more than 1 ad above the fold of your website, which is what Google recommends. Also arrange other ads wisely  which does not disturb your users.

Speed up your website for SEO

Everyone loves to surf fast and the search engine loves your page if it is fast. Now it is a good time to test your website speed with Google's page tool. The tool will help you to find which are the pages or scripts which makes your website slower. The tool also recommends various measures to increase your page speed. You can also use site performance tool inside Google Analytics to know your website speed.

Images are good but not too big

We know that images are now ruling the internet world. We have a good example of the success of social networking website Pinterest which shows how important an image is. But don't make your image so big which will not be users friendly. Try to make your images medium sized and always upload in .jpg or .gif formats which are not heavier.

Navigation menu- for both search engines and users

Navigation menu are essential for search engines and users. When the search engine visits your website the navigation menu will helps the bots to navigate through the website and understands the niche of the website. I have found that it is a common practice to build navigation menu using java script or  Flash to make the website attractive. But when viewing through the angle of SEO this practice is not recommended because search engine cannot access javascript and Flash. So you must create navigation menu using CSS and HTML which allows the search engine to crawl the navigation menu.

Will beauty of website have role in SEO?

Google works for customers and not for the website owners. Therefore they should do anything to make best website to appear in search engine. Here arises the growth of sentimental search. Now Google have many tools to test the users opinion on websites. So if your website is not attractive and not user friendly you will consequently lose your value of website in search engine. Here is an example how Google tests users opinion.

A search in Google is made and we bounce back after entering into the page. Now a link appears in search results which allows to block pages from this website and if any one use this feature it is a bad mark for that website. To avoid this make your website attractive and beautiful.

White, black or other color?

I think you must use light colors as background of your pages. If you use dark colors as background for your pages, visitors will feel great strain to look into your website and they will leave your website within a minute because your website is creating strain to their eyes. You can see that all professional websites colors have white background and I recommend a white background for a professional blog.

If you do all these changes to your blog, it will surely improves your search engine ranks and the amount depends upon your changes. If you succeed or have any difficulties in designing your website for SEO, feel free to ask us.