A properly designed website will not have to work much about its search engine optimization. The key thus is to follow the principles and design an ideal website.

The textual element of the website should be well separated from the design elements. Information may be what lures visitors to the website, but the design and layout is what makes them stay. A poor and hard-to-ude website design may just give a reason to the visitor to stray away regardless of the quality of the content in it.

The layout, colors and style of the website should be defined by the characteristics of the target customer base. Professionals like engineers and programmers can do well with intricate tools and graphics but for inexperienced people, it’s best to stick to the simple standard format that works with the most common browser and resolution. Customers with special needs should not be neglected and necessary adjustments should be made to the site to cater to their demands.

The home page of the website should contain not less than 275 words of text that offers a crisp description of the product and lures the customer to further explore the site. The first paragraphs should contain the primary keywords along with the tagline or phrase. The primary and secondary keywords should constitute about 5% of the text on the homepage, used within complete and logical sentences.

Primary keywords should ideally be incorporated in the major headlines of the text content and secondary keywords in subsequent headlines.

All the graphics should be accompanied with an alt tag that describes the graphic using the keywords. The keywords should never be put in the color of the background text. This would be termed as keyword stuffing and can get one penalized. The first page of the website should clearly explain the ‘who-where-what’ concepts of the company. All the expertise fields need to be listed along with other qualifications.

Splash pages should be avoided not only does it eliminate customers who may not have the necessary software to view the site, the search engine robots don’t get any reactions from this type of design.

On the whole the site should have an attractive professional look and appeal to the target audience. The graphics should be enhancing the overall look of the page and navigation be spontaneous.