Make website seo friendly

[jyotitis]

In the present Internet era where billions of website are being surfed every day it is not enough merely to own a website or creating a website with good look but it is very important to make it reachable to the targeted visitors and provide them with all the essential elements to convert them into potential customers.

Like make it simple, avoid javascript and excessive images as google does not read images, avoid use of frames, unnecessary vertical scrolling, horizontal scrolling, organize your website, keeping navigation at the left, managing sitemap and so on.

I have tried to list out some more of the tips to make the website seo friendly as per the search engine preferences and guidelines in one of my article on <snip>

I am looking for more suggestions on how can I make my website more informative and user friendly too. Will the use of blog or forum on my site make any difference?

[BasicECommerce]

Adding a forum is beneficial in a number of ways (in theory). It increases repeat traffic and gets potential customers engaged and invested.

1-People need to pay multiple visits to see fresh posts and stay up to date. Thus, increasing traffic and repeat traffic (which will help if you're using AdSense).

2-For e-commerce, you have now created a social community in your store. Participants in the forum now feel invested and engaged in the site and (in theory) will buy from your site when the time comes.

Also, its not necessarily best practice to have navigation on the left. Having top navigation is growing in popularity, as well. It keeps sites interesting and separates from the pack providing a unique user experience.

[Brick Marketing]

A forum is most beneficial if you already have an established amount of visitors on a daily basis. Otherwise, to have a forum on a new site is just distracting. Also if a visitor visits a forum with little to no activity, it will lessen the credibility of the site.

[jenishshah]

Blogs can also prove to be very useful.

[Jazajay]

keeping navigation at the left

I will agree that the consitent desgin is true. Search bar in the top right, labeled search or go nothing else etc... are good useability guide lines. But a recent survery found that a right nav actually gets used more than a left nav does. Also content gets seens more and page times increase. Due to the fact people are made to look at the content as they move thier mouse accross the screen. At least in western cultures anyway.

Jaza

[jenishshah]

I will agree that the consitent desgin is true. Search bar in the top right, labeled search or go nothing else etc... are good useability guide lines. But a recent survery found that a right nav actually gets used more than a left nav does. Also content gets seens more and page times increase. Due to the fact people are made to look at the content as they move thier mouse accross the screen. At least in western cultures anyway.

Jaza

What you said may be true when it comes to viewing the site in terms of the search functionality but when it comes down to search engines what Big G says is that it is better to have a left navigation as crawlers go from left to right on a page.

[Jazajay]

Table or CSS layout?
A CSS layout and a left or right navigation can be in the same place in the code. My left nav is at the bottom of the code. If I decided to change to a right nav I would change my CSS layout not my code layout, it would remain in the same place, code wise, for the engines.

Tables are read from left to right "in the code" - technically it's read top to bottom - as that is how it has to be indexed as the first row is indexed first in the code followed by the second row and third row etc....
As the right nav tends to be in a lower row in the the table it get's indexed last.

Thats debatable though if you know the table trick where the right nav is indexed first.

Even if it was, whats the issue with it getting indexed last? It still gets indexed.
I would perfer it not to be indexed at all just for them to follow the links then my code bloat goes down and my keyword prominance goes up.

Jaza

[onlineseo]

A forum is most beneficial if you already have an established amount of visitors on a daily basis. Otherwise, to have a forum on a new site is just distracting. Also if a visitor visits a forum with little to no activity, it will lessen the credibility of the site.

I think having a BLOG would be a better option. You can post your articles and other important information on your blog.

If your blog is interesting, you will surely get back links too.

This could help you score higher rankings on search engines.