SEO for Designers
This article is going to make you aware of steps necessary to take while creating a website. If you are planning to develop a website then this article is for you. Any designer or developer can use this guide as a checklist before creating a website.
title tags
title tags are very important. Every webpage should have a unique and precise title. The page title should not be too lengthy or too small.
meta tags
meta tags are also very helpful from the point of SEO. Meta keywords help to show up your website in the search engine's result according to user's query. If user's query is similar to or close to your meta keyword then search engine will list your site in the search result.
meta description gives the description about webpage to the search engines and help them to properly index and store website's URL in their result page.
anchor tags
Number of unique links adds up to the page rank. Do not use links with different names that point to the same page.
URL Structure
Page URL link should be proper. It should be meaningful and according to title. If your URL is of more than one word, then hyphens should be used as word separator instead of space or underscore.
Headings and paragraphs
Heading are important for search engines. h1 tag has more weight than h2, h2 has more weight than h3 and go on. Search engines give more importance to h1 tags. Headings should be followed by one or more paragraphs.
em and strong tags
Use em and strong tags instead of i and b tags if you want to give more emphasis or focus on the text within it. bold and italics are just for looks. But em and strong tags have some SEO value.
Images
While placing images using img tag, make sure that you also define image's alt attribute. Search engines are not able to read images. They just read content. So if they find your image and if you have put alt tag in it then they store your images link based on your alt attribute value.
Validate Your Code
While coding for your website keep checking your code by validation it on validator.w3.org. This tool is very helpful and shows all the errors and warnings present in your webpage.
Quality Content
Do not copy contents from other site. Use your own content related to the topic of your site. If your site is about flowers then don't put irrelevant content away from the topic.
I guess that's enough for now. Maybe I've missed a few more things. But to begin with, these are sufficient things that web designers or developers should pay attention to.