When designing a web site it is important to remember that some elements of a web site might look nice but will be useless for search engines. Here are a few tips to think about when designing a web site or getting one created for you.
Don't try and trick the search engines using unethical techniques. Adding hidden text and using keywords that have no relevance will just get your site banned and once you are banned it is very hard work to get out of that position. You could spend this time doing ethical SEO and you will get more reward for this and you won't run the risk of damaging your web sites rankings.
Each page your web site has should have different title and description tags to tell the search engine what content you have. Having the same tags for all your pages means you are losing a lot of SEO opportunities. It is competitive enough on the web to attract clients and candidates for certain search terms without limiting them to just a handful. So by having different tags on your pages you are increasing the chances of being found and competing on the long tail words.
A splash page is a page that just has an image or text as the home page and asks you to enter the web site by clicking on a link. Firstly it is annoying more than anything because of the delay in getting to the information you requested but it is also bad for search engines. Search engines look for text they can index and when they don't find it, they will not regard it as an important page. The home page is very important because this is the landing page most users will land on therefore every effort should be done to ensure it is fully optimised.
Try and avoid your site just being information about you and how people should use your service. By putting useful information onto your web site about relevant information you will be inviting more candidates and clients. Providing useful industry news makes you become more of a resource and in return develop into a more trusted site within that field. It also helps with adding new content to your site but don't just add any new content that isn't relevant.
