Be Clean. Be Professional.
Posted by Mike | Filed under SEOThis post was republished. Reason: To let more readers know about this post. 
Some of you might ask, “Why does my website have to look professional and what does it have to do with SEO?”.
The answer is simple: Neat and beautifully-designed websites tend to be trusted by visitors and/or customers while websites with crappy layouts are often ignored by the people and do not attract much quality backlinks (thus, they have lower search engine rankings).
Do you think your website got what it takes to be considered a “professional website”? See these pointers and know if your site has the qualities of a high-standard, professional website.
Is your site clustered with ads? If not, then good. Very good. If yes, you might want to remove those as most people who surf the net are likely to close their browsers if they see a website or web page which is full of advertisements. Having an ad-bombed page would also give your visitors the impression that you made your site just to make money and not to help other people.
Is your website stuffed with keywords? If it is not, then you have no problem. If it is, then you have some big changes to do. Either remove the keywords or completely forget about being a webmaster. Stuffing your site with keywords is considered a black-hat SEO tactic.
People (especially other webmasters) who will visit your site might think that you are not a good content builder. Why? You’re simply putting keywords on your site to get a high ranking in search engines and leave your content space close to empty. Plus, websites with too much keywords (visible or hidden) are just dirty and topsy-turvy.
Tip for new webmasters: No offense, but please don’t bother making a website if you don’t know how to build some good quality content.
Does your website look good on all kinds monitors? Try visiting your site using a computer with a smaller monitor than you used when you built it.
Does it look okay or does it look disordered? Be considerate, make your website compatible for all monitors. Most people use monitors with 1024 x 768 resolution, so make sure that your site will fit in that kind of screen. If you cannot, just put a sign or warning near your footer saying that your website is best viewed with a monitor which is using the [insert resolution here] resolution.
Example: This site is best viewed with a 1024 x 768 resolution.
Does your site look okay on all types of web browsers? Let’s face it. Internet Explorer is so crappy, yet a lot of people are using it. I guess all we can do is to adjust. Make sure that your site looks perfectly fine on all browsers. Some sites look great on Firefox, but they look all messed up on IE (let’s blame Microsoft!). 
Is your source code clean? When coding a website, you always have to be careful. Some people forget to close some tags, and others close them without even opening them! Use the W3C validator to check if your code has some errors in it. Just keep your code clean and you will have no problems.
Juggler’s Note: I might edit this post in the future if I can think of other things to keep your site professional and clean.
Good points you make. I just had a talk with someone the other day who asked me the first five things I would do to optimize a page, and I said two of the first things I would do would be to clean up the page and to write for humans, not robots. I don’t think it was the answer they were expecting, but I think what good is being number 1 in the SERPs if humans don’t find your page useful?
“What good is being number 1 in the SERPs if humans don’t find your page useful?”
Right on.. it’s no use being #1 for all the keywords in the world if you don’t provide anything informative.
Sounds like my site can be considered “clean and professional”.
Though, it does not seem to pass the real “SEO” test…
You are right of course. But I have seen plenty of examples of websites who look awful but are doing great due to their SERPs position.
… Look at MySpace
There is too much chaos around us and the one thing I do not have time is to look at yet another clatter on web pages. I hope more people would read your post and apply it.
Yeah… hopefully people will make user-friendly and search-engine friendly pages. I don’t like browsing cluttered pages either, that’s the reason why I wrote this post.
[…] The website has a messy layout. Messy layouts, especially those with big glittery buttons, flashy colors and a nowhere-to-be-found navigation bar totally annoy me. Not only do they make me go “Ahh!!! It hurts my eyes!”, they also give me a hard time finding what I want on the spot. As I said, the world is moving fast these days and it is completely illogical to waste even one second. If your site blinds me (temporarily or permanently, doesn’t really matter!) or if it lets me look for the navigation bar, then I assure you that I won’t visit your site. Never again. Your site should be clean for it to look professional! […]