Over the past few months I’ve preached about breaking the rules of design. I’ve spoke of how “normal” is boring and how sometimes just sometimes breaking the rules makes for a perfect website. Well this post is pretty much summing up the web design do’s and dont’s in terms of SEO … again these rules are here to be broken but most designers and developers won’t (usually with good reason).

1. Designs should be Clean and Simple – this does not mean it needs to be boring!
2. Avoid Splash Pages – these annoy people and can stop you being indexed by Search Engines.
3. Limit usage of Flash – it takes time to load and isn’t indexable.
4. Don’t (totally) re-invent the wheel of navigation – people need to know where things are.
5. Clever White Space – white space is your friend not your enemy, use it wisely.
6. Break it Up - break long pieces of text with images to elaborate your subject.
7. Use ALT tags – easy to use and amazing for SEO.
8. Layout and Design are a Constant – your layout shouldn’t change without good reason.
9. Clean the Code – ok not really design but clean code means faster loading.
10. Remove Distractions – anything flashing or distracting will draw the user away and search engines.

Pretty simple to follow I think, but then when you know how a lot of things are easy.

If you have any design rules to add to this list simply leave them below or tweet me @andykinsey and I will add them.