Selecting a web designer isn't an easy job because not only the site should be creative, but it should captivate the whole theme or the purpose of the business and be SEO-friendly. It is quite painful to deal with the web designers, because many of them can create great designs, but they don't understand the SEO aspects.
Utility vs. Creativity
Without any doubt, there are many designers, who are skilled SEO professionals too; it'd be a better idea to leave behind the intellect designers, who focus only on the graphic side of the website. The job of a web designer is usually perceived to design the site and they may not care about other aspects such as gaining good rankings in search engines. Hence, do remember that hiring an expert designer does not lead to get rankings in search engines. If you look in terms of SEO, you might as well find few things, including design issues that can affect your site's ranking badly. If the site itself is designed against the SEO policies, then it's not possible to patch up the issues with SEO tricks.
How to go about Hiring a Designer
If you know SEO pretty well, then you might not face too much of trouble in hiring an SEO-friendly designer. If you aren't an SEO pro, you may not be able to pick the best designer as you would be unaware of the top aspects to look for.
When you're hiring a designer, you can check out his past sites and test whether or not it's done keeping SEO in mind. If you find it worth, you can go ahead talking to the designer about web site optimization and much more. Look at the below given checklist of common mistakes often committed by the designers that can make your website turn into a disaster. These traits shouldn't be seen in an SEO-friendly designer.
Relying Heavily on Flash
Many do believe that flash is the biggest thing; though it gives a good look to the site, heavily flashed websites are considered to be a tragedy in terms of SEO. Flash designs are artistic, but use of simple HTML would be recognized by the search engines quickly. Suppose, if you want to optimize a flash site, then making use of an HTML version of the same site is recommended.
Very Few Links
Internal links given in the site are nothing but backlinks and are very crucial; however, it doesn't mean that all the anchor text should be hyperlinked to all the inner pages, but can be twice or so, if the internal links are more.
Creating a good internal linking structure is vital to the On-Page SEO of the website.
Using Image for Linking Instead of Text
The very common mistakes committed by designer is using picture rather than anchor text for linking. The keyword phrase is very important in SEO department and when your site lacks good anchor text, using image in place of anchor text is a surefire way of affecting your website's ranking in a negative method. It may be easier to use image than text, but should never sacrifice functionality for beautification. It's however recommended to add images to supplement the information.
Too Much Code
Similar to flash, search engines do not like usage of tons of JavaScript or any other code clutter. The most important aspect in SEO is marinating the cleanness of codes; when it looks messy, your website will not be able to get indexed by search engines easily.
Over-Optimized Sites
Over-optimization is as bad as being under-optimized; sometimes, the effect could be worse than expected. It is even applicable to keyword stuffing and other techniques used in SEO. The over-optimized sites may seem like automated sites to search engines that could result in a Penguin penalty these days.
So, hire a designer who understands and appreciates the importance of SEO over flashy designs.
Author Bio - Gareth Hoyle has been running an SEO Outsourcing agency for past 4 years, and he understands all the aspects of SEO really well. He recommends people to focus on utility more than beautification during the web design process.