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As
an online marketing specialist, I'm often asked what website owners
can do to better promote their websites. Many of them have beautiful
sites - but no visitors. They want to know why. Often, the problems
have to do with the design of the site rather than anything these
website owners *haven't* done.
I
admire the talent of a great many web designers. But some simply
have no idea of how the search engines work - and how their design
choices may affect their clients' bottom line. I certainly can't
blame them for that. Technically, search engine knowledge isn't
in their job description. That's why they frequently employ someone
like me.
If
you decide to employ an online marketing specialist yourself, it's
best to have that person working with you right at the beginning
while the designer is coming up with possible layouts. That way,
you can catch these typical design problems early on and with a
minimum of fuss.
One
of THE most important things you can do to ensure that your site
will be found online, is to make sure your site is what's called
"search engine friendly". This term means that your site is "crawlable"
by the software (called a "spider") that a search engine sends to
your site to look through it and take back information on all the
pages that are included within it. If the spider can't crawl through
your site, your site won't get the attention it deserves in the
search engines - and the money you've spent on developing your beautiful
website will simply be wasted.
Here
are a few things to avoid in your design:
THE
DON'TS:
Search
engines see text. The more text in your website, the easier it is
for a search engine to discern the theme and topic of it - and the
more likely it is you will be found for certain keywords and phrases
relevant to your product, service or resource. This doesn't mean
that your website needs to be ugly. Quite the contrary! It just
means that there needs to be some "meat" to it (as I like to call
content) for it to assume its rightful place in the search engines.
With
that in mind:
-
DON'T have your site entirely graphical with very little text.
Search engines don't see graphics. If your site relies heavily
on graphics, it will remain virtually invisible to the search
engines - whether or not your site is reached and can be looked
through by the search engine spider.
-
DON'T make your site entirely in Flash (or if you do, make
an .html alternative site.)
Though they're getting better all the time, for the most part,
search engine spiders don't see Flash. If you have a website that's
mostly or entirely Flash in nature, your site will simply not
be indexed - or if it is, only the main page of the site will
be included in the search engines. That won't be very helpful
to you as there won't be enough text to establish your website's
theme within the engines.
- DON'T
make your site in frames.
The search engines only see the first page of the site and can't
crawl any deeper. Since having more pages in the search engines
is one of those factors used to determine whether or not your
site is an "authority" - and the greater an "authority" your site
is believed to be, the higher in the search engines your site
will be found for certain keywords, it's really important to have
at least five pages or more indexable.
-
DON'T put too many parameters in your dynamic urls or force
session IDs.
If your urls are dynamic and involve many parameters in the resulting
url, you can expect that the search engines will index to a certain
point and not beyond that. Typically, characters like "?" and
"&" can stop search engines in their tracks (they don't want to
get caught in an endless loop). While the spiders are getting
better at this all the time, there's no point in making things
difficult on them. If at all possible, use a server-side method
to make your urls come out without all the strange characters
(your web designer or a programmer will have more information
on this sort of thing). And try to keep the parameters for your
dynamic websites down as low as you can - without forcing session
IDs. If you force cookies on the spiders, they will simply go
elsewhere - without indexing your site.
Now
that I've gone through some of the DON'Ts, here are:
THE
DO's:
- DO
add a title and description meta tag to every page of your site!
This is one of the most important things to make certain of when
you're building your website. Each and every page of your site
should have a useful and enticing title and description meta tag.
The title is displayed at the top of a browser when someone visits
your website. The description is displayed next to your title
in your search engine listings (with the exception of the listings
in Google, but that's another entire article). If your title and
description contain the keywords that best describe your business,
service or resource, and if those keywords are actually being
searched for (keyword analysis is a very important part of any
search engine optimization service offered) they're likely to
get more attention - from both potential visitors seeing your
listing, and from the search engines trying to discern the theme
and most relevant keywords within your site. Having different
titles and descriptions for each page will also help differentiate
your pages from one another in the search engines.
- DO
move your javascript code to a separate file.
Many websites these days have a great deal of javascript code
at the top of their .html pages. This code is responsible for
rollovers that change graphical buttons when your mouse's arrow
moves over them, or for inputting date and time code at the top
of pages, etc. While there's nothing wrong with having javascript
code in your page, try and put this javascript in a separate .js
file, and refer to it in your page rather than having all the
straight code there. Anything that keeps the search engine spider
from getting to the important part of your website - the text
content - is a bad thing. Again, your designer should know how
to do this for you.
- DO
include a site map in your design.
Whatever angle your design takes, try and include a page that
lists all the urls of your site in one place - and place a link
to that site map on the bottom of at *least* your main page, if
not every page of your site. What you're doing when you provide
a site map, is providing "spider food". You're giving the search
engines an easy way to crawl through your site, indexing all the
most important pages. You're also giving your visitors an easy
way to find what it is they're after, in case they're having a
hard time of it. For your visitors, try and make sure you have
a description of the relevant sections or pages and don't just
list the urls.
- DO
create resources.
It may seem like a simple thing, but it's a big thing. Your visitors
will only be turned into potential clients if they trust that
you know what you're talking about. One of the best ways to let
them know that you know your business, is to include articles,
white papers, charts, or other resources that fit your topic.
If you sell powder paint, write an article about the items that
might require such a coating. If you're a criminal defence lawyer,
include case studies (minus names, of course) or articles about
what people should do if they're charge with a crime. If you're
selling a particular item, inform your visitors about what makes
that item special, where it comes from, what went into making
it, and how it works. All of these things will help instill confidence
in your visitors - and confidence is a large part of making the
sale.
Beyond
instilling confidence in your potential clients, these resources
also give the spiders more "food". The more content you give
them to establish theme, and to establish your site as an authority
in your field, the higher up in the search engines you'll appear
for certain relevant keywords within your industry. Such articles
provide a prime space to automatically be using important keywords
and phrases relevant to what your website offers. These sorts
of additions to your site will definitely help you when it comes
time to be found.
In
conclusion, if you want your site to be found in the search engines,
make sure you're not preventing the search engine spiders from doing
their job! Make it easy on them, and your website - and bottom line
- will benefit.
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