Internet Business USA » SEO

Designing Websites

IBUSA — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:33:08 +0000

Designing Web Sites For Search Visibility

By Rob Garner in Web Design

Designing enterprise Web sites for search engine visibility has been a major thread of this column since I started writing for MediaPost several years ago. URL structures, redirection plans, dealing with process obstacles, and putting research up front have all been topics I’ve previously covered. Today I am going to build on a column that I wrote almost a year ago, entitled “How Search Fits Into The Redesign Process.” To start, a list of major considerations for designing an enterprise Web site for greater search visibility is provided below. (Please read that column for more info on each of the following points):

I was recently going through a discovery process with a Fortune 500 executive who was guiding his company’s Web site redesign, and I inquired directly about the search aspects of the project. His response: “Search is not relevant to this process.” Contrary to what he was saying, search was in fact critical to the overall process; he was just clearly unaware of his company’s campaign history and investment in the search channel. In light of this response, seemingly old and worn advice is worth another spin or two around the block, especially if it will help convey the natural search value of a legacy Web presence.

In enterprise marketing, it is not a question of whether your company’s site is going to be redesigned or not, it is simply a question of when. Most companies do some kind of major redesign or tweak every two years, and if they haven’t just relaunched, they are planning for the next one. So the “when” is most often “now,” no matter where you are in the process. The important thing to remember here is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment.

So how do you fit natural search into the process? Here are a few ideas to start:

Use site language and messaging that is consistent with the user’s perception of your product or service.
For the most part, search engines are still very literal, and truly effective semantic intelligence still lies far ahead. Position content and language that reflects the way users search, in order to rank for those terms. The path to understanding this language is through linguistic and keyword research, and also by studying and knowing your target. Language and keywords impact and guide information architecture and content strategies, among other aspects.

Read your log files (and/or review analytics reports).

If you want to know what you stand to lose in a site redesign, take a look at what you are currently gaining in terms of traffic, visibility, revenue, and conversions. Are there any particular Holy Grail terms like “travel,” “shopping,” or “banking” that may be giving

you a lot of traffic? See a section of a site that is referring a ton of long-tail terms? You wil

l likely find some areas that are worth preserving.

Ensure that RIAs are both crawlable and indexable by search engines.
Rich Internet technologies that are implemented without search engines in mind can instantly render a once-thriving natural search program into total obscurity. Flash and Ajax are key tools in the design and development toolbox, but considerations must be made for search upfront.

Avoid the creation of URL canonicalization issues.
When you change phone numbers, the phone company will leave a recorded message telling the new number to the person who called your old number. This is the effect a 301 permanent redirect has on a search engine — it applies the old URL and backlinks to the new URL; the search engine is happy, and your site is happy. A canonicalization problem occurs when 302 redirects are pointed to permanently moved pages. I have seen instances where clients have gone through four or five redesigns using 302s, and a string of six-to-eight redirects points to a single page, each with its own set of inbound links. This basically makes it difficult for engines to determine the “real URL” to show in results and apply backlinks to.

Set up a redirection plan.
In just about every redesign project, at least some content is removed, and URLs go away. Help the engines and your users by using a 301 redirect to point them to the most similar page on your site, or the site map, home page, or custom 404 page. Spend the time to map out which URLs are going away, and where they should be pointed. And don’t sit on the plan —do it on the day or evening that a site is pushed out of production.

Don’t remove content that supports coveted rankings without assessing risks first.
One mistake I see frequently is when content is removed from a site, with no replacement content to support the valuable rankings and visibility it has previously created. Before axing existing site content, determine how difficult it would be to re-attain the ranking, the ranking’s importance in terms of traffic and revenue, or if it is your CEO’s favorite pet ranking. Then create a plan for bridging new content, or leaving it alone.

Include search as both a business and technical requirement before planning has even started.
If search is not a consideration and priority early on, then it will be 10 times harder and more expensive to try to re-engineer at the end of or after the project.

Ensure that there is a voice for search within the Web site team structure.
Having a search specialist as part of the Web design team (and implementing their recommendations) will do a lot to ensure a healthy transition in the redesign and relaunch process, in addition to the potential for growth. The list above is useless without some subjective strategy behind it. Get experienced search optimization help that is fit to your company’s unique situation, needs and goals, and make it an integral part of the redesign process.

These are just a few considerations to get you started. Feel free to add your own thoughts and considerations for redesign at the Search Insider blog.

Rob Garner is strategy director for digital marketing company iCrossing and writes for Great Finds, the iCrossing blog. Contact him via email at rob.garner@icrossing.com,and follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robgarner.

SEO: not for amateurs

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:34:34 +0000

SEO is no place for amateurs

By Andrew Plimmer

How Come nowadays everybody is an SEO Expert?

Not a day goes by where we don’t see someone offering their services as a Search Engine Optimization specialist. The strange thing is however, many of the people offering such services on the various forums tend to have no runs on the board themselves. I’m not saying there aren’t a great deal of reputable internet marketing services out there, but they are becoming increasingly outnumbered by those with little or no experience at all.

One should bear in mind that there is no difference between investing your money in internet marketing, and investing your money in a regular market. In both cases you need to measure your results. For example, you wouldn’t even consider wasting your money by advertising your product or your service in a newspaper that is completely irrelevant to your target market. Advertising is done for one purpose, to bring in a return on your investment, irrespective of whether the advertising is done online or offline.

Why you Should Avoid the Amateurs

Essentially, you need to bear in mind that while anybody can learn about search engine optimization, it takes several years of dedication, practice, and careful analysis, in order to fully understand the different techniques, and how to apply different techniques to different types of business.

The bottom line is: a SEO campaign is a highly intensive process that starts out with intense keyword research in order to establish which keywords are the most likely to produce maximum results for a website. Once the ideal keywords have been established, it can be incredibly tempting to simply spread them around on your website and hope for the best. However, in most cases you’ll find that the most popular keywords also have the most competition.

On the other hand, a specialist who is highly skilled in internet marketing will be aware of which relevant keywords and keyword phrases will help to improve a website’s ranking. A true professional will also know where the keywords and keyword phrases should be placed on a website in order for them to have the maximum amount of impact, without being penalized for keyword stuffing.

Onsite optimization of keywords is notoriously time consuming if it’s being done properly. But this optimization process needs to be continued off-site as well. Here again, a competent SEO professional will know exactly how to go about implementing a successful link building campaign, including article marketing, submitting articles to directories, taking advantage of several social networking sites, and also social book marking.

Furthermore, a professional SEO specialist will make use of Analytics tools in order to track conversions and monitor the success of an internet marketing campaign.

Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast internet marketing, web development and search engine optimisation specialists. For a free SEO report of your website from Suncoast Internet go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/

You can read the entire article at: http://www.sitepronews.com/category/articles/se-optimization/

SEO Will Make The Difference to Your Success!

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:30:54 +0000

By: Mark Nenadic

SEO – is the latest in techniques used by web masters for making the overall layout, structure, and keyword patterning of your website relevant to search engines and web directories where the site has been submitted. This technique, readily available by professionals in any quality SEO company or firm, allows search engines and directories, both human indexed, and spider indexed, to properly categorize and rank your site to be found when a user makes a search.

SEO teaches the different search engines and web directories which keywords are most relevant to your website, so that they will obtain high ranking when someone makes a search for that exact keyword. Search engine ranking is very important because the majority of internet users will only look at the first sites listed whenever they do a search. Therefore, even if your page is listed 12th with Google for a given keyword, it may never be seen by web users, because they simply don’t scroll that far down the list.

For this reason, it’s very important that you incorporate proper SEO strategies into your website. This may involve hiring an SEO firm or an SEO company for their different services.

Among the most common SEO services are articles. These are articles written with interesting or informative content, but which have been structured specifically around a specific keyword. Therefore, if your company sells widgets, you might want to include an article on your website that uses the word “widgets company” throughout its paragraphs.

This ad has two different styles depending on whether you want it positioned at the left margin or the right margin.

To come up with your keywords, try to think about the different ways that you’d search for your own website. Think about your services, your products, the information that you provide, and the type of customer you’ll want to attract. You can either make your own list, or use a computer program that is designed for coming up with the different words that will work the best for you. If you hire an SEO company, they will likely have that sort of program available. It allows you to simply give an idea, such as “widgets”, and it will come up with all of the relevant search words that people use, and will tell you how many other sites already come up in search engines when that word or group of words is used.

There is a trick to writing a proper SEO based article. Although it may seem as though you can simply write a regular article and plug in your keyword, there are actually some other things that you need to consider. For example, if you use the keyword too frequently, many search engines will not recognize it as SEO, but will instead see it as SPAM. Similarly, if you use the word too infrequently, the search engine will not recognize the keyword as being relevant at all.

This is where experts seem to disagree. While some believe that the keyword should be used once within the title of the article, and up to ten times throughout the rest of the text, others believe that it should only be used three more times, and a subheading is required.

In fact, there are many different techniques that work very well for proper SEO, but it is a matter of knowing what you’re doing, and being consistent about it. For this reason, it’s not a bad idea to hire either a freelance SEO writer, an SEO company, or a firm. This will ensure that you have the best odds at achieving those coveted top search engine ranks.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure that SEO is a part of your website…unless, that is, you don’t want to encourage any visitors at all!

About the Author:

Mark is the director and face behind 15Degrees-North, One of UK’s most successfull Affordable Web Design companies. Where you will find articles and resources to help with Search Engine Optimisation, Marketing and Web design.