We sometimes (actually quite often) speak to clients who bemoan the fact that the website they spent a bunch of money developing does not feature in any search engine search results.
Surely the ‘professional’ web design firm they engaged has done its job? After all, the website is there on the internet for everyone to see.
Unfortunately, not all websites are born equal. Too many web designers are really graphic designers who produce an attractive and pleasant page design or template, but simply lack the technical knowledge to create an effective site. As they say, looks ain’t everything baby!
Not all websites are designed with search engine rankings as their objective – some are deliberately designed as ‘brochure’ sites, with traffic driven via direct marketing and promotion of the website address, domain name or URL.
Whilst this is quite acceptable from a marketing point of view, why not capitalise on the ever growing search traffic from popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.
By applying website and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques, you will maximise your investment in your website and generate better commercial results.
There are a number of key areas that need to be considered and successfully applied when developing a website that is optimised for search engine rankings or results:
– Meta tag
– Page content
– Coding and technical structure
META TAGS
Meta tags generally consist of page title, keywords and description, and are not openly visible to visitors. If you open your browser and click >View>Page Source, you will be able to find the Meta tags near the top of the page. What you are seeing is actually the HTML code that presents your web page in all its glory.
Over the years the major search engines have attached varying levels of importance to Meta tags, and even today they have their own views of what tags are important or not. But without fail, they all consider the page ‘title’ to be paramount. This is the phrase that appears on the top of your browser when you visit a site.
In many cases, the ‘keywords’ tag no longer carries high importance, and some search engines ignore it completely. However, if you abuse this tag and ‘keyword stuff’ it, you can be penalised by Google. It’s still worth adding this tag, just to satisfy the other engines.
The other main Meta tag is the ‘description’ tag. This generates the phrase that appears in search engine results to describe your page. Not only should it include your keywords but is also has to be written in a way that searchers will find relevance to your page content.
If you ignore this important tag you may achieve a great ranking and high search result, but not have visitors click through to your site because the description doesn’t adequately describe the actual content of the page.
OPTIMISING PAGE CONTENT
Whilst page content is not a ‘coded’ element, it is still one of the most critical aspects that will determine search engine results. Not only this, but poor content and structure will turn your visitors off and fail to capitalise on the limited time they spend on your webpage.
It may seem pretty obvious that anyone can write a few paragraphs describing their company, product or service. Without sounding pretentious, just because you can use Microsoft Word doesn’t make you an author!
Writing for the web is quite different to writing for other ‘real-world’ applications. Paragraph structure and length, positioning of main themes and ideas, adequate inclusion of keywords, optimum keyword density and overall page length are all elements that need to be carefully addressed and executed. This is best left to a professional.
Many web design firms offer Content Management Systems (CMS) which rely on the end-user to add additional pages and content. Whilst this may appear to be cost-effective, it’s actually false economy. Most end-users have little or no experience in developing marketing copy, let alone writing specialised web page copy.
Plus, because the user is creating and populating the pages, Meta tags are seldom added. When the user bravely ventures to adding Meta tags, they generally have no real understanding of what constitutes a good tag from a bad one, and limits the effectiveness of the page.
HTML CODING & TECHNICAL STRUCTURE
Behind the scenes of a website, a myriad of complex operations are being performed in order to display the page in your browser. If you followed the suggestion in an earlier paragraph and viewed the ‘page source’ of a web page, you will have seen the many lines of complex HTML code. But even if you can write some HTML and make a page miraculously appear in a browser, there is both good and bad coding practice.
One of the basic measures of a page’s success is its load time. From numerous usability tests carried out, the general rule of thumb is that if a page doesn’t load within 8 seconds it will probably be bypassed by most visitors.
Load time can be negatively impacted by many things; poor coding structure, excessive HTML, images that are too large, and not building the site according to the latest search engine recommendations and W3C standards. In addition, slow-loading pages are less favoured by the search engines.
Another important, but often overlooked aspect, is that search engines cannot index images – there simply is no text for them to recognise. That makes it important for ‘alt tags’ to be used for all images, menu graphics and Flash files. Not only does this give search engines some text to index, but it also provides an ideal opportunity to add relevant keywords to your page.
And finally, a savvy web developer will pay careful attention to the actual URL page name. This is an important element used by search engines to index pages and should be a key part of any website or search engine optimisation (SEO) programme.
You’ll notice that in the previous paragraph I used the term web developer and not web designer. In my opinion, and I’m sure I’ll be tarred and feathered for this, many web designers are simply graphic designers that can write HTML code.
Others are HTML coders that can use PhotoShop, having little or no real understanding of the complexities of creating websites that are search engine friendly and correctly structured for optimum visitor experience. But then that’s just my opinion.
