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Search engines are merely
an element in an overall marketing campaign. What is outlined below are
guidelines and not hard and fast rules. If search engines are an
important aspect of a campaign then the guidelines below should be
followed as closely as possible.
There must be a balance
between the various factors involved in creating a successful site.
Strategy, graphic design, copy, branding, functionality and search
engines are all important elements in creating a successful site.
Search engines can drive
a significant amount of traffic to a site and help with sales generation
and branding. However, simply adjusting meta-tags and submitting will
not place your site in the top engines. A comprehensive campaign is
required. What is outlined below will give your search engine marketers
the best chance of ranking your site well in the engines.
Following these relatively simple points can help save time and money
over the long term.
Site Quality
This is fairly obvious,
however it should be mentioned. The overall site quality, graphic design
and content will affect rankings as editors are more likely to include
the site in a directory and webmasters are more likely to link to the
site. Hiring a professional graphic designer or design team is always
recommended. Think twice about your designer if they’re your VP’s son,
creating the site in the basement on his new PC.
Homepage
The use of text on the
homepage (index page) cannot be overemphasized in regards to search
engines. In addition to search engines, a short text paragraph explains
to first time visitors in a concise format what the Web site is. On the
homepage there should be an explicit reference to what users can expect
from the site and what they can accomplish on the site. The who, what,
where, and how of the Web site should be stated for surfers to view in
text as soon as they arrive at the site.
Updated Quality Content
In the search engine
world – content is king. Having plenty of good quality content in text
throughout the site describing your product/services is essential. In
addition, updating this content is important. Tricks such as dynamically
inserting new content via a database each time the page loads or each
day can help with “freshness” points. Forums, news articles and
archiving newsletters on the site are a good way to add new content for
some sites as well.
Site Design
When designing it helps
to keep the following points in mind.
- Use of text on all
pages (if possible)
- Quality coding is
important – extra tags and code with errors will cause a decrease in
rankings – hence the important of a professional coder
- Frames cause serious
problems in search engines and should be avoided
- A completely Flash
based site should avoided, however use of Flash to enhance the site
is great
- Flash navigation
should be avoided if possible (workarounds available)
- DHTML navigation
should be avoided if possible (workarounds available)
- Flash introductions
should be avoided
- “Splash” pages
should not be used. A splash page is generally a graphic on the
homepage with the message “Welcome to our Web site. Please click
here to enter”. In addition, usability research has shown that
splash pages and Flash intros cause a decrease in conversion rates,
and decrease the functionality of the site.
- Use of graphical
text should be minimized (ie. using a picture instead of text).
- Use of external
style sheets and Javascript is recommended in place of inserting
code on each page of the site. This reduces the amount of code above
the main content of the site. This has a number of advantages beyond
search engines including ease of editing of the coding and speed of
loading.
Example:
Javascript
Placed in head tag - <script language="JavaScript" src="roll.js"
type="text/javascript">
</script>
Stylesheet
Placed in head tag - <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="style.css">
- Text navigation -
using text navigation at the bottom of the page has two advantages.
First from a usability stand point this can help surfers navigate
the site. This is a standard form of navigation that is quite often
expected. In addition the use of text links is advantageous for
search engines. For example, if DHTML or Flash is used for the main
navigation, text links can help create a search engine friendly
site.
- Naming – the
identification of pages and names of directories should reflect
keywords targeted
- Alt tags – Alt tags
should be used on images
- Directory structure
should be kept to a minimum number of directories. For example
www.domain.com/faq.html is better than
www.domain.com/directory/customerservice/faq/faq.html
- Databases - any
section of the site that requires a user to enter search variables
will not be accessible to search engines
- “?” in URLs are bad
– dynamic URL’s generally will cause a decrease in rankings. Most
dynamic URL’s can be mapped to what appears to be a static page and
this is highly recommended.
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