The
world is full of Google, Bing & Yahoo experts
Website
Content - the chicken and egg scenario
Peter
Yexley focuses on marketing and promoting websites UK.
Here's a 'Chicken and Egg' scenario - when designing a website does
one create it to suit Google, Yahoo and Bing or create it to suit potential
customers? The answer might be obvious ...or is it that simple?
If you design a website purely for your customers and it doesn't fit
in with Google's ethos and it doesn't get listed effectively, potential
customers won't be able to find it anyway.
If the website is clinically designed purely for Google and in such
a mercenary manner that it perfectly fits Google's guidelines, will
it be customer friendly? If not, despite the fact that it will gain
very high rankings, it won't earn money.
Somewhere between the two, is a happy medium - but what is it?
Suppose we optimised our website and whilst acting on duff advice from
some self appointed internet marketing guru, find the website has been
penalised for using incorrect 'Black Hat' techniques. Such bad internet
marketing tactics are hidden text or links, keyword stuffing (repeating
keywords too often) or using link schemes such as dubious link farms.
These characters lurk around chat rooms and forums dishing out advice
about internet marketing or boasting that they have beaten Google with
some newly cooked website marketing scam. Others are totally innocent
and are unaware that the internet marketing advice is very dodgy and
could cost dearly should the webmaster choose to implement it.
Here's some proper ethical website marketing advice from Peter Yexley.
Keywords
Keyword research is extremely important and as much s you might think
you know what your keywords are; get some professional marketing intelligence
because there could be many variants that you have not included. Don't
get caught up in 'vanity keywords', these are words that people in your
industry search for just to see where their website is in the search
engines. Find keywords and keyword phrases related to your main keywords
and use them on your website pages. Don't dismiss long-tail keywords,
despite common rumours they are a rich source.
Text or Images?
A lot of website marketers will advise you to use text instead of images
and they are right from a mercenary point of view but in our commercial
world if you have an online store, you need images. Be mindful that
Google's crawler doesn't recognise images, it knows there are images
there but doesn't know what they are. Don't use text contained in images
but use text in ALT TAGS instead to describe images. Your site may certainly
look very presentable when using lots of images, however you are at
risk of reducing the potential for obtaining high rankings in search
engines and also your web pages may be slow to load on some older computers
or those with poor connections. BUT, and it is a big 'but', you need
to sell and make money. Smaller images with a link to bigger images
might be a solution.
Don't be a Novelist!
I've lost count how many sites I have evaluated and asked 'What are
you selling?'. The writer has tried to be creative and gone completely
over the top using excessive superlatives and even common spelling mistakes.
Here's an example; "We have a combined experience stretching over
four decades and globally renowned as the finest purveyors of solar
control laminates for domestic vehicle glazing systems". What do
they sell? Tinted Window Film for cars!
Keep your website content focussed and you will increase the possibility
that Google will rank it higher than your competitors. That is the name
of the game.
Headings and sub titles.
When visitors first view a website they don't react the same way as
a book reader would, or indeed the way they view an advertisement. The
first thing that could greet them is 'information overload'. It could
be an assault on the reader's eyes and mind. The first three or four
seconds are crucial and the content needs to engage the visitor almost
instantly. Website visitors tend to scan web pages whilst they get accustomed
to the layout. It is much harder to read text on a computer monitor
than on a printed page, so we need to provide headings and sub-titles
in order that the website visitor can quickly read the main points.
Ensure your headings are clear and concise, describing the content contained
in the paragraphs below them. Website marketing is not like writing
an advertisement for a local newspaper.
Don't try and trick Google.
If your livelihood relies on your online business or you are serious
about website marketing, don't contemplate trying to trick Google or
any other search engine for that matter. You may be aware, or learn
of 'Black Hat' marketing tricks and tactics to trick the search engines.
I'm not going to list all of them because I have no desire to advertise
such internet marketing strategies but here's a couple: hiding links
in the text so visitors inadvertently get taken to another site or create
hidden text to get more keywords in their html code. This will be seen
by Google as spamming and your website is likely to be penalised, resulting
in your website disappearing from Google. If this happens it will take
a lot of website marketing skills and a long time to get your reputation
back.
Include a Directory or Site
Map
Every page of your website should be reachable from at least one text
link. This can be achieved with a directory page or site map to enable
visitors to quickly view the content of your website. It also allows
search engine spiders to index your entire website.
Check and fix broken links
I mentioned a directory page or site map, It is important that you check
all your links inside your website as well as external links. Search
engines will find your site by following links from other sites. If
your site contains broken links the spider will not be able to index
all your pages.
Validate HTML.
If your HTML code is Incorrect, it can prevent your website from being
displayed correctly. A single missed CSS or HTML tag can offset an entire
web page. Incorrect HTML can slow the indexing of your site too. Some
browsers are pickier than others when displaying web pages, whilst others
are more forgiving of html errors. Correct HTML will help you to avoid
these problems.
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