The evolution of SEO in the effectiveness of your web development and web design efforts changes weekly if not daily. For every legitimate method of being found online, there are a zillion people to abuse it to the point where Google reduces its value in their algorithms.
Incidentally, what makes “zillion” such a great number is that it’s an arbitrary number to which anyone can assign any value. Gotta love it:)
Anyway, one of the big culprits we deal with today is “key word stuffing.” That’s basically cramming (stuffing) as many key words into the copy on your pages as possible and cramming as many key words into links, etc. that you possibly can. This is the kind of behavior that makes your site look and read spammy, yet why do so many people still use these tactics?
Simple: Desperation and/or impatience. The key to using key words in your SEO is moderation, not stuffing. There should be no more than a 3% saturation of any key word phrase on any page of your website. Links to your site are also now more effective if they contain your name or your brand name rather than key words in the links. This is due to the abuse of key word “link wheels,” which are basically a series of sites set up which link to each other and then link back to one central site.
Be consistent with your blogging efforts, content management and site updates and exercise reasonable moderation in using keywords in your SEO efforts. It’s excess that leads to the constant changes, such as the Panda Google updates, which are specifically designed to eliminate the effectiveness of spammy behavior in both on and offsite SEO. If you go overboard with any method, you are basically contributing to that method being rendered ineffective in the long run.
The analogy I like to draw is the cornerback Lester Hayes of the Oakland Raiders in the 70′s and early 80′s. Back then, players used a sticky resin called “Stick ‘Um” on their hands to help with their grip on the ball. Used in reasonable moderation, this substance was legal. Hayes, however, pushed it to the limit in the 1980 NFL season. He smeared it on his hands, jersey, pants, shoes, helmet…anywhere the ball would potentially touch (see the picture to the left). In 1980 he was one interception short of the all-time season record with 13, while an additional 4 were called back because of penalties. Teammates even joked that the reason he got all those interceptions was StickUm …because if the ball even touched his hand he’d hang on.
By the 1981 season, Stick Um was outlawed (and still is) in what is known as the Lester Hayes Rule. Can you imagine what the league would look like if this was still allowed? Ridiculous.
That is what continues to happen with the evolution of online marketing and search engines. People take legitimate, legal methods and go overboard to the point where search engines have to step in and do their job: Create and maintain a level playing field for all.
Search engines continue to evolve and those changes occur almost daily. For example, those meta tags that were once pretty valuable on your site are now not indexed the way they once were. Why? Because the search engines became wise to the fact that people are key-word-stuffing their metatags…so they have devalued those tags in indexing. Is this permanent? Probably not. These things go in cycles and in time, metatags will cycle around to more valuable indexing again.
In the meantime, like our parents told us (but we didn’t wanna listen)…practice moderation. At least with your SEO:)
We’re about a third of the way through the last quarter of the year (how ’bout THEM fractions?) and now is a great time to take an inventory of your website’s SEO. Much of your SEO actually occurs offsite through link building. However, if your foundation on your site is not solid and well thought out, you’re just spinning your wheels.
Work with your web development and web design team on these things and your search engine ranking will improve. Not overnight, but you will build a solid foundation that will make your offsite SEO that much more effective.
Titling: The title of your web page appears in search engine results as a link to that page. It should not be more than 60 characters long, as most search engines (especially Google) won’t index past 60 characters, including spaces. The title should use relevant key words.
Meta Description: This tells searchers the purpose of your site…basically what it’s all about. It usually appears below the title in search results and helps people decide if your site interests them enough to visit. Your meta description should generally be no longer than 150 characters, including spaces, and should contain the most important keywords for your website. Search engines will read 200 – 250 characters, but only the first 150 are displayed. “Trim the fat” when you write your meta description and keep it relevant, using keywords your potential clients/customers are using to search. Admittedly, Meta Tags aren’t heavy in SEO weight but they ARE part of an overall SEO picture and certainly help in describing your site.
Content: Content is king, linking is queen. You’ve heard it before. We’ve said it many times. Since we’re talking about your onsite SEO, we’re talking about your website content. Is your content relevant? Is it genuinely helpful and not just an afterthought? Most importantly, is it engaging? What style or flair do you bring to your website’s content?
Remember, there’s no magic pill. It’s a growing process. Start with your onsite SEO and make sure your content is engaging. Who cares if someone finds your site if the content is lackluster? That just means they won’t return and will tell their friends not to go there, either. Follow the simple guidelines above and you will be on your way to better online optimization for your website.
Rock and Roll Is DEAD!
How many times over the history of rock and roll have these words been spoken or printed when some new trend comes along. In the end, it’s the trend that dies while rock continues to roll. Rock and Roll has continued to evolve and expand by incorporating the good characteristics of trends. Meanwhile, naysayers continue to look for the next hot trend.
What does this have to do with traditional marketing or Internet marketing or your web development and web design efforts? A lot.
Internet marketing and social media marketing are here to stay and truly are both the present AND the future. However, don’t believe it when anyone tells you that traditional marketing is dead. If that’s true, then apparently no one has told McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, or any of the myriad mega-companies still spending millions upon millions on print, radio and TV advertising. Granted, even they are spending less than in the past, but it still amounts to mega-bucks.
The key is how they are using their traditional marketing and what you can learn from that for your business. Traditional marketing serves one key purpose in today’s business world…to drive traffic to your website. Look at the big companies and their traditional marketing…their website, Facebook, Twitter, etc. all figure prominently in their commercials and print advertising.
Sure there are scenarios, depending on your product or service, where you want people to contact you directly or come to your office or store, but the reality of today’s marketing is that people want to learn more about what you have to offer…on their own time and at their own convenience. This is where your web development and web design efforts factor in heavily.
If you don’t have a proper foundation online, your traditional marketing is not going to be very effective. Make sure you have a website that is well thought-out, truly informative and easy to navigate. You also need to have a presence on Yelp! and other online forums that not only provide information on your business, but also provide links to your website which help with your search engine ranking.
With the proper online foundation in place, your traditional marketing can continue to be effective and work in synergy with your Internet marketing.
Recently it came to our attention that a site one of our web designers created for a business a few years back was redesigned. It’s not such a big deal that it was redesigned, but rather that it was redesigned poorly. One of the problems with current web design standards and web development based content management systems is the learning curve. While slight in some cases, like using WordPress, to incredibly difficult and tedious, like some CMS’s we won’t mention, the process is still time consuming. It’s not good enough to JUST have a website. You must use your website, but in order to use it you have to know how to use it. That being said, let us give a little info on the website in question for today’s lesson.
A few years back our designer was hired to a local security company. One of his task was to redesign their current marketing material and redesign their website. The hope was that the new website would #1: Sell products on the site #2: Increase their rankings on the search engines #3: Win an industry award for the website #4 Give a clean and professional look to compete with the likes of ADT and BRINKS. What was done with the website in just 3 months was nothing short of spectacular. Not only was the site cleanly redesigned for user experience it was also optimized for search and selling on the site. The site actually reached first page status on Google and appeared just under the major security competitors. This was a large jump from the 4th or 5th page that they were previously occupying. The site was also nominated for the industry award that was originally in mind. Sadly, another site took the honors, but neither our designer or us were really impressed with the end results of the other sites once we saw them. Realistically, in the whole process, the only major drawback was having someone other than our designer learn how to use the CMS, which was WordPress.
Unfortunately a short time later, our designer was laid off from the company, but not after he was also asked to redesign the sister site of the security site; a monitoring company that also had their site redesigned recently… seemingly by the same person/company. Now, to be clear, this post is not intended to bash, however, it is intended to show the difference between well thought out design and just throwing stuff on a page.
Here you can view the “Before” and “After” of the website in question. A few things to take note of… “Before” is cleaner, more professional. You see the product(s) immediately and are presented with a deal and a form, two things that are proven to convert traffic (and did) if done properly. “Before” also segments it’s target markets by providing alternate navigational items such as the “Home Security”, “Business Security”, and “Switch & Save” blocks. Unseen, but further down the page, were more links and graphic elements to display the companies top clients. On the usability side, “Before” was built on WordPress and was capable of changing content on the fly and made search engine optimization (SEO) easier. A blogging element was also implemented, however, never used after our designer was let go.
On the other side we have “After”. “After” has some necessary elements but misses the mark in a number of ways. First, the site is no longer optimized for search. In fact the “h tags” aren’t being used properly, if at all. I don’t believe I even saw an “h1″ and the “title” tags are nowhere near where they should be in order to pull traffic. “After” looks to be built in simple HTML pages, which is fine if you are just trying to get your name out there and have a presence. It’s a completely different story when you are trying to use your site to sell. Due to the loose structure of the HTML on these pages you notice things like spacing and sizes thrown off on particular pages. “After” is just not appealing to the eye… sorry, but it’s not. Functionality on “After” is completely thrown out the window. The contact page doesn’t even have a form. In fact the careers page, which had a resume upload function, now only has a “mailto” link going to the company’s Gmail account! “After” lacks consistency throughout the site. There is no one design “standard” for the pages. Visually the site is severely lacking. From the lack of a background to the shadows on the nav, the site just doesn’t make the mark.
Some things to note… what will happen to the site? Almost immediately the site will lose page rank. Since the markup is not properly done and major keywords and phrases are all but missing from the site, the search bots will have nothing good to index causing a drop in view-ability. They won’t be able to sell through the site or even take contacts from the site. Instead of having the site work FOR them, it’s just hanging out online like a buoy in the ocean… going nowhere. Of course the owners of the site could really push promotion of the site and the company, but once someone got there, what’s the big draw? What has this redesign done to improve your image or your business? And why would you promote now with a poor website, why wouldn’t you put that effort into the old site that could actually convert… and did!
Again, we do not aim to bash, but we must ask, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”
How much traffic are you getting to your website? This is the constant struggle of having a business presence online. The bottom line is higher traffic volume = more opportunities = better and more manageable results.
Remember that traffic doesn’t generate guarantees. It generates opportunities. In your web development and web design efforts for your business, remember that once you lay the foundation it will probably need some tweaking along the way. That’s okay, because you will have a solid foundation that will allow you to properly assess your results and make educated decisions on any changes.
Below is an excerpt from WordPress with some excellent suggestions for generating traffic. Simply put, they work. They just require a little effort, patience and consistency. While this is about the WordPress platform specifically, the principles can be applied to whatever platform you’re using on your site.
- Update your About Page. If your “About” page is generic and doesn’t have a short bio and contact information, visitors will be disappointed.
- Turn on Publicize. You can easily set up your WordPress.com blog to automatically share new posts out to your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo or LinkedIn accounts.
- Turn on Sharing. With a few clicks, you can make it so any visitor can share a link to your post out to their social networks, their blog, or through email.
- Let readers subscribe by email. Email is often forgotten as a source of traffic. It’s a great way to keep them connected to your blog without any extra work for you, or for them.
- Post regularly. Pick a schedule that works for you – once a day, once a week, once every two weeks, and stick to it. It’s only when people can expect regular posts that they’ll be compelled to come back to see what you’ve written next.
- Write Well. It’s often unsaid, but better posts get more traffic. There’s no sense in posting every day, if every post is boring or poorly written. If people find a careless writer at work, they won’t be back.
- Pick good titles. Blog post titles are like newspaper headlines. They need to be short and interesting to get people to want to see what’s inside.
- Link to bloggers like you. When you link to another blog, they’ll typically get notified (via a pingback) that someone has mentioned them. This will encourage them to visit your blog and, if they like what they find, link to you as well in their posts.
- Comment on other blogslike yours. Every comment is an opportunity to show how well you write and think. When people read a great comment, they’ll see your name, and the link to your blog, encouraging them to see what else you have to say. Identify good blogs on topics similar to your own, read and contribute sincerely.
- Respond to every comment you get. When people comment on your blog, they’ve invested a lot of their time. Reward them by answering questions and taking their feedback, and they’ll come back again.
- Take requests. Write a post requesting your readers (or your friends) to suggest topics to write about. Reach out to Facebook, twitter, or friends, for suggestions.
For more elaboration and other hints, click here to read the entire WordPress article.
