Put SEO in Your Site Design

By Bruce Clay - October 11, 2006


The importance of ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERP) for queries on your specific terms is undeniable. Recent research on user behavior shows that most people will ultimately click on a link within the first three pages.

However, don't let that statement fool you; 62 percent of searchers only look at the first page of their search results. All this means that if you are not in the Top 10, few people will know you exist, and if you're not in the Top 30, you have almost no chance of being found.

Research also reveals that the top search listings convey brand equity to users, another good reason for achieving high rankings in the SERPs. Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques produce top rankings in the SERPs, yet many web developers and designers do not take the time or do not know how to properly optimize a site for high rankings.

SEO requires proper HTML coding, site architecture, copywriting and linking strategies to create site content that satisfies your human site visitors and the search engine spiders at the same time. Understanding how to tag content and where to place it in the HTML can be critical. Following are a few basic SEO principles for web designers.

Search Spiders Crawl the Web

Search engines develop their databases by crawling the web with robot software. You can submit your site directly to a search engine, or the engine's robot will find and index your site on its regular crawl. When the spider crawls your site, it reads the text in the body of your pages (including markup elements), follows all internal and outbound links, reading all the elements from the page header including Meta tags (depending on the search engine) and the body section. The spiders scan for spam violations and if the site is worthy, will ultimately deposit this information into its central database for subsequent search results.

The spider continues to follow the links on each page, repeating the same process. Spiders can only follow the most basic HTML code. Spiders do not recognize complex JavaScript so if you enclose a link in JavaScript, it may be ignored. The same thing applies to forms (spiders can't complete them), Flash and other complex code.

Once the search engine has all your content in its database, it applies a mathematical formula to the content for ranking. Ranking algorithms vary by search engine and are tweaked periodically to improve relevancy. However, we know all search engines look for key words on your page and assign a value to your major terms based on word density and position on the page. Below are some SEO pointers that can help web designers in the site development process.

Spiders Like Text — Give spiders plenty of descriptive text to read (200 to 400 words per page). Search engines spiders don't read code. Creating an image-based or Flash-only site will prohibit the spiders from being able to read and index it properly. Always use unique keyword rich text.

Web Sites Look Different to Robots — Spiders see your site differently than humans. Run a spider simulator on your pages or view your site in a text only browser to reveal the links and text the spider sees on your site. It is important to write content that satisfies both humans and the crawlers and to create pages that display the same information to both.

Robots Can't Think — Each site needs a robots.txt file. This file allows the spiders to parse its contents for instructions to the robot not to visit certain parts of the site. Even if the robot.txt file is empty, create it.

Each page must also be search engine friendly. There are two major areas in a web page: the area between the head tags and the area between the body tags. The information placed in these areas has a large impact on how the page is indexed and to a degree, what will appear in the SERPs.

When designing or placing content on your page, remember that spiders read from left to right and from top to bottom. Greater weight is given to content located at the top of the page. Keep this in mind when creating page content. In the head section, the three important tags are the title tag, the description tag and the keywords tag. Don't worry about that revisit after tag -- it's worthless.

Each Page Needs a Title and Description — One of the first and most important elements on a web page is the Title tag. This tag is a key indicator of the page's content and is very often used by the search engines as the first line in the SERPs. Each page should have a unique title that describes the page content. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the title.

Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) but very few web sites actually use them. Take time to define your header tags in your CSS and use the header tag for the titles and subtitles titles of your content. To avoid spamming search engines, a web page would usually have only a few h1 tags, but can usually have as many h2 tags as necessary and normal.

The Description Meta tag should also be unique and match the content on the page. Avoid using the same Meta tag across all pages because the search spider will notice this and ignore the Meta tag content or possibly the entire page.

Linking Strategies Are Important — There are three basic types of links to focus on when developing your site: inbound, outbound and internal.

Your inbound link strategy is important and can take a little time to develop. You can include a “link to us” page, providing information about your site and its resources. You can also write articles to be published on authoritative sites and send optimized press releases to Google News and Yahoo News about your site's offerings and accomplishments. One of the best ways to get inbound links is to create content that is so valuable that others will link to your site spontaneously. We call this compelling content a "link magnet" because it attracts links.

Outbound links to authoritative resources are important because they show the search engines that you know quality sites, and your visitors will appreciate the resources, creating trust and loyalty. Know who you are linking to and avoid bad neighborhoods. Your outbound links should be relevant to your industry and helpful to your visitors.

When creating your internal linking strategy, it is important to use silo linking patterns to ensure that you are ranked for general keyword terms as well as specific industry-related terms. When you silo your pages, you want to create a themed site that enables you to rank well for both types of terms.

How To Play In Google's Sandbox

By David Wallace - February 09, 2005

The Theory
There has been a theory floating around that Google is now imposing some kind of penalty on brand new web sites or sites that seem to acquire a large amount of links from other sites in a relatively short period of time. The so-called "sandbox" theory suggests that new sites will be added to the Google index and may even show up for obscure searches such as the company/web site name but will not show well for other phrases that are relevant to the site. It doesn't matter if the site is optimized for the search engines either. In fact, those who have optimized their sites can drive themselves crazy making change after change but to no positive avail.

Sandbox or Aging Filter?
So if a site is sent to the sandbox by Google either because it is new or it is participating in mass link building, what is the time frame that must pass before the site is allowed out of the box? Most search engine marketers that have been discussing and analyzing this say about 6-8 months. As for myself, I don't actually believe that Google is sending new sites to a "sandbox" but rather they may be applying some sort of aging filter.

How Do I Play?
So now that we have come to the conclusion that this sandbox, aging filter or whatever you want to call it, actually seems to exist, what can one do that has been affected by it? The answer is "absolutely nothing". That surely is not what many people want to hear and possibly even you the reader question the reasoning of writing an article on the subject if there are no solutions. But wait a minute, there is a solution! It is called patience. Sure that might not be a definite solution to getting one's self out of the sandbox. However it will allow them to keep their sanity and in doing so, to look at some alternatives to marketing their sites until the time period lapses. Let us take a look at some of those alternatives.

Pay Per Click
There of course is AdWords, Google's pay per click advertising program. If you have a new site and are finding yourself caught in that aging filter to where your site will not show well in the Google, why not put aside a budget for an AdWords program? With AdWords, you can instantly gain exposure on Google as well as many search and contextual partner sites. This can bring traffic to your site as a direct result of people searching at Google or one of their search partners such as Ask Jeeves, Netscape, AOL as well as others that display AdWords on their sites.

Sure these will not be the free listings you may get from the organic results of Google but if you watch your bottom line and conversions, you might find that AdWords will bring about a very good ROI. Later on when you start to see your site showing well in the organic results, you can begin to back off of your AdWords campaign. Of course if AdWords is effective for you, you may just well continue both.

Other Search Engines
Don't discount traffic from other search engines such as Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and MSN. If you only focus on Google, you might miss valuable traffic that you can receive from these other sites, all of which do not seem to have any type of aging filters. Besides that, sites that have good "on the page" search engine optimization seem to do very well in these engines.

Take Advantage of Established Sites
One thing we have recently began to test with new sites that we are providing marketing services for is to develop a profile page or pages that will give a brief summary of the client and their product and/or service. These are also optimized to target some of their most important keywords. We will then place this page or pages on an established site such as a directory we own or a case study section on our site - somewhere where it has the possibility of ranking well and sending the client some traffic. When they do finally begin to rank well in Google with their own site, the page or pages are no longer needed and can be removed.

A word of caution here - in doing this we are careful not to simply place duplicate content on another domain. I say that because I don't want people to think I am endorsing duplicate content or mirror sites. The pages or pages that are created need to be unique and not just copies of their own content.

Patience Is A Virtue
All in all, be patient. Don't continue to tweak and adjust your site hoping that you changes will thrust you on to the first page. Don't pull all the hair out of your head, cursing Google because they won't allow your site to rank well. Simply accept the fact that if you have a new site, it will take quite awhile before it will rank well in Google. This will allow you to be more at peace with your marketing efforts as well as have the foresight to look at other alternatives.

What Is The Google Sandbox Effect?

In the age of fair competition you may find it hard to believe that a search engine may hinder the appearance of a new website.

This is what is currently believed to be happening on more web servers today. Some programmers have viewed Google as uncomfortable to rank newer websites until they have proven their viability to exist for more than a period of "x" months. Thus the term "Sandbox Effect" applies to the idea that all new websites have their ratings placed in a holding tank until such time is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence.

However the website is not hindered as much as the links that are reciprocated from other users. Newer links that are created are put on a "probationary" status until again they pickup in rank from other matured sites or placed directly by an ad campaign. The idea behind the hindrance is to prevent a fast ranking to occur on a new website. The usual holding period seems to be between 90 and 120 days before a site would start obtaining rank from reciprocal or back linking.

Some advice has been given to have companies you are going to reciprocate back add your link first to the website. This may help grandfather your site in, thus reducing the waiting time associated with "new" websites. People have noticed a 0 page rank when first signing up and receiving a bolstering 7 page ranking after 4 months. Why the delay? The fact is, that if people realized how easy it would be to get a high ranking, would that take away the credibility of the engine. It depends on whom you ask, but it does seem to be happening frequently to newer subscribers. Do not discontinue back linking, your rank will eventually appear.

Article from: Jakob Jelling, Expert Author

Sitelinks - So THAT'S What They Are Called...

For quite a while now, observant Google users have noticed that the first search result in Google's organic listings have had some extra links attached to them. The links tend to lead to the most popular sub-pages of a site as a sort of short-cut for searchers. For example, a movie theatre might include quick links to showtimes and ticket sales and a business listing might include links to job postings and store locations. Despite the fact that these listings have been showing up for awhile now, Google has only officially given them a name today.

SEO Speedway – Getting Ahead and Staying in Front of the Pack

Extracts - Search Engine Articles and Press Releases

In the world of non paid placement, organic or natural search marketing for websites is so much more than putting up a website and expecting the search engines to place your website in its rightful place; high up on the first page. It would appear many site owners perceive that once their site is launched – THAT’S IT! - the search engines are waiting in eager anticipation for it and immediately place it on the first page. (People really have such expectations.)

In explaining the search marketing landscape to clients I am often reminded of go-karting; lots of similarly equipped go-karts (information), all having the same intention of getting ahead and staying ahead of the pack. There always seems to be an initial traffic jam (waiting to be indexed), jostling (re-tweaking the site, adding new textual content and link building) and bouncing about without any clear sense of actual forward motion. This article is about running the gauntlet, getting free of the pack, and staying ahead of them.

The ideal campaign, to achieve success on the internet need to have:- practical goals, a clear focus on the site’s overall message, a realistic timetable, patience, and a call to action for each page. Often I present an overall strategy based on an ideal campaign.

Keyword Research - This is a minimum all sites should undergo to determine best fits for placement. In conversation with callers, many website owners are unable to identify their site’s primary goal and/or keyword phrase. Just because something is common sense doesn’t mean it’s common practice” – (unknown). Once a set of primary and secondary keywords have been established it is time to review existing textual content or create new text. Often times, site owners are surprised to learn that the textual content on their home page does not once mention their primary keyword phrase!

Website Design or Redesign - How old is the site, how was the site made, who wrote the site and where is it hosted? When was the last time it had a checkup or a redesign? Frequently I inspect and come across a website that has 0 backlinks pointing to the site, and 0 pages spidered and/or indexed by Google. This is problematic of course and although the client may wish to talk about website optimization I first need to recommend we take a step back; we need to determine the site architecture and to what extent the design is search engine friendly. If the site utilizes a frames design is the owner willing to consider a site redesign or come to terms with the site being compromised without a hope of attaining exceptional placements. Similarly how much of the site is in Flash? Is there a splash page? Be cautious of those low monthly all-in-one templates sites; they are challenging to optimize due to their inflexible architecture.

Usability - Many callers say their website receives a large volume of visitors but the exit rate is very high and the conversion rate is extremely low. Good questions to ask: Are you targeting your traffic (audience) properly? What is the significance for each and every page of your website? How do you want to direct your visitor? Does each page carry a message or a call to action?

Ongoing Maintenance - Each website is not static; it is like an organism – it needs to morph and respond to search engine indexing, keyword placement competitiveness or traffic conversion rate. A properly monitored website will stabilize and perhaps enhance the positioning of the website. SEOs are always working to understand the latest search engine updates and make website adjustments as necessary.

For more advice on SEO contact Courtney Web Design. Your local SEO experts.