Learn where most companies misstep when it comes to this crucial
component of their online marketing strategies.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of tuning the content and
coding of a website in order to maximize its listings in search engines. SEO
should be part of every well-rounded online marketing program. Pay-per-click
advertising is all very well, but it means you have to pay for every visitor.
SEO is about getting free traffic from the search engines. Over the course of
two years or more, nothing has a better return on investment than SEO. Thus, if
you plan on having a website that runs for more than two years, search engine
optimization should be a key part of your online marketing strategy.
I started doing search engine optimization in 1996 when Web Position (the
world’s first SEO tool) was in beta. I remember receiving an e-mail from the
company that pointed out that its tool would make it possible to sell SEO
services to clients. At the time, nobody was doing search engine optimization,
but it was instantly obvious to me that such a service would be essential if
people wanted to be found on the web. I have now been doing search engine
optimization for 12 years -- and in some areas I "own" Google.
The most common mistake that organizations make with regard to SEO is
bringing their SEO consultants into the process too late. Many companies fail to
give SEO its due consideration during a website's design phase. In fact, many
companies don't give it any thought at all until after a site's design has been
finalized. However, it is during the planning and design processes that SEO
considerations are most important and will provide the greatest advantage.
Coding for success
The coding of a site affects search
engine optimization in many ways. In fact, coding has a greater impact on a
site's listings in the search engines than the site's content. Many sites --
including those of some top brands -- simply cannot be read by search engines at
all. If you want to see for yourself, install the Google taskbar in your browser
and start looking at the page ranks that appear when you visit various sites.
Page rank is Google's assessment of the global importance of a site. It will not
take you long to find major sites that have no page rank. Unless the site is
very new, a lack of page rank means Google cannot read it.
The technology used to build a site has a direct bearing on search engine
optimization. For example, most search engines will not read pages if a URL
contains a question mark. A question mark indicates that the content is the
result of some dynamic process, such as a content management system or PHP. In
other words, it tells a search engine that the content is being generated
automatically.
When a search engine perceives that content is automatically generated, it
has no way of knowing if the content is generated every hour or only once a
year. There is typically a delay of six to eight weeks between the time that a
site is read by a search engine and the time at which it appears in the
listings. Thus, the search engine has no way of knowing whether what it has just
read will still be there when it sends a user to the page in a month or two. In
short, any page with a question mark in its URL is potentially untrustworthy. It
was precisely for this reason that the mod_rewrite module was produced for
Apache. (Microsoft has a similar module for IIS.) Mod_rewrite enables you to lay
static URLs over dynamic ones. Adding mod_rewrite to a system before you start
coding it is a small job. Adding it to a large dynamic shopping site after it is
running is a major headache, and may simply be impossible.
If you read Larry Page's and Sergey Brin's Stanford University dissertation,
describing the algorithms they wanted to use in a search engine, you will find
that a great deal of space is devoted to the analysis of the importance of pages
according to their position inside the navigation structure of a website.
Therefore, how you arrange the pages and how they link to each other has a
direct bearing on the search engine optimization of those pages. I have used
this information to look at potential site designs and, in some cases, have
found that the core content would actually rank as less important than the
site's privacy policy, simply because of the way links were built to the
respective sections.
There are many ways of coding the same page, and not all ways are equal to a
search engine. Dynamic menus are a case in point. At present, search engines
cannot run JavaScript or Flash. The only hyperlinks that they can follow are
standard HTML <A> tags. You want search engines to follow your links
because that is how they find the pages inside your site. It is therefore
important that you create navigation structures that they can follow. Some
dynamic menus can be followed by search engines and some cannot. It depends on
how they are coded. Generally speaking, menus that are dynamic because of
changes to CSS properties are fine. However, those in which the target page is
called via programming are not. Once again, it is best to lay considerations
like this down during the design brief because changing every link in the site
later is expensive.
This becomes more important if you plan on having a content management system
(CMS). If software is going to be writing your copy, or code, you need to ensure
that what it produces is as search engine-friendly as possible. Many content
management systems generate horrific code from a search engine point of view.
Once again, changing a CMS after it has been deployed is a major nightmare --
and often impossible.
Early communication for optimal results
You often won't
hear complaints from SEO consultants unless search engine activity is absolutely
impossible (and sometimes not even then). SEOs are used to dealing with (from
their perspective) sub-standard sites, sites that are barely readable by search
engines, and sites that contain many problematic elements. SEOs have learned to
accept such sites, and they often have no choice but to do the best they can
with the garbage they are given by customers. Many SEOs have learned that
pointing out problems may result in a client's deciding to go to a yes-man who
will not make waves and is happy to take the client's money for a year or two
while achieving nothing.
If you want to get the most out of search engine optimization, your SEO
consultant should be the first person you talk to when developing a site --
before you even write a brief and start searching for potential designers. The
sites that have had the most success when I've worked with them are the ones
that asked me to modify their briefs to cover the requirements of SEO. The last
time I did this, three of the five design agencies that had been asked to bid
withdrew because they could not meet the standards required to make a search
engine-friendly site. Throughout the design and construction process, I worked
closely with the coders. Most new sites don't get listed by Google at all for
months. Our site was No. 1 in Google within two weeks of launch.
Bring SEO experts into the discussions of what will be built at the earliest
possible moment. Don't let the design agency or your own designers get their
feet under the table until you have spoken to the SEO expert.
There are many elements that need to be considered during the SEO process,
and these discussions often result in the SEO expert becoming the most unpopular
person at the table. Such conversations often degrade into a litany of "no, you
can't do that because the search engines don't like it," followed by "no, you
can't do that because the search engines don't like it." Companies have to watch
their favorite design features drop like flies. Sometimes designers have even
gone so far as to accuse me of trying to cripple their designs. But ultimately,
it is not the fault of the SEOs; they are just the messengers. They are simply
telling you the way things are. When it comes down to it, if you want your site
to get listed in the search engines, you have to give the search engines what
they want.
Remember: Search engines do not have to list every site on the Web. In fact,
despite what they may claim, they don't even try. All a search engine has to do
is provide people with a list of 10 reasonably valid results from which to
choose. The lesson: You need the search engines. They don't need you. Therefore,
it is incumbent upon you to understand what they require and give it to them.
Bringing an SEO in after a site is finished is like deciding to do the
electrical wiring on a house after you have moved in. By bringing an SEO into
the site design process, you can save time and money later. In addition, your
site is likely to achieve listings that it could never achieve if SEO were
undertaken after the site was already finished.
Design a site for the search engines, and the viewers will follow. Design a
site the search engines can't read, and nobody will ever know it exists.
Brandt
Dainow is an independent web analytics consultant and the CEO of
ThinkMetrics.
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