Marketing Your Website (Part 2)

Search Engine Strategies

A key activity in any web marketing plan should be Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) . Search Engine Optimisation basically means making your website accessible to, and readable by, search engine spiders. Search engines spiders (also known as robots, crawlers or bots) navigate and read a website's textual content. The spider uses a unique algorithm to determine the rank of the page analysing the web site and attempting to determine its relevance for unique keywords.

Therefore, if your navigation or textual content is within Frames, graphics, JavaScript, Flash, Content Management or E-Commerce Systems (but not those built by Hitchman/Essex Website Design!) the search engines may be unable to see all or part of your website content. NB. Our CMS and e-commerce systems ensure that the pages are created in HTML at the point of update, NOT dynamically when requested by a web browser. This ensures that the search engine spiders can happily analyse the sites without hinderance.

Making your website search engine friendly is the basis of search engine optimisation. Part of your marketing strategy should be to optimise the website to target search terms most commonly used to find the product or service you are offering. Search engine optimisation is now much more widely known about and used than it was a year ago and competition for popular keyword phrases has risen significantly. It is, therefore, best to target search terms which are as specific as possible to your products or services and not to have unrealistic expectations.

For example a Dentist based in Dorking would be best placed to start off by targeting 'dentist dorking' and not 'dentists uk' or 'dental surgeons'. When your website is ranking well for your initial search terms and you have built upon your website's link popularity you may well be able to tweak your website optimisation to target more highly competitive terms.

Whilst search engines are not, for many businesses, the most important strategy, it is worth spending some time to ensure your website is search engine friendly and optimised to ensure your preferred words are listed on the main search engines. The following are the most common techniques for search engine optimisation:

1. Write a Page Title. For standard HTML websites you will probably need to discuss page titles with your website designer however all Hitchman/Essex Website Design websites have a facility to maintain the page title under the general settings in the control panel. Keywords found in a page title tend to rank very highly in search engine listings and, if present, the page title is usually displayed prominently in the search results.

Write a descriptive title for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title, such as "the," "and," etc. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice surfers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialise in silver bullets and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Ammunition, Inc." use "Silver Bullets -- Acme Ammunition, Inc.".

Remember, this title is your entire identity on the search engines. The more people see in the blue highlighted portion of the search engine that interests them, the more likely they are to click on the link. Especially if it tells them that you have what they are looking to buy! Put words that people are most likely to search on at the beginning of the title (this is called "keyword prominence"). This technique goes for all areas of text where keywords are displayed and doing this tends to catch human eyes as well as spiders.

2. Write a Site Description. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title, though many don't. The site description can be entered and maintained under the general settings of all Hitchman/Essex Website Design websites or you should discuss it with your web design company.

This sentence should be short and succinct and describe the key contents of the webpage. If you include keywords that aren't used on the webpage you could hurt yourself.

3. Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document. You don't want to stuff keywords here, however. Google expects a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high. In other words, ensure you use plain, wel-structured English. Don't simply try to repeat keywords over and over. Techniques such as this can get your keywords ignored by the search engines altogether!

All Hitchman/Essex Website Design websites are Content Managed. This means that you have full control of your website content and therefore have the responsibility to ensure the text is search engine friendly. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in alternative text and comments which, again, you can maintain yourself through the control panel of our websites or should discuss with your web designer.

4. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. Some lazy webmasters use frames, but they can cause serious problems with search engines. Even if search engines can find your content pages, they'll be missing the key navigation to help visitors get to the rest of your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation buttons look great, but search engines can't follow them. If such techniques are used they should be supplemented with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that can get from the front page to every page in your site.

A site map with links to all your pages can help, too. Be aware that some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages (this is not true of our Content Management systems!!). You can recognise these with question marks in their URLs followed by numbers. Overworked search engines usually stop at the question mark and refuse to go further. Some solutions might be URL rewriting, paid inclusion, and targeted content pages.

5. Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords. Many SEO specialists don't recommend using standalone doorway or gateway pages any more, since nearly duplicate webpages might penalise you. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate webpage for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content.

It is worth spending some time researching your keywords. Whilst they may be important to your business there is no point in using them unless others are searching for them. Also, it is worth bearing in mind subtle differences in the way that keywords can be used. Most people tend to use plurals, so for example, as a hairdresser you may want to cover hairdresser, hairdressers, hairdressing and hair dresser. Each will bring up different results in the search engines.

The good news is that there are tools available on the Internet to help you analyse the best use of your keywords. For more information check out our Guide to Search Term Suggestion Tools. These tools analyse search trends and give a good indication of what people are searching for, but don't necesserily home in on the top results.

6. Submit Webpage URL to Search Engines. Next, submit your page to the important Web search engines that robotically index the Web. Look for a link on the search engine for "Add Your URL." Generally the most important are: Google, Inktomi, Alta Vista, and Tehoma. They feed search content to the other main search engines and portal sites. You may also want to submit to regional search engines. These can often be extremely effective for small to medium sized businesses trading in specific areas.

It's a waste of money to pay someone to submit your site to hundreds of search engines. Avoid registering with FFA (Free For All pages) and other link farms. They don't work well, bring you lots of spam e-mails, and could cause you to be penalised by the search engines. All good web design/build companies should be able to advise on search engine submission and the best companies should provide a submission service for their customers.

7. Fine-tune with search engine positioning. Now fine-tune your focused content pages, and perhaps your home page, by making minor adjustments to help them rank high. Software such as WebPosition Gold allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors and WebPosition's Page Critic analysis of a search engine's preferred statistics for each part of your webpage. You can do this yourself with WebPosition Gold, but many small businesses outsource search engine positioning because of the considerable time investment it requires.

For Linking Strategies continue to Part 3 of our E-Marketing Guide