identitydesignwebsitedesign
search engines
snake oil, misinformation & half-truths (honest…)
There’s more nonsense talked about Search Engines and particularly SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) than just about any other topic in the web world. Not just my opinion, Google think so too. Understand there are no archaic secrets, no black arts, no voodoo, no way to buy yourself a better result by throwing money at Google. Paid-for advertising on any major SE makes no difference to your rankings.
How do I get really good search engine results?
Well, sites built to be easy to use for real people (which is Google’s advice) generally perform pretty well in search engines.
So if your content is clear, concise and relevant to your target market, and the site is well-structured, built to meet modern design and accessibility standards, then the results should be pretty good.
Just follow a few simple rules. Like these…
Writing for the web is very different from print. Simple, often informal copy works better than buzzword-ridden marketing speak. People aren’t stupid, nor do they normally want to read your press release.
The curse of ‘click here.’
Don’t title pages ‘About Us.’ Who the hell is ‘us’ to a Search Engine? Use your keywords in your headings and sub-headings. So ‘About Flying Solo Website Design ’is a far better heading than ‘About Me.’
And don’t create links which say ‘for more information, click here.’ It’s largely meaningless to a search engine (you’re telling it the next page is about ‘click here’) and poor for accessibility. Much better to use ‘for more information about web design’ and make ‘web design’ the actual link text.
What’s a ‘keyword?’
Keywords or often more relevantly, key phrases should relate to what people are searching for.
They should be in the content in your page, the headings, and things like the page title (the stuff at the top of your browser window, very important to SEs) and the text titles on links. You can pretty much forget ‘meta-tag’ keywords, Google’s ignored those for years
NB. Use your own keywords obviously; if you sell beer online, links about web design won’t help me find you, a tragedy for both of us.
So how much does it cost to optimise a site?
A lot of SEO relates to how well-built the site is. After that, it depends on how well written your copy is for the web. I can help with the latter, and I know other people who can too. If you do it yourself, ask nicely and I’ll give advice. If you’re updating the site yourself, I’ll show you the basics as part of the project cost.
Can you guarantee ‘top-ten’ results or whatever?
No. And neither can anyone else, as Google will confirm — in many cases, trying to ‘spoof’ the Search Engines does more harm than good. If you receive unsolicited email making such claims, bin it. (Client of mine who once took up such an offer found themselves surreptitiously linked to a Japanese porn site network, not quite the audience they were hoping for).
Anything else I’m going to need?
Yes. Patience. If it’s a new domain, it typically takes several months for SEs to ‘rank’ your site, although it’ll normally be found and indexed in a matter of days.
Are incoming links important?
Yes. Probably more now than ever, the more ‘relevant’ links to your site the better, particularly if they’re from highly-ranked, popular sites. Note that links generated via ‘link-farm’ techniques will do more harm than good, so again any offers suggesting you’ll be linked to 10,000 sites for only 25 dollars should be binned immediately.
If there are trade directories/industry listings sites you can use do so, reciprocal links with clients or appropriate related sites can be valuable.
What about offers submitting a site to hundreds of search engines?
Ignore them as well. The ‘big four’ are Google, Yahoo, Microsoft’s Bing and AOL Search. Between them, these account for 85-95% of all searches, depending on which stats you read. (The other reasonably important player, which not many non-web professionals will have heard of, is the DMOZ Open Directory Project, currently supplying supplemental search results to several search engines).
And finally, don’t leave it to rot.
Even a site which initially does quite well will ‘fade from view’ if it’s updated with about the same frequency as Halley’s Comet appears. More info here about updating the content
so miles, tell me...
Am I experienced?
Some people do ask you know. Since starting Flying Solo in 1875 (give or take), I’ve worked on identity, web, new-media, print, signage and exhibition design projects for everyone from ‘one man (or woman) and his/her dog’ type start-ups to ‘blue-chip’ international clients.
(Sometimes I’d have got more sense out of the dog, but that’s another story…)
Before Flying Solo I did lots of other stuff too and only a small percentage of it involves a criminal record. So, yeah, generally, I know what I’m doing.