How to make your website impossible to find in the search engines.
A cautionary tale for today's marketers, from Freestyle Media
Remember the good old days? Well, maybe not: some of you might be a tad young. But a mere 10 years ago, if you were looking for something - information, a brochure, a product - you had to pick up the phone, or walk into a store. Can you believe it?
If you wanted to get hold of material from your competitors, it was standard practice to have a secretary call up and pretend to be a student doing research. Hmmm.
Now, of course, we all hop online. Type what we're looking for, and up comes a great long list. And we're off: downloading brochures, researching products, comparing prices, taking a look at the competition.
It's great for consumers, and great for business. As long as you're one of those that appear on the search results page, of course.
If you build it, they will come
If you've ever been through the process of building a webpage or website, you'll know the energy and effort that goes into it. Months, sometimes years, of gathering information, design and build, sorting out the technologies, mapping it all out.
Then that magic day when you go live.
And nothing happens.
There's barely a nod from the 1+ billion online population (13.1 million Australians, according to eMarketer earlier this year). There's no flood of sales or enquiries. With a shrug of the shoulders, everyone moves onto the next project.
The fact is, if you build it, they will not come.
The Netcraft Web Server Survey in February this year found 108,810,358 distinct web sites. By August 2005, Yahoo! had indexed 19,200,000,000 webpages. Estimates suggest there are currently 29.7 billion pages on the World Wide Web.
Yours is just one of them.
Driving traffic
Building a website is a little like animation. All the hard work goes into getting the individual bits right. Then it all comes together at the end, for a seamless and fluid result.
One of the 'bits' is thinking about how you're going to drive traffic to the site. That needs to happen early. Not when the site is live, and not when it's failing to get the results you expect.
Of course, you start by putting the web address on your traditional marketing material (but not too soon: sites always take longer than you think. Wait till it's actually up, before you promote the address).
More importantly, you need to build search engine-friendly features into the very structure and content of the site. All the way from the very start of the process.
Who cares about search engines?
According to an article by AOL's Melanie Mitchell a month or so ago, 73% of all online transactions start with search engines.
According to Forrester Research, 81% of online consumers find sites through search engines.
And the top 4 (you know who they are) account for 99.99%.
If you don't care, you should. You have to.
Pretty pictures just don't rank
In the real world, the non-online world, marketers try to look different. Fresh. Catch the eye.
Designers have turned it into a fine art. And an art it is.
But then they try to apply that same thinking to the web. Lots of graphics. Flash. Animations and bursts of colour. Being cutting edge with your technology can cut you off from search engines.
Search engines rely on readable contents. Words. If the key ones are buried inside that Flash animation, guess what: they simply don't exist.
The page needs copy
Don't you just love sites that have little copy or just one paragraph of generic text. The designer (with their offline hat on) will tell you, "The design has visual impact because of all the graphics."
Google only reads text, pdfs and word docs. Unfortunately it will have no impact with Google.
And whilst we're all getting busier and appreciate less waffle in traditional marketing, online, long works better. That's right: copywriter's revenge!
Don't 'click here'
On the Internet, text hyperlinks have a special place in the heart of the search engine spiders. They're valued more highly than ordinary text.
A generic 'click here' won't press the buttons of the spiders. Write informative text links, such as Compare phone plans, Download White Paper or Update member details.
And did you notice how your eye was drawn to the underlined words above?
The added bonus is the same thing happens to your online audience. It gets their attention.
Sitemap? What sitemap!
That's right. The sitemap is out of fashion. Developers will tell you it's old school, old hat. That if you design a site correctly, people will know intuitively where to go.
Well, spiders aren't people. Adding a sitemap improves search results.
Theme but not heard
Sites that are not so successful with search engines are often designed for the human browser, first. They ignore search engines until it's too late.
A good website is structured so that there are different sections with specific themes. That way, search engines can interpret, rank and categorise the pages accordingly.
Think about both the human and the spider at the same time, and find a happy medium. Develop your site into clear themes and topics.
You'll get a better result from search engines and browsers.
B-to-B vs. B2B
The search terms you, I or a consumer type in are up to the individual. What one person calls B2B, another calls B-to-B. Or even BtoB. Or Biz2Biz. Or...
They miss-spell things, type in all sorts of variations. And your site needs to include as many of them as possible. Either in actual text, or in keywords.
Unlike the offline world where you work hard for consistency throughout your marketing, online, include all those alternates. Have a drink, and try typing in key terms: what are the common spelling errors? How do you describe something in a search term when you've had a few?
Of course, that's not to say your site should appear unprofessional. Absolutely not.
But, hey: search engines don't care about grammar. Nor does your potential customer. They just want a result.
Put 'em to the test
Ask any online developer or resource if they understand search engine marketing, and they're going to say yes. Doh.
But do they?
Here's how you can find out.
Ask them about a site they recently redesigned. Now type in some keywords. Does the site show up?
If it does, was that only because you typed in very specific words like the name of the company or product. What about more generic terms - the type of words or descriptions that real people are likely to actually type in?
If the site doesn't show up on either account, smile politely. And leave.
Next (if you're still there), ask about their Content Management System. (Call it 'CMS', and you'll immediately go up in their estimation). A CMS is what allows you to update the site without the developer's help.
How search engine-friendly is their CMS? Some dump a whole heap of unnecessary code and content into the updated pages. That's no good.
Others format the address of the page with too many query strings. How often have you seen a page with an incredibly friendly (not) URL of ThisGreatPage.aspx?id=pinkelephant&fd=339fdsfsd&ttj=Peter&&
All those query strings clog up the search engine. It assumes you are just content spamming, and treats each of your webpages as a single page. In other words, it chops off the query string elements and just assumes that there is one page there, even though the query string elements allow you to see different content.
No, no, no.
Still with us? Read on
If you're still with us, well done. You obviously care about making sure your site or page gets found.
Those who have left before this point are obviously focused on one thing. Making sure their site is impossible to find.
What next?
Well, this is an ad, after all. We want to talk to you.
Take a look at our site. Just browse around.
Actually, no. Search for our name on your favourite search engine. Hell, type in 'online marketing agency'. That's pretty generic.
Guess where we'll come on the results.
We can get you there, too.
Freestyle Media
Give Fred Schebesta a call on 02 9339 6747 and come and see our offices!
L3, 4-16 Yurong St, East Sydney NSW 2010
