That includes a depressing number of website designers, some of whom actually tell their clients that SEO is a waste of time and money, and that it’s quite unnecessary these days because Google is smarter than ever before… Au contraire – it becomes more and more critical every day, as website numbers expand exponentially! Lack of knowledge is not confined to website designers, it also includes a number of wanna-be SEO firms who make outrageous claims about their special relationship and affinity with Google etc, but have little idea of what it takes to consistently succeed in attaining Top 30 rankings.

Be very aware that in most cases website design is taught as an Art, not as a Business discipline. Website designers are rarely taught anything about search engine optimization, and few are interested in mastering the skills required to produce optimal results. That’s all very fine and dandy – but it leaves a lot of website owners desperately disappointed in mediocre results! You’ve probably heard the analogy about building a shop in the middle of a forest too, I bet? Seriously, it really does not matter how beautiful the site is – if no one finds it, then it’s just a gorgeous waste of virtual space.

Content is Still King

Regardless of the various conflicting opinions, Google conspiracy theories and misinformation, it comes down to a very simple concept – content quality, and accurate content classification. Content is where many sites fail dismally! The sites that thrive are those with well written, well organised original, interesting and useful content. Don’t copy other peoples stuff. Aside from being illegal, at best it immediately downgrades you to second best… As a general rule, from an SEO perspective, bear in mind the most fundamental issue – Google loathes duplicate content!

Classification

There are literally millions of websites, each competing for viewers in a particular niche. Reasons for their existence vary across the A to Z spectrum – advertising, entertainment, comedy, educational, humour, informational, music, news, promotional, sports, wine, video, zoos… you get the picture, right?

In the world of books we have the Dewey decimal classification system. Every published work is assigned an ISBN number, and libraries classify all books under a rigid hierarchical subject classification system. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well because every one uses and understands it! Erudite people write insightful book reviews, which are sometimes included in advertising and promotions. Hold this thought, its relevant to a following section. You want to find a book on a particular topic, or by a specific author, you do a search and Eureka! You’ve found it, there’s a list, even! The best books are reviewed multiple times, and take pride of place in the “best sellers” rack.

Relevancy Ranking

Using different terminology, search engines are trying hard to do the same thing – to give their searchers the most accurate list possible, containing exactly what they want, so they can pick and choose from it! Unfortunately, there is no Dewey classification system on the web. The closest thing to a hierarchical subject listing is the Open Directory, Yahoo, or one of the thousands of other web directories – all of which are inconsistently organised into completely different illogical structures!

So, here we have Google and other search engines trying valiantly to index and categorize the billions of pages on millions of websites, in hundreds of countries in a multiplicity of languages. Then, they have to calculate each page’s relevance to specific search queries…

Are You Helping or Hindering?

That’s where YOU come into the picture… It’s a big, big task – have you made any effort at all to help Google to help you? Or is your website fuzzy and unfocused, with no clear statement of content or purpose? In most cases, sites are constructed with vague intentions to do SEO as an optional extra sometime in the future… What, you want Google to do everything for you?

Done Any Homework?

Do you have any idea how your primary audience searches for the information, products or services you offer? Do the pages on your site describe your content using terms your clients use? Because that’s the only way Google can match searchers with relevant content! What? You actually forgot to do any market research before launching the site? You have no accurate, researched, hard data on the keywords your potential clients would use? You asked your friends at work for ideas? Absolutely incredible!

Let us pretend you’re looking for clients for your small bed & breakfast business in Christchurch, New Zealand. You are optimistic that potential customers in New Zealand, Australia and the UK will be able to find your website amongst the millions of competing B&B pages on the web, be convinced by your persuasive advertising copy and elegant pictures… you’d also like them to come and book directly with you, to avoid hefty commission payments on the dozens of B&B Advertising Directory sites who also want you to pay to advertise! Dream on!

So You Want Google To Work For You?

You’d really like Google et al to help connect your potential clients to your business via Search Engine Results Pages by making your site No.1… And you certainly want “qualified” traffic from Google, visitors who are specifically looking for exactly what you offer!

Anyone who thinks they can survive online without Google, Yahoo and MSN is either a thoroughly well-rounded idiot, or is a household name who does not need to advertise to generate qualified traffic. There is no middle ground.

But here’s where it gets hard! How will Google do that? What solid information have you provided Google in your on-site content, and in the off-site links to your site? Have you got a Domain Name which encapsulates your business type and location; Bed-Breakfast-Christchurch.co.nz? Or a cryptic name, like; BnBChChNZ.com? Of the two, which is most likely to give the SE its first clue as to what your site is about?

What is On-Site SEO

Think about it this way… Does your home page have an explicit and accurate Title that provides a direct and unequivocal statement of the site’s business purpose in 70 characters? Does the Title say “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation, Christchurch New Zealand” or does it say “Welcome to Dusty Lodge” or something equally asinine?

Does your home page have an explicit and accurate Description that provides a brief outline of your business purpose, unique selling proposition, and call to action, encapsulated in 150 – 200 characters? Or does it contain some vague warm and fuzzy drivel about beaches and sunsets?

Keep the book analogy in your mind, and take a look at your Home page, particularly the first heading and first paragraph… “Welcome to my website” is not a productive approach! What does it tell your visitors about you? It tells me that you are at best naïve and both you and your website designer need SEO counselling! And think about that first paragraph… is it an accurate summary of the site’s reason for existence? Eliminate that fruity, cheesy, fluffy verbiage immediately!

If your website is required to deliver a return on investment, particularly by selling products or services, or delivering customer service, informing or entertaining, your really need to accurately describe your website’s content, and allow it to become visible online. What’s that I hear? Oh, you want it to make you rich as well? But you don’t really want to make a serious commitment or effort to do the job properly? Right… good luck with that! And remember that old GIGO acronym – “Garbage In, Garbage Out!”

What is Off-Site SEO?

This may surprise you, but some people are dishonest about their site content. Frankly, some people handle the truth in a very awkward fashion indeed… Telling Google that your site is about Pamela Anderson, when its actually selling Bart Simpson comics, is deuced annoying to the people who visit it! Therefore, Google and other SE’s decided long ago that some external verification of every website’s content would assist their efforts to deliver the most relevant SERPs to their clients. Makes perfect sense to me…

How is this achieved, I hear you ask. Well, you’ve heard of links, right? Back to the book analogy – think of good links as being like a series of book reviews! What if lots of people are writing positive things about your site? What if multiple, external, widely distributed sites are all saying that your site is about “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation Christchurch NZ” huh? The balance of probability that your site is relevant to such a search is positively impacted by this external confirmation! A coincidence of keywords in on-site content and off-site links reassures Google immensely! Those keywords in the off-site links are referred to as anchor text, and should form the link title.

No, Its Not Rocket Science

Frankly, search engine optimisation, in the pure sense of the term, is not particularly difficult to understand, or to do. The aim of the search engines is to provide their customers with the content most relevant to the search they are making. Therefore, your salvation lies in making your content relevant to the known searches! Do some thorough keyword research, learn and understand your target audience’s searching behaviour. Plan pages that target specific, high-volume, low competition search phrases.

Don’t be vague, don’t waffle, and help Google to help you!

When the economic gravy pot is bubbling merrily, and there’s ample business gravy slopping over, even the mediocre get a share. But when the economic ice age casts midnight shadows at noon, and credit wolf packs softly pad the empty streets, howling balefully at the waning moon… then, when you’re sucking the last congealed streaks of business gravy off your tarnished website spoon, ask yourself… Can you afford your website to be second rate, disorganised and drifting ever further into the icy wastes of mediocrity? With a better understanding of why  SEO is so important to your website’s success, will you continue to ignore it?

Author’s Bio:

The SEO Guy, Ben Kemp, is a veteran SEO consultant who provides a guaranteed personal service on all projects. Drawing on a decade of SEO experience and website design and 20+ years of work in the IT industry,  THE SEO Guy’s Blog provides advice on SEO and WordPress CMS website design issues.

Web: www.ComAuth.co.nz plus www.Website-Designers.net.nz

Copyright Statement: This article may be copied for use on your site providing its not edited, and the Author’s bio remains intact.

Search Engine Page Results

When a reference to one of your pages shows up within a SERP, there are 3 important cues that can entice a visitor to click the link and visit your site. In order, they are Title, Description and URL – or page file name. Why not give yourself every possible advantage when competing for visitors, by providing accurate and readable file names? It might well be the final push that slides the mouse pointer in your favor.

Search Engine Rankings

Equally, when search engine spiders are mapping your site and trying to figure out what on earth its all about, giving them some accurate information in every possible area would seem like a smart move, right? Keywords in file names are important, and they do make a difference. It might only be one of 100-plus elements in a search engine relevancy algorithm, but the more places you can tick off as being perfect, the better!

The Reality Check

Oddly enough, few people actually do this! Most file names are either a model of brevity, acronymic, cryptic or just plain gibberish! That’s a bit like driving with the handbrake on…

Top 10 File Name Factors

1.) Use keywords! Why use “contact.html” when you could use “contact-the-blue-widget-specialists.html”??? Your page names are a good place to slip in an “exact match” high-volume keyword phrase… Do this where appropriate – like every page on your site – to help reinforce the keywords in Title / Description tags.

2.) Use hyphens and not underscores! In a URL, or in a text anchor on a page, the underscore blends with the hyperlink underline, making it difficult to see that it is not a space.

3.) Do NOT use spaces! Aside from the fact that the operating system has to fill the gaps with the awful %20 – there are still some operating systems and browsers in use around the globe that struggle to process spaces in file names.

4.) Do NOT use CAPITALS in file names – Windows does not care, and will treat “Blue-Widgets.html” and “blue-widgets.html” as the same file… However, operating systems such a Linux are case sensitive and see that variation as two completely different filenames! If you’ve typed internal hyperlink file names with case variations, you may well generate broken links for some users.

5.) Confine yourself to the Alphabet, and numerals, with hyphens between words. Do not commit the heinous crime of adding special characters into your file names! Linux allows pretty much any character except a forward slash (/) – but other operating systems might choke on them!

6.) Remember that SE’s really don’t like all the “&” and “?” and “=” that some CMS systems add. For example, if you are an osCommerce user, its a straightforward task to have Ultimate SEO URL’s installed, and produce plain-English file names.

7.) Don’t use the default file names and hierarchical structures in Wordpress / Joomla / Drupal / or any other Content Management system. For example, is 2007 a good Category heading, or directory name? Its out of date in a few months time! Still, its not uncommon to see sites based on silly, out-of-date directory/file name combinations.

8.) Make sure your CMS site generates keyword-rich file names that reflect page content. This should be the “normal” way to do things, but apparently the people who write this software genre don’t really understand a web business must generate search engine traffic to survive.

9.) Prevent your session ID’s being added to pages served to search engine spiders. Aside from the special character garbage, it means every time they visit, they get a different URL for the same page – resulting in duplicate content indexing! That can get your site removed from the SE indexes!

10.) Before changing a filename, ensure that you first set up a 301 Permanent Redirect from the old file name to the new file name. This will make the transition seamless, and minimise the possibility of 404 page not found errors. Also, those people who had the page bookmarked will still arrive at the correct location in your site.

Yet another SEO article by Ben Kemp, a free-lance website seo consultant and web site designer. He offers free SEO articles & web design tips, see Web Page SEO & Website Design Blog : Web: www.comauth.co.nz

When you are setting out to establish a new venture on the web, its a daunting task. The terminology is complex and confusing. There are multiple aspects to consider – domain registration, website hosting, web site design, maintenance, search engine optimisation etc. There is a temptation to take the easy option of a one-stop shop, where someone else takes care of all the complicated items that you don’t understand. That way, you get one all-inclusive bill per month. There is an old adage – Jack of all Trades, Master of None! A bigger web design company that does everything rarely does individual things as well as a carefully selected group of specialists in their own fields of expertise.

The relationship between you and your website design company will evolve over time. As you become more knowledgeable (and more demanding) the relationship might even deteriorate! It happens… If you are in a 1-Stop Shop environment, you may be unwittingly placing your web business in potential jeopardy.

Domain Registration

Do it yourself, and you ensure that you actually own the site. If you let your web designer do it for you, and he/she puts his/her name as the registrant, its not your site! Most website designers are aware of this, and take care to protect your interests. Some do not! For a company site, make sure the domain is registered in the company name, not an individuals name. If the office girl registers the site in her name, then leaves without a forwarding address, you’ve got a potential disaster in the making!

Website Hosting

Some web designers offer hosting as part of the package. Its usually a re-seller arrangement, where the designer gets a commission on the monthly hosting fees – as opposed to a server owned and operated by the website designer. Realistically, you are better to shop around and find a hosting package that delivers the functionality you require in terms of site management and software. For example, a classic Apache server with cpanel management, and PHP and MySQL databases will meet most needs. Performance can be an issue – and its not in your best interests to be hosted on a server with 600 other sites.

If you’ve chosen a .com domain, make sure you have hosting in the country that your clients are located in… otherwise, you’ll be excluded from country-specific searches! 

Choosing Website Designers

Its best to develop a design brief – specify your goals and objectives, and give some examples of sites that appeal to you. Circulate the brief to a few designers you’ve selected after reviewing multiple web design sites. Build a chart that compares what each designer offers, at what costs. Engage in dialogue with a short list of 2-3 designers and resolve any issues you did not understand in their responses to your brief.

Finally, pick someone who can talk to you on your level without being condescending. Be firm about separating components such as domain registration, hosting, and design. If the designer is insistent on combining all elements, move them to the bottom of the pile. If they have a particular CMS that they want you to use, ask them if its an open-source system. If not, ask them what happens in the future, if you become unsatisfied with them or the product. All promises should be made in writing, and signed by the CEO… in the form of a legal and binding contract.

Make sure your potential designer is listening to you, and is trying to deliver what you require, rather than what is best for them.

Website Architecture

The web site architecture that you choose can make or break you. In terms of good search engine rankings, the simpler you can make the site, the better. HTML-based sites which allow total control over all page elements will always deliver the best results. If your potential designer is insistent on building the site in Frames, JavaScript, or Flash, or combination thereof, remove them from your list immediately. The rule is “form follows function.” It won’t matter a bit how wonderful your site looks, if no one can find it.  Modest use of JavaScript or Flash is fine… but the search engines can neither read or index anything in either – so it is best to ensure at the outset that your site is not doomed to obscurity!

Website Management

Free-form editing of individual HTML pages is the best option from a search engine optimisation perspective. Its not much more complicated than using a word processor, and uploading the page amendments to the live site is not particularly difficult. However, if you are going to use a Content Management System for maintenance instead, its in your best interests to opt for an Open-Source CMS! With “open source” the software is free, no license fees apply, and anyone can work on it. You own the site content, and can more readily export it to another CMS platform if you don’t like the current one. With an open -source platform, you are not limited to a single designer or developer. If things don’t go the way you want, changing designers or developers is relatively simple.  

Content Management Systems – CMS

Proprietary Content Management Systems (CMS) present a real threat if you become dissatisfied with the developer’s service / performance. “They” own the site, not you, and you are effectively locked in to the package, which usually includes web design, development and hosting. If you want to change suppliers, you may have to abandon your entire development investment and start again from scratch! 

Such an environment usually involves shared hosting on the CMS supplier’s server. This places your site in the midst of multiple other sites all running exactly the same software platform, and often all of the same site type – e.g. e-commerce. This is undesirable from a search engine optimisation point of view.

In my opinion, a CMS system is complete overkill for a site of less than 100 pages – which is most small business sites. This comment applies equally to any totally database-driven solution. Overall, content changes very little – for many pages, it might be an annual revision. Using an HTML editor to make minor page changes requires minimal technical ability, and publishing amended pages via FTP is a trivial exercise. Exceptions to this are e-commerce, dating, portal or similar special purpose site, where you require a pre-designed application such as a shopping cart solution. Even then, combining HTML informational pages with the open-source application is still the best option.

Website Backups

This can be a simple as a monthly download to your PC of the site plus databases. Do not totally rely on your hosting company for site backups! Do not totally rely on your website designer for backups! In the event of a total systems failure, or unresolved dispute, you may be left relying on what data you have at your disposal. As a minimum, you want multiple copies of the site, stored at multiple locations. The live site on your hosting companies server, plus a local copy on your PC, plus a backup copy on your external hard drive, plus a monthly copy on CD or DVD and stored at your Mum’s place should do it! 

Business Resilience

Rule No.1: Do not put all your eggs in one basket! Basically, you need to ensure that you minimise your dependence on any one service supplier. If your web designer goes belly-up, what becomes of your proprietary CMS system? If the hosting company goes out of business, you need to be able to quickly change hosts and servers.  

• use the national domain registrar – more expensive, but they might still be in business next year!

• use open-source software, if you must use a Content Management System! 

• use an independent web designer – if your relationship deteriorates, you can easily switch to another!

• use a independent hosting supplier – if it does not work out, you can change hosting companies!

• use an independent SEO supplier – if it does not work out, pick another!

• use a regular site backup regime – multiple copies in multiple locations!

Doing so substantially insulates you from other’s failings, and ensures you can quickly respond to a change of circumstances. Even in cyberspace, an ounce of prevention is still better than a pound of cure!