Search engine optimization, or SEO, has been around almost as long as the Internet, but specialized information publishers, particularly those who come from a print background, often have not been able to take advantage of the constantly changing nature of this vital part of online marketing.
That’s the estimation of Tom Lynch, CMO of Astek Consulting and one of the presenters at a recent meeting in Boston sponsored by SIPA’s New England Chapter. Publishers accustomed to the print environment are used to working in a “set it and forget it environment,” he said, where plans can be set in place for months in advance with some small day-to-day adjustments. “On the Web things can change day-to-day,” he said.
The key to success on the Web is to get the search engines to see your site and that’s where a search-engine-friendly Website comes in, Lynch said.
While many publishers are satisfied that their site looks good to the observer, all too often they are not aware their site does not look good to search engines.
Simple beats fancy
Trying to get too creative with your Web pages can cut your SEO effectiveness significantly, Lynch said. Things like flash, Ajax and frames, though cool-looking, may not be good for SEO. It often comes down to a balancing act between what looks good to the site visitor and what looks good to the search engines. Your site doesn’t have to be ugly to be search engine friendly, but some technology will block your site’s ability to be indexed by the search engines.
For example, search engines do not accept Websites that require cookies to create pages.
Another thing that search engines refuse to do is take session IDs. If your site requires session IDs to create pages, your site will not get indexed well. And what can be indexed stands to be penalized for all the duplicate content this kind of site produces.
Make sure you are not leaking PageRank.
Links to a page help drive up PageRank. One problem with getting a site to do well on the search engines, Lynch said, is a fragmented PageRank. A site’s PageRank can be diminished because there are too many ways visitors can see the same page with different URLs. In other words, it shouldn’t matter if someone types in “widgets.com,” “www.widgets.com,” or “http//www.widgets.com,” they should be redirected to one of the three you want to be authoritative. However, if a site is set up to accept each of those three ways as unique pages, users can link to each of those pages and the PageRank of each URL will be fragmented.
The simple answer would be to have only one of the URLs recognized as authoritative. It’s important that both ends of the equations work — visitors should be able to type in any of the forms of address and get to the site, but the search engines should be scoring all of those visitors as coming to a single page. The answer, said Lynch, is something called 301 Permanent Redirect. This technology redirects visitors using any of the three forms of address to the one URL the site owner wants the search engines to index and score. “A 301 permanent redirect is the only way to pass PageRank from each of the possible ways a site can be reached to the page you want to have that PageRank.”
‘Gaming’ the search engines is not an effective long-term strategy
Lynch said this is but one way the search engines are becoming more “open” about how best to present your content. “They’re helping people understand how to get their content viewed,” but as the search engines get friendlier, the more important it is to play by their rules.
“It used to be that you had to figure out what they wanted, then we’d game it to give them that, even if the site didn’t.” We would build separate “doorway pages” or “landing pages” into client sites to try to “trick” the search engines into giving them a higher ranking for their targeted keywords.
This would and can work for a while, increasing traffic markedly over the short haul. But then, the search engine operators would recognize the tactic and improve the algorithm that would defeat it. Some companies still promote these banned tactics and stand to get their client’s sites delisted altogether. We only promote accepted “white hat” strategies and tactics.
“Now, if you wear the white hat, you win,” he said.
Site:domain.com a good tool
One tool for identifying your site’s status is the “Site:domain.com” function under Google. If you go to
Google and type in the search window “Site:
Site:domain.com first gives you the number of pages on your site that are being indexed by Google. If you think you have a certain number of pages indexed and this shows a markedly different number, you know right away that something is wrong.
This feature allows you to see your HTML title for each page, the snippet text (often the meta description) and the URLs associated with each page.
Lynch had these suggestions for making sure your HTML title, the most important element for scoring your page, is the best it can be:
- Make sure all pages are listed with unique and descriptive titles for each.
- Keep title lengths to less than 65 characters (including spaces and punctuation marks).
- Lead with targeted keywords.
- Have a call to action in the title if possible.
- Avoid puns and metaphors — use the literal over the clever.
- Terms like “Contact Us,” “Home” and “Info Services” do not qualify as titles alone.
- Use tools like Wordtracker.com to incorporate relevant words that Web searches use.
Control your snippet text
Also within the HTML coding (you can see it by opening a Web page then going to the “View Source” option by pulling down the View menu and selecting “Source.”), you can see where your snippet text is most commonly pulled from. Snippet text often comes from the meta description of your site. Control the meta text description, and control your snippet text.
Lynch suggested writing a good meta description for every page. A good content-management system will help you do that he said, and should provide some level of automation. “Be sure to make it unique to each page and descriptive of the content on that page. Keep it shorter than 150 characters,” he said. Google clips the meta description at 150 characters for the majority of searches.
One thing you shouldn’t do is to use the same meta description for each page, Lynch said. This approach has the potential to get you penalized. And it doesn’t help a Web searcher know what your page is about. If you wouldn’t describe every article on your site the same, don’t do it with the meta description either.
The bottom line, Lynch said, is that if a site is not search-engine friendly, it won’t do well no matter how good it looks on the screen. Secondly, the importance of naming the pages right, both with HTML titles and accurate meta descriptions that drive the snippet text, can’t be overemphasized.
For a list of individual tools available to help rate and improve a site’s ranking on several of the possible problems that can interfere with getting a site indexed, contact Lynch as listed below.
Tom Lynch, Astek Consulting, 3580 West Belden Ave., Suite 3, Chicago, IL 60647 773.486.6666 E-mail: tom.lynch@asktekweb.com Web: www.astekweb.com
Comments
Leave a Comment