Search Engines

These have four elements that need to be accommodated in your search engine strategy. They are TEXT, LINKS, POPULARITY and WEIGHT.

TEXT: If your target market is to be able to find you then you better use the words they might use in a search engine as part of your site’s dialogue. The words they will be using to find you can be strategically placed in four ways TITLE, BODY, META TAG and IMAGES. Of these four the TITLE and BODY are the most important.

The two most important places to put key words are in the title tag (the title that appears in the strip at the top of the browser) and the body text (the page your users can read). Meta tag text are considered as secondary to title and body since not all search engines read meta tags. Meta tags are the secret messages written specially for a robot crawler. Directories do NOT use meta tags. Key word selection and strategic deployment in your web site is the most effective way to ensure your listing success.

LINKS: The search engine must be able to find your pages via links within your site but links outside your site are important too. There are ways to ensure that your site’s internal links are search engine friendly. Please note that:

POPULARITY: is divided in to two parts, LINK and CLICK. It’s good to have links from other sites to your site but the quality of the site that links to you is more powerful than the quantity of links. Merely having links to your site is not enough. A search services (engines and directories) measure how many times users are clicking on the links to your site. And how long they stay on your site to read the quality information you have put there. But not just that, they also look to see if your new visitors came back to look again. Staying and coming back to your site is referred to as click-through (CLICK). So remember, search services measure both link popularity (which includes quantity and quality) and click-through. This is why it is important that web sites that link to your page have attractive and appropriate banners that encourage a user to click and while visitors are there you better engage their attention and find strategies to bring them back. Note: ALL the major search engines include POPULARITY as part of their search algorithm. It’s well worth devising models to capture and engage your visitors.

WEIGHT: is a mystery to all but the search engine writers. The rules are constantly changing, so anyone who promises your site will list in the top ten of a search is meaningless, not least if you consider the same promise is being made to many more people that 10 across the rest of the UK let alone the world. However, it is well known that search engines assign a higher weight to the information they find on the front page of a web site than to any other page, so consider well what you put there.

LONGEVITY is the staying power of your site. The directory service wants to be sure your web site will be there in the future so it doesn't get a dead link in its listing. If they see some evidence of a legitimate organisation or company that matches the owner of the domain name in the WHOIS listing then all the better. Another good sign is a secure payment scheme on your site which is only possible to set up if you are a trusted financially.

UNIQUENESS is important to the directory service because they don’t want to put sites in their category listings that are already served by the same information. You know that your site has unique elements to it so you better make sure that the person who deals with your submission knows it too. When you submit your site you can leave details for the editor to read.

CATEGORY is really determined by the editor. The editor will decide where your site should live in their directory. If you want to understand which category you should be placed in then use the key words you expect users to enter and find out who pops up. Remember, your site's actual content must match the category you want to place it in.

TITLES and DESCRIPTIONS are used to find your site if the directory user’s search word is not found in a category. Web sites that have the search word in the category and title and description text will be higher in the listing than those that don’t. So think back to the person who said he could get you in the top 10 but didn't give you advice about wording the text on your site. Again, the description you submit of your site to the directory editor should accurately reflect the content of your web site If the editor can’t see evidence of that content by looking at the front page then don’t expect him to add you to the directory.

Web Design Practice

This has five basic parts READABILITY, NAVIGATION, LAYOUT, SPEED and AVAILABLITY which collectively make your web site a nice place to visit which all helps to bring visitors back and improve your CLICK.

NAVIGATION is important. If a user gets lost in your site they might not return again. Colour, font size and simple visual techniques can do a lot to help a user browse around with confidence. Having a menu bar that appears on every page is a must. The default signal for a link is blue underlined text but it is a little unattractive. If you don’t use the default then make it bold and/or a different size and colour and be consistent from page to page. You should also distinguish links within your site from hyperlinks which take the user out of your site.

The LAYOUT of your web site should be consistent. Don’t swap and change background colours just because you have discovered how. Being consistent makes you predictable, being predictable comforts the user and comfortable users buy the products you want to sell. If you are displaying pictures then as far as possible use the same sizes throughout the site. If you use pop-up browser windows be consistent in the size of the pop-up image too.

SPEED, or lack of it, can be a terrible turnoff to most users. You will especially upset users on dial-up modems if your site takes forever to access. This means you should use animations sparingly. If the photographic images on your site are not optimised for the web you will loose customers. It’s common to see pictures that are 10 times too data heavy than they need to be. Users won’t thank you as they wait on their dial-up modem for a 120kb picture when it could have been 12kb. What is the point of you being at the top of a search list if the user decides your site is too slow and goes back to the list to get the site that came in second. Use thumbnail pictures for your products. If a user wants to see a better picture let them click the thumbnail for a web optimised image. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: If your front page takes too long to load then the search engine might not bother to wait! Generally speaking your front page should be less that 100kb. A typical dial-up modem has a speed of 56kb per second. Your 100kb front page will take about 2 seconds to load. Anything longer and you run the risk of loosing a customer and possibly the robot crawler.

AVAILABILITY is a must for your customers. Don’t make the prospective customer search for your product. If at all possible take your prospect directly to your product page from the link presented on the search service. Never make your customer make more than seven clicks to find your product. Remember that to get your listing in the directory services it’s a person that will be trying to find your products. Don’t hide them.

We hope this article helps you understand a little more about web design and search service strategy. Needless to say there is more to it than this article discusses but we hope this was enough to help you choose Green Town to build your web site.

Regards,