fantomNews - The Search Engine Grapevine: News 'n Stuff - 2005-03-26

This is a good site with lots of information on Google...

fantomNews - The Search Engine Grapevine: News 'n Stuff - 2005-03-26

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SEO "Experts" Fleece Small Businesses

If you are considering hiring a search engine optimization firm, be careful who you choose. Small businesses all over are getting fleeced by so called "experts" in search optimization - who know little or nothing about the science beyond the very basics of optimizing head and title tags.

Be sure you are speaking with someone who is able to explain to you in plain english what it is they intend to do to your site, how much it will cost, and if there are any recurring "maintenance" fees (recurring maintenance fees are often a scam as no additional work is done).

Also be wary of "guaranteed" top 10 results - often this involves pay per click schemes which cost even more money.

The best way to get guaranteed results is to hire a search engine optimization firm that is willing to work with you over a period of time - as effective results over time are based upon a number of factors - which a one time optimization cannot achieve. A one time seo plan may give you short term results, but for long term, sustained placement effort on the part of the client is required (although this effort is minimal). Be sure to ask if training on search engine optimization is included, and if the firm will teach you what you can (and must) do to achieve and maintain top search rankings.

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Fresh Content Improves Search Engine Optimization

Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization. These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like. These are all key aspects of a good search optimization.

However, one problem is that the major search engines (especially Google) not only rank pages upon relevant content (which is determined by the factors listed above, and more), but by fresh content as well. What this means to you is that, even after your site has been "optimized to the max", your rankings will increase to a certain level and then not go much higher. To get to the top and stay there, your site should deliver fresh, relevant content on a regular basis. Depending upon the nature of your business, your competition, and targeted keyphrases, the rate at which you should add content to your site can vary from monthly to daily.

The delivery of fresh content to your site, in a form that is readable by search engines (i.e. not through the use of javascript, iframes, or the like) requires a dynamic, database driven content management system.

The most cost effective way to achieve this is through the use of a weblog that sits on your server and resides under your domain name. Updating the weblog with rich articles or commentary, broadcasting this information to the internet, and allowing users to post comments, achieves the following:

1) Increases the number of inbound links to your website
2) Increases the frequency at which major search engines will spider or crawl your site
3) Increases interactivity for the web user
4) Improves your search engine ranking

For further information, you may contact ArteWorks toll free at 877-336-8266, or visit http://www.arteworks.biz.

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Use of Graphics in Business Website Design

Many business owners are primarily concerned with the "look and feel" of their new website. Website designers will often go to great lengths to come up with a graphic design scheme for a website that makes the business owner happy.

Keys to Graphic Design of a Website

A clean, simple look and feel is usually best. Most web visitors are looking for information and content, not a graphics-intensive page that may be too busy and too slow to load for dial-up users.

The first thing that your website should incorporate is a prominently displayed logo or corporate identity, if you have one. Your branding should be consistent - from your website, to your business cards, to your print advertisments, to your letterhead, and the like. A strategy of consistent branding will increase your customer's loyalty and help them remember you when they are in need of your type of product or services in the future.

Next, you want a navigation scheme that is logical and simple to use, which avoids orphaned pages - pages that are not linked to any other page - and the navigation should be consistent throughout your website to minimize any confusion. Ease of navigation is especially critical in an ecommerce environment, where even the slightest bit of confusion can result in abandoned shopping carts - which translates into lost sales.

Sites that are heavy in graphical content, while perhaps aesthetically pleasing to the naked eye, are not at all pleasing to search engines - as a search engine is not able to tell what a picture depicts (unless, of course, it is told via the use of special hidden code, which is a critical part of an effective search engine optimization).

Human Users versus Search Engines

So, the key to a well designed site is for it to be both pleasing to the human eye and the search engine robots who will look at your site from a coding standpoint. The way to do this is to ensure that, while the use of nice, clean, attractive graphics is not only desirable but often necessary to pique human interest, there should also be included in the website rich, relevant content - or text - that delivers your site's message effectively to both humans and search engines alike.

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Search Engine Optimization and META Tags

Many people believe that stuffing html head and meta tags (title, description, and keywords) will make their site "search engine optimized". Is this true? To answer this question, it is first necessary to engage in a short history lesson concerning search engines and search rankings.

Brief History of Search Engine Ranking Schemes

Back in the '90's, when the Internet first began to expand into the public sector on a large scale, search engine technology was primitive and was based primarily on one fundamental assumption - that human beings would be honest about the content of their websites. As such, the head tags mentioned above were of great importance in determining the relevancy of a website. Search engines would spider a page and read the head tags, which, in theory, would provide an accurate picture of the content of the website through the use of keywords and keyphrases relevant to the site's content.

However, people soon realized that by stuffing these tags with popular yet irrelevant keyphrases (such as pornographic words or other popular words like mp3, etcetera) would attract more raw traffic to their websites, even though the website in question was in no way related to those topics. The theory was that given enough raw traffic, search engine rankings and sales would increase.

At this same time, the competition among search engines was fierce (as it continues to be), and search engine companies such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and the like began to realize that their very survival depended upon delivering accurate results so that people could find exactly what it is they were looking for. In other words, search engines which would deliver inaccurate results would eventually go out of business as consumers realized that they could not find what that for which they were searching.

Once again, the American way of free enterprise and competition worked, resulting in more accurate results delivered by search engine companies. But how?

The Abuse of Head Tags and Keywords Has Changed the Way Search Engines Rank Sites

Now, any respectable search engine, and all of the major search engines, virtually ignore the head tags and keywords written into the html code of a website. In order to deliver the most relevant results, search engines realized that dependency on head tags had to go.

For a website to be properly built with an eye towards search engine optimization, it must be built in such a way as to ensure that the content of the website (i.e. the actual text written on the website) matches the keywords and keyphrases included in the meta tags, and that they do so in such a way as to make sense. The number of times that keywords or keyphrases are used in a website is very important and is known as keyphrase density.

If keyphrase density is too low, then the site will achieve a lower ranking. On the other hand, if it is too high, it will be penalized as well. This is known as keyphrase stuffing, and example of this would be repeating the same keyword or keyphrase over and over on the site without any logical or sensical scheme to it.

Summary

In summation, if you are relying on your head tags for search engine placement, you are making a costly mistake and your site will suffer for it. To have a website properly optimized for maximum search engine traffic, many factors beyond those described herein must be taken into account. The need for a qualified search engine optimization expert cannot be overemphasized in today's competitive marketplace.

For more information on search engine optimization, you may visit this website: http://www.arteworks.biz/seo.htm.

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