Headspace Design

12 things you need to know before commissioning a website - part 4: SEO

Posted On June 1st, 2008 Author Kyle Racki  Filed Under Business, Marketing   0

1. Know your audience
2. Content
3. Content Management Systems
4. Hosting and Domain
5. Bandwidth
6. Web standards
7. Search Engine Optimization
8. Browser Testing
9. Accessibility
10. Design/Usability
11. Open Source or Proprietary?
12. Flash or HTML?

The previous post covered topic 6. This post will discuss point 7 - search engine optimization (SEO).

If they find you, they will come

The web is increasingly becoming the new phone book. And we all know who the Yellow Pages is in that analogy. That’s right, Google. It’s become so prevalent that the company name has become a verb, and if you’re company isn’t getting Googled, you’re in trouble.

The fact is, search engines are one of the most important ways to market your site, and a niche service in the broad field of internet marketing is that of search engine optimization, or SEO. This is relatively simple, as much as SEO experts would like you to believe otherwise. Despite the scientific sound of the term, search engine optimization is just that, it’s optimizing your website for search engines. It’s making your website ‘search-engine friendly.’

The pen is mightier

The key thing to remember is this—search engine spiders (the incomprehensible things that crawl through the web and find, or index websites) like one thing - words. The more content on your site the better, or more accurately, the more appropriate content in the more appropriate places, the better.

You see, most people when searching the web will never type your company name, and if they do, they are actively looking for you anyway, and thus not a qualified lead. Most people type in key words. If your looking for the nearest flower shop, your not typing “Aunt June’s Flower Shop”. You’re going to first look for the type of business; “flowers”, then you’re adding the location; “downtown Halifax”, just as you would if you were searching the phone book.

With this in mind, key words are vital to SEO. Try to figure out the key words that your users are searching with to find your competitors, and then try to weave these words in your website as much as possible. Of course, this is what an SEO expert does, therefore you’ll have to work with your consultant, be that your design and development team, or a specialized contractor.

Because of the nature of these posts I will not get into the technical details of how to incorporate words on your site. But here are a few dos and don’ts of SEO:

DO:

• Make the content of your site key word rich, yet still readable and fluent
• Keep your site updated on a regular basis (search engines love that)
• Use lots of links, both to internal site pages, and to other appropriate sites

DON’T

• Stuff your site with hidden keywords, it will get you black-listed from the search engines
• Put key words ahead of content, that is, don’t place more importance on getting key words on your site than writing good, meaningful copy
• Expect to be number one immediately. Even with best practices, it takes time and patience to see the results of your SEO

Oh yeah, perhaps that last ‘don’t’ is this: Don’t assume that the team making your website will automatically be concerned with your search engine ranking. Most of the time, designers are too busy designing and developers are too busy developing to be adding key words to your website. Ask up front how the team will optimize your site, and add an additional budget for it if necessary, even if it means hiring a web copywriter. Remember, even as a tree in the forest makes no sound if there are none around to hear it, a great site will have no impact on your bottom line if no one visits it.