Search Category

The process of putting your business online involves more than just building a website. As with other areas of your marketing your website requires careful planning to ensure it will be a success. One area which is crucial to that success, but sadly often overlooked, is a search engine friendly – or search friendly - website.

What is a Search Friendly Website?

A search friendly website is a website that has been designed from the ground up in a manner that enables the search engines to find, crawl and index the website’s pages. You may think that sounds easy but you would be amazed at how many search engines, such as Google, are unable to list a website because of technical issues.

A search friendly website should also ideally rank highly in the search engines for keyword phrases related to your business. Personally I would take search friendly a step further and say that a search friendly website is a website that is also user friendly. By that I mean a website that users (your customers and prospects) find easy to use and engage with.

What Are the Benefits of a Search Friendly Website?

A website that looks great but has no one visit it is not very useful. It’s kind of like a bricks and mortar store that is tucked away out of sight, and no doubt out of mind. The search engines are like busy shopping strips and ideally you want your business, or website, to be positioned up front and centre so you can attract lots of prospects and convert them into customers. A search friendly website can deliver this prime position to you. Some additional benefits of a search friendly website include:

• High visibility in the search engines;
• Increased targeted traffic to your website;
• A website that is search friendly is usually more user friendly – meaning your prospects will find it easier to use and therefore convert into customers;
• Saves you time and money by not having to find someone to optimise your website after it has been built;
• Increased customers and sales!!

What Stops a Website From Being Search Friendly?

As I mentioned above you would be amazed at the number of websites that don’t appear, let alone rank, in Google purely because of the way they are built. Here are some common issues that can harm your website and stop it from being search friendly:

Frames

In the earlier days of the internet frames were hailed as the next big web design weapon. These days frames are probably one of the worst offenders when it comes to having a search friendly website as most search engines cannot follow links via frames. Even if a search engine does index your pages it is usually just the content of the page so a user is taken to a page of your website’s “content” with no visible logo or navigation as they are part of a separate frame.  Frames also cause problems for users when using the browsers back button, printing or bookmarking a page. There are some remedial fixes available but they really are an interim fix until you can get your website re-designed.

If your current website has been built using frames I would highly recommend you consider redesigning it.

Flash

Flash is not the total search engine friendly killer it once was but you do need to ensure that the web designer who implements a flash website for you either develops a HTML version of your website or creates a website that can incorporate Flash within your HTML “search friendly” website.

Again I would avoid a purely Flash built site if at all possible.

Dynamic URLs

Dynamic URL’s are generally seen in e-commerce websites and Content Management Systems (CMS) that have not been designed in a search engine friendly manner. Here is an example of a dynamic URL:

• http://www.mywebsite.com.au/products.php&123=prod762&subproduct

Re-written to be search engine friendly the URL would look like this:

• http://www.mywebsite.com.au/products/123/prod762/subproduct/

Dynamic URL’s can cause problems with the search engines who may find them too complex to index. Generally speaking they can be avoided by ensuring that the system you use allows search engine friendly URL’s. If your website already has dynamic URL’s your web designer should be able to work with you to correct the problem.

Splash Pages

A splash page is usually the entry point of your website which contains an animated image/message and not much else. Apart from all the usability issues I’ve raised about them in the past they generally contain no content a search engine can index which makes them redundant to the search engines as well as your users.

Poorly Implemented Page Title and Meta Tags

Unique well crafted page title and meta tags on each page of your website help the search engines to understand what each page of your website is about and rank it accordingly. A website with the same page title and meta tags on each page makes it difficult for the search engines to understand the contents of the page which in turn will affect their ability to rank the page well.

What To Do If Your Existing Website Is Not Search Friendly

If your existing website has not been built in a search friendly manner I suggest you talk to a web design company who specialises is search friendly web design to see what can be done to rectify the problem. They may be able to make changes to your current site, or re-design it to ensure its search friendliness. A company that specialises in search engine optimisation (SEO) may also be able to help you.

It’s also important to review your current site for it’s potential to convert visitors into customers. If the design is not up to scratch in this regard t may be better to re-design the website from scratch.

How Can I Ensure My New Website Is Built In a Search Friendly Manner?

The best way to ensure your new website is built in a search engine friendly manner is to find a web design firm who understands the importance of search engines to the success of your website and has knowledge of search engine optimisation and search friendly web design. Alternatively select web design and search engine optimisation firms who are happy to work together to ensure your website is search friendly.

The best way to find companies who have this expertise is by doing your homework, asking questions and looking at other sites they have built to see how search (and user) friendly they are. If they don’t seem knowledgeable and/or interested in search engine traffic I would suggest you run, not walk, away.

Conclusion

A search friendly website is vital if you want to receive targeted visitors to your site from the search engines, such as Google. Ideally having your website built in a search friendly manner from the ground up is the ideal way to go, however if your site has already been built talking to the right people can help you rectify the problems and reap the reward of targeted traffic to your website.

I clicked on an AdWord this morning only to be taken to a 404 error page. I wonder how much the business paid for that click?? One of the beauties of Google AdWords is the fact that you can control your campaign so minutely. Got enough business for the day? Pause your campaigns. Need more enquiries or sales? Increase your budget. So if your website is being re-designed or is coming soon for heavens sake pause your AdWords campaign so you’re not paying for nothing.

Here are some more common AdWords mistakes that really shouldn’t happen:

• The landing page has nothing to do with the ad I clicked on.
• The item being advertised is out of stock.
• The business doesn’t deliver to my location.
• There’s no reference to the special promoted in the ad.

As I often say the key to your online success is to test, test and test again. Don’t just put it up there and forget about it. Monitor and track your campaigns and make adjustments as circumstances require.

With Nielsen NetRatings figures showing Google Search is used by 9.3 million Australians compared to just 184,000 users for Sensis Search is it any wonder Sensis have finally bitten the bullet and abandoned their search engine for Google’s? In addition all their Yellow listings will be stored in Google Maps, as well as WhereIs. It’s not before time.

So what does this mean for Australian businesses? It means that if you do not have a presence in Google it’s more vital than ever that you rectify the problem. More Australians use Google to find products and services online than any other search engine and if you aren’t listed you are missing out on vital traffic. And now more than ever with this announcement. The change is expected to happen from early next year so now is the time to get started.

You’ll often find web designers and search engine marketers telling you you need content on your site to help you rank highly in the search engines. Unfortunately many website owners find it hard to work out what sort of content they should add to their site - or focus too much on adding content for the search engines and not their users.

I came across a great use of content that should benefit both the search engines and visitors on Specsavers recently. Specsavers sell glasses so what better content to add to their site than a guide to frame choice. Admittedly they haven’t optimised it for the search engines (and are no doubt missing out on valuable traffic) but as far as visitors go it’s a great way to attract prospects and convert them into customers. It can also be used to get people to refer their friends to the site and encourage repeat visits.

So the next time someone suggest you add content to your site step back and think of what you can add to benefit both the search engines and your visitors.

Kalena Jordan from Search Engine College has written a great article titled “Secrets Your Web Designer Isn’t Telling You”, in which she asks:

If I was to ask you right now “Are you absolutely certain that your web site is optimized for high visibility in search engines?”, what would you say?

Sadly the vast majority of websites have not been designed with the search engines in mind, and worse, many business owners have no idea that’s the case. And with so much traffic coming from search engines, it’s like being cut off from your air supply.

What to do?

If you already have a website, do some research to see if your site is listed in the search engines — especially Google. A quick way of doing this is to type your business name and/or website address into the search engine to see what results are found. Ideally you should be listed at the top of the results.

As well as making sure your site is in the search engine it’s important to see if your website ranks for keywords related to your business. So if you are a motel located in Bondi, for example, try typing “bondi motels” into the search engine and seeing what is returned. Ideally your website should be prominent. Repeat this for a variety of phrases.

If you are listed and ranking for relevant phrases good for you, however if you are one of the majority who is no where to be found, it’s a good idea to get some outside expertise to help get things sorted.

If you are about to start building a website, it is a good idea to discuss your search engine strategy with your web designers. If they don’t have one, or have no idea what you are talking about I’d suggest firing them and finding someone who does know.

Remember: Having a website that’s not in the search engines is like having an unlisted phone number.

References
Secrets Your Web Designer Isn’t Telling You by Kalena Jordan.
Website Health Check Report by ThinkProspect