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Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. For details, see www.samizdat.com/consult.html. Please contact him if you need more detail to do this yourself or if you'd like him to do this kind of work for you.
1 Content can drive traffic to a Web site by way of search engines. But
many well-established and expensive sites are designed in such a way that
search engines cannot see the text on their pages. In such cases, simply
registering pages with search engines accomplishes nothing.
2 My approach is intended to make visible the content that you already
have so search engine users who are interested in that content can find you --
and to accomplish that without affecting your current, branded site design.
3 First, let's take a closer look at the typical problems -- what kind of
page designs get in the way.
4 Then let's look at the faulty solutions typically proposed by search
optimization companies -- such as metatags and doorway pages.
5 Then let's look at the best and simplest solution.
6 Unfortunately, branding rules and politics may prevent you from solving
the problem the simple way.
7 But there are workarounds that allow you to leave your corporate design
as is and make your pages more visible to search engines without violating
search engine rules.
8 Many sites present dynamic pages -- generating pages on-the-fly from
databases. Such pages typically have a ? in the URL, which serves as a stop
sign for search engine crawlers. These crawlers need to avoid being trapped at
dynamic sites, which could generate huge number of pages, clogging search
engine indexes with useless content.
9 Other sites use javascript in such a way that very little text is
visible to search engine crawlers. Even the links to other pages at your site
may be buried, so that if a crawler finds one page at your site, it can't
follow a trail of links to discover the rest of your site.
10 Other sites use frames or tables, which while not blocking crawlers,
wind up confusing search engine users. For instance, when a frames page is
indexed, each window is indexed separately, so someone finding a match and
clicking on it will be presented with that window alone, out of context. And
when pages dependent on tables are indexed, the words are interpreted as
appearing in sequential order, left to right, instead of associated by columns
and rows. As a result, phrases get jumbled.
11 When companies realize that their pages are poorly represented or not at
all represented in search engine indexes, they typically target the symptoms
rather than the cause of the problem. They'll set measurable goals that
are irrelevant to their true business needs -- such as "ranking" for
specific key words -- and then hire experts who try to trick search engines
into delivering those the desired results. In the process, the
"experts" may break the rules that search engines have set up
to try to keep their indexes truly useful, and thereby get the company's pages
completely thrown out. In any case, the experts typically have their hands tied
-- they are unable to add new useful content to the site and are unable to
change the site's basic design. Hence they often propose adding metatags to
existing poorly designed pages and/or creating doorway pages.
12 There are two kinds of metatags that matter to search engines. The
description metatag indicates the text that should appear in a search engine
results list. The default is the first couple lines of text. If that text is
nonsense -- random words that happen to be associated with graphics -- or if
there is no plain static text at all, because of the way the pages are
generated -- a description metatag might be useful, but it's just a band aid
for a problem that you created for yourself with your page design.
13 Keep in mind that the two most important parts of a Web page for
purposes of search engine ranking are the HTML title and the first couple lines
of text. Yes, the description metatag can give you a coherent description in
results lists, instead of gibberish; but the first lines of text still retain
their priority for ranking. In general, search engine ranking algorithms pay
little of no attention to metatags, mainly because they are very vulnerable to
"spam". Search engine companies want to ensure as much as possible
that what actually appears on the page is a good match for their users'
queries; and they trust the actual static words on the page far more than
anything that might appear in metatags. So a page that has no description
metatag and has a good clear description in the first couple lines of text is
likely to do better in ranking than a page with those very same words presented
in a description metatag and little or no static text on the page itself.
14 The second kind of metatag is called "keyword", a term that
confuses many people, leading them to think in terms of databases. Many presume
that search engines index keywords, and hence that the keyword metatag is very
important. In fact, only two of the major search engines, Inktomi and
AltaVista, pay any attention at all to keyword metatags. And AltaVista gives
plain text on a Web page higher priority than anything in keyword metatags, for
purposes of ranking.
15 Today's search engines in fact index every word on every page. And many
search engine users enter multi-word queries. So the more useful text you have
on your pages, the more likely it is that searchers who want your kind of
information will find you. Instead of spending time and money generating key
word metatags, you should add more and more useful content to your site.
16 To get a concrete feel for how this works, try a high end web traffic
analysis program, like WebTrends Log Analyzer. (You can download it for a
30-day free trial). Such a program will let you see how people come to your
pages -- showing not only the volume of traffic from each of the major search
engines, but also the queries that people used to find you. You are likely to
be amazed at the variety and the detail of the queries. Very few people enter
single word queries -- and those who do are not likely to be good prospects.
17 To get a sense of the typical behavior of search engine users, check
stats generated for my site using WebTrends on one particular day in January.
Go to www.samizdat.com/jan25/jan25.htm In
the left column, click on "Referrers and Keywords". Then click on
"Top Search Engines", "Top Search Phrases", and "Top
Key Words". The key words are relatively useless, while the phrases are
rich and informative.
18 Keywords only matter for advertising -- search engines will sell you ad
space on pages generated when certain words appear in the query. But for actual
searching, keywords are meaningless. Put your effort into generating more good
content.
19 Also don't waste your time with key-word position checkers -- programs,
like WebPosition Gold that tell you how your whole site or particular pages
rank for particular queries. Such programs bang away repeatedly and
automatically at search engines, adding an enormous load to those systems and
hence slowing response time for actual users and forcing the search engines to
invest more to keep performance at acceptable levels. While the results you get
from such programs might make you look good to your boss, they mean little or
nothing in terms of how much traffic your pages are likely to get by way of
search engines. For traffic, you need content, and lots of it.
20 Some search engine optimization companies will propose creating
"doorway" pages for your site.
21 A doorway page consists of artificially generated content, designed to
emphasize pre-selected keywords. The page itself is meaningless. Its sole
purpose is to fool search engines, with the objective of coming near the top of
lists of matches when queries include those key words. In fact, search engines
strongly discourage that practice, and when they detect it, many will blacklist
those pages and sometimes even all pages from the same site -- kicking them out
of the index.
22 You might think, "Why worry? There's more than a billion pages out
there. How will anyone ever know?" As was evident in presentation
after presentation at a recent search engine conference in Boston, your
competitors and the people hired by your competitors to design their sites
watch what you do very carefully. They understand these techniques and how to
spot them. And when they spot them, they blow the whistle -- loud. Search
engine folks are inundated with alert messages about wrong doing, sent by
competitors of the companies that are using those techniques.
23 Also, doorway pages typically reside on the servers of the "search
optimization" companies that produce them. They automatically redirect
traffic to actual pages at the customer's site. That means that the customer
receives more traffic, but to the search engine the traffic appears as if it is
going to the optimization company. So when the search engine calculates the
"popularity" of pages for purposes of ranking, the customer site gets
none of that credit.
24 In other words, many people go to great lengths and great expense to try
to fool search engines. But the risks are great -- not just annoyed search
engine users, but your sites becoming blacklisted.
25 It is far less expensive and far more effective to write good, useful
content and present it simply so it can be properly indexed.
26 Since search engines index every word on every page they find, the more
useful text you have at your site, the more likely your pages will be found by
people who are interested in them. This is a random game -- the more content
you have, the more dice you throw, so the more likely you'll win.
27 Focus on building content, not on trying to trick search engines.
28 Large pages are more valuable than short ones -- large in terms of text,
not graphics. Graphics are useless for search engines.
29 For maximum effectiveness, you need plain static HTML pages (not ASP
pages), without frames or tables or java applets.
30 The most important text should appear at the top of the page. In fact,
the first couple of lines of text should make sense as a description of the
page.
31 And the HTML title (not the file name, and not the headline that appears
on the page, but rather the title in the HTML header) should be carefully
written to mention everything that is important about the page, in very few
words. That title will appear in search engine results lists as the words that
are linked to your page. And words that appear in HTML titles are typically
given very high priority by search engines -- in other words if two pages match
a given query and one of those pages has the query words in the HTML title,
that is the page that will appear on top.
32 These static pages can have static graphic images (jpg or gif), if you
like. Such images will not help you with search engines, but won't hurt you
either -- so long as none of the text is embedded in images.
33 In some cases, a simple text-heavy design goes counter to the aesthetic
taste of the Web designers or management. More often, corporate branding rules
get in the way.
34 Even at Digital Equipment, the company that invented the pioneering
search engine AltaVista, corporate branding rules got in the way of making the
company's pages findable by search engines.
35 Typically, the branding folks come up with a "template" based
on what they have done in the past with their print brochures and without
realizing they are costing the company traffic and hence revenue with such
rules.
36 Branding rules, which are intended to present a consistent corporate
visual image to the world, were often created before the Web or by people who
had no real knowledge of how the Web works. Once in place, such rules can make
it very difficult to do what is necessary to use content to attract traffic to
a Web site by way of search engines. And bureaucracy often makes it very
difficult to change such rules once they are in place.
37 Basically, there are two parallel design goals when building a Web
site.
38 Design for the optimum user experience at the site, with a consistent
look-and-feel that follows corporate branding standards. 39 Design for optimum traffic and revenue growth by making your content
clearly visible to users of the major search engines. 40 Far too often, large companies put all their emphasis on the user
experience at the site and forget the search engines which are necessary for
getting people to the site in the first place.
41 Only people who find your site can appreciate the experience.
42 You need to take steps to draw more people to the site. But the design
that optimizes the user experience will probably get in the way of search
engines, and hence cost your traffic and business.
43 If you have no chance of converting the branding and marketing folks
from their current search-engine unfriendly site design, consider creating
mirror pages.
44 This approach keeps your current branded design in place, but you can
still take full advantage of your text content to attract more visitors and
hence generate more business.
45 Brand plays an important role on the Web -- for existing customers and
partners and for users who have found your site and want to navigate through it
for further information.
46 But to attract new prospects using search engines, you need to take a
different and parallel approach that emphasizes text.
47 Your mirror pages have the exact same text content as your standard
pages, but they are presented in static HTML, with meaningful HTML titles and
with the first couple lines of text written so they can serve as a description.
They have no metatags. They have a minimum of graphics.
48 If the standard pages are very tiny -- forcing the visitor to look at a
whole series of pages to read or print what is really a single document -- the
mirror pages will consolidate that text (serving at the same time a
"printer friendly" version).
49 Each of these pages has links to your main site, with an explanation
that people should go there for the optimum experience -- with all the graphics
and dynamic effects. But people who were looking for specific information and
found this mirror page by way of a search engine will be quite happy because
you have provided those people with exactly what they were looking for. There
are no links from mirror pages to other mirror pages, and no links from
standard pages to mirror pages.
50 Static HTML pages attract traffic by way of search engines and provide
new visitors with the information they want, very efficiently.
51 Also create a sitemap page that consists of a hyperlinked list of all
your mirror pages. You submit that sitemap page, not your home page to the
search engines.
52 Search engine crawlers follow a trail of links to "discover"
the content on the Web. If your pages today are not well represented in search
engines, chances are good that you are using a technique that either halts
crawlers (e.g., dynamic pages with question marks in the URLs) or that present
links to other pages at your site using a technique that makes those
links invisible to crawlers, such as dropdown menus. By sending a crawler
to a static HTML sitemap with links to every one of the search-engine-friendly
pages at your site, you make it easy for that crawler to find all of your
content.
53 Also, search engine crawlers typically stop after going several layers
deep into a site (following 2-3 links in succession). (Last I heard, Lycos only
went one layer deep). If you have a sitemap with links to every mirror page,
and if you submit that page, instead of your home page, to the major search
engines, you make it so every page at your site is just one layer deep.
54 Doorway pages are designed to fool search engines. Mirror pages are
designed to make it easy for search engines to find and index your real
content. The "key words" and "key phrases" that doorway
pages focus on are of no real value. Search engines index every single word of
every single page. And people who are looking for unique phrases that are
matched on you pages are the very best prospects. Your measure of success
should be in terms of leads and sales, not in terms of "high
rankings" for particular search words or hits or even visitors. People who
are fooled into going to one of your pages by a phony doorway page and who
don't see what they were looking for on the page they arrived at are worth
nothing to you.
55 To put it another way, some schools prepare their students to pass a
particular test; while others prepare them for success in the real world. Don't
mistake the measurement for the reality. Don't be impressed by the
"rankings" of competitors or by the "rankings" that search
engine optimization companies claim they can deliver. Focus on your real
business objectives. Don't try deceptive tricks. They backfire. Provide real
content in a form that can be well-indexed and that is also immediately useful
to your customers and prospects.
56 Your mirror pages have text and links to encourage visitors to go to
your standard site. If those standard pages provide real benefit and you
explain that benefit clearly, visitors should head there. Do not use automatic
redirects and other cloaking mechanisms that take visitors to a page they
didn't ask for That's "spam." Treat your visitors with respect, and
abide by the sensible rules of search engines.
57 People arriving at mirror pages from search engines immediately see what
they were looking for. Those arriving at doorway pages are automatically
redirected to other pages where they typically do not find what they are
looking for because the exact words of the query do not appear on the
destination page.
58 You want to target search engine users who are actually looking for the
content on your pages. The more pages you have with the full-text indexed, the
better your chances that those people with unique queries will find your pages.
59 Also, mirror pages reside on your site. Any traffic directed there by
search engines counts toward the popularity of your pages and site when those
search engines determine which pages should appear high on lists of matches.
60 Check www.jeremyjosephs.com That is the
site of freelance writer, Jeremy Josephs, in Montpelier, France. The standard
site looks professional, but got zero traffic.
61 Then check www.jeremyjosephs.com/sitemap.html That
will take you to his sitemap, with links to mirror pages for his site. Check a
few of the links to get to plain-text search-engine friendly versions of his
articles and books. By using this technique, he now gets over 1000
visitors/week.
62 Remember that your goal is not "maximum positioning" for your
pages with regard to particular keywords. Your goal is not just getting more
pages into search engine indexes. It's a question of traffic and new business.
63 Also, don't expect immediate results. It may take months before your new
mirror pages get into the search engine indexes. Search engines vary as to how
frequently they crawl and update their indexes, ranging from about a week with
AltaVista, to 6-8 weeks with many, and up to 3 months with some. And if you
trigger spam alarms with doorway pages and other tricks, it could take years to
untangle the mess.
64 For another example, check www.richardtosti.com,www.richardtosti.com/plain.html andwww.richardtosti.com/sitemap.html; also
www.medicalattys.com andwww.medicalattys.com/rep/ (not
really a sitemap, but a document that serves the same purpose). Also, compare
my home page www.samizdat.com and my
sitemap page www.samizdat.com/sitemap.html (the
ultimate big, ugly, search-engine friendly page).
65 There are no links from your full-blown pages to the mirror pages --
only links from the mirror pages back. Hence only people arriving by way of
search engines or by bookmarks/favorites are likely to ever find these pages.
But since the pages reside on your servers and provide your content directly,
issues of branding could still arise. These pages have a text-heavy look and
undoubtedly will not conform to your corporate branding rules.
66 You need to explain that these pages are not part of your site, rather
they are an add-on, intended to draw traffic, and that the corporate rules
should not apply here.
67 Think of search engine traffic like word-of-mouth referrals to your
company. You brand your brochures and your advertising. But you wouldn't
consider branding word-of-mouth marketing.
68 Instead of asking a friend, a Web user turns to a search engine and asks
-- "where can I get information about xyz and pdq?" The search engine
then provides a plain-text results list -- that includes no one's logos, no
one's branding. And when users click on links in such lists, they expect to go
straight to pages that have the kind of information they are looking for. This
is very different from calling up a sales person and asking to receive a
brochure or a spec sheet.
69 Explain the difference between optimizing the user experience and
optimizing search engine results. Try to find ways to work together to generate
new business for the company.
70 What if you can't convince management to allow you to create mirror
pages? Your pages are all dynamic with a ? in the URL, so crawlers come to a
halt whenever they come to one of your pages, not following any trail of links.
And your pages have no useful text is visible to search engine crawlers. Are
you totally dead in the water? Not necessarily.
71 In this worst case scenario,
72 Write useful informative HTML titles for each and every page (every
one different) 73 Write description and keyword Metatags for each and every page (every
one different, and without much repetition among HTML title, description
Metatag, and keyword metatag). 74 Create a sitemap page -- a static HTML page that ignores branding
rules: just a list of the HTML titles of all your pages with links (including
the ?) 75 If branding rules prevent you from posting this sitemap page on your
company's site, then post it anywhere else -- even on free Web hosting space.
76 Submit this sitemap page to the major search engines. They should
eventually check every page linked to from that sitemap page. They won't be
able to follow the links any further (the ? stopping them), but they should be
able to capture the HTML title and, in some cases, the metatags -- so you could
still end up with some information about all of your pages in the major search
engine indexes. 77 Each HTML title and metatag should be no longer than 255
characters.78 But don't lose sight of the fact that if you are forced to proceed this
way to help your company attract new prospects through search engines, your
company has serious management problems. Keep kicking and screaming in hopes
that eventually your message will be heard and the corporate rules change. And
meanwhile, be sure to update your resume and post it on the Web.