Web sites must be designed for users and search engines

According to a 2005 study by Oneupweb, only 13 percent of Fortune 100 companies had Web sites that were well-optimized for search engines. While that figure has certainly grown since 2005, it still points out that even companies with significant marketing budgets haven’t made the investment of time and effort into optimizing their sites. Certainly most of our companies are not part of the Fortune 100, nor do we have the name and brand recognition that they enjoy, but solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies are still vital to online success. In addition to SEO basics, companies need to embrace the ABCs: accessibility, breadth of content, and commitment.

ACCESSIBILITY

Not only do Web sites need to be well-designed for users, but they need to be accessible to the search engines. Web sites that are built with dated design methods and do not employ even the most basic SEO techniques will be relegated to no man’s land — never to be found by the search engines.

CSS & TABLE-LESS DESIGN

Web designers are increasingly using cascading style sheets (CSS) for their Web sites over their table-based template predecessor. CSS uses much less html code so search engines can "spider" your site quickly and easily differentiate content from code, which helps to ensure the site gets indexed accurately.

SITEMAPS

A sitemap of your Web site provides the search engines with valuable information about your site, the pages included, their relative importance, the frequency of change, and when they were last updated. A sitemap standard has been developed (see sitemaps.org) and is supported by Google, Yahoo and MSN.

METADATA – TITLES, DESCRIPTIONS AND KEYWORDS

Web site metadata is simply information that sits behind the page in the html code and contains information about that specific page, mainly the title, page description, and the deywords for the page. Some search engines take this information into account when determining the relevancy to a search term or phrase and where to display it in the search engine results. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that title and description metadata contain the keywords/phrases for that unique page and be readable for the user.

BREADTH OF CONTENT

Content is king, and the presence of quality content, or lack thereof, will greatly impact your SEO effort. Don’t overlook your About Us, FAQ and Contact pages, as they often rank highly as search engines consider them important sources of relevant information for visitors. Also, every Web site should have some form of media center to share information with visitors, including white papers, company press releases, and relevant outbound links related to your industry. To the extent you can, include product and consumer reviews of your products and services as these will often be important to others looking to buy and will often contain keyword-rich content that is valuable to search engines. One last note on content – keep it current and update it frequently!

COMMITMENT

Ongoing commitment is the single most important aspect of any SEO strategy – the commitment to develop a site that is accessible, to develop keyword-rich content that’s kept current, to offer innovative products and services, and to test your SEO strategy to determine if it’s working and to make changes. Effective SEO and high ranking pages does not happen by accident. Take the time to learn what it takes and make the commitment to make it happen. n