maine web development, web design, internet marketing

It’s that time of the day (or week) that you’ve set aside in your busy schedule to compose your next blog post.  After exhausting all possible excuses and finding other things to do, the time to write has come.  You’ve racked your brain.  You’ve been keeping up with other blogs and news articles in your industry.  But alas, you are utterly stumped and don’t know what to write about.

Enter WordTracker’s Keyword Questions tool.

Get Some Ideas for Your Post

I have to say, I love using this tool because it is so easy!  All you have to do is pop in a word (try some different words related to your business) and it gives you a list of questions that have been searched for involving that word.  I used the word “SEO” (I know, go figure!):

Now I have a whole list of questions that people have typed into search engines to find an answer.  My next blog post could be “How Does SEO Work?”, since this is something that people clearly want to know about and I can provide an answer (most likely ad nauseam).

You can apply this same strategy to your own blog, whether your business is crm software, wedding dresses, jewelry, PR…you get the point.  When you know which topics people are looking for related to what you do, you can provide a well-written answer and further position yourself as an expert in your field.

Get Some SEO Benefit

You already know that a blog can help your SEO efforts by consistently adding fresh content to your site (which search engines like), as well as reinforce your website’s keyword targets if you include them in your posts.  Since you’re tapping into questions that were typed into search engines, having a blog post title with that question can boost your ability to be found in a search when that question is typed in.

A search for “What does a search engine see?“, a post I wrote last month, puts me on the first page of Google:

Don’t Forget the Search Engine Suggest Feature

I’ve spoken in the past about getting ideas from what the search engine box suggests to you when typing in a search.  These suggestions are based on queries that have already been typed in, so these can also be valuable content ideas.  I stumbled across this great tool called Soovle, which aggregates all of the search box suggestions from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, and Answers.com in one place, using one single search box.  I highly recommend using this tool as a topic-generator as well.

Do you have any surefire methods to cure the I-Don’t-Know-What-To-Write-About Blues?  I’d love to hear them!

I like to imagine that search engine spiders are funny little cartoon characters that surf the internet and check out all the web pages it has to offer.  It’s fun for me to daydream scenarios of the spiders saying things like “Oh, is this an entire website developed in Flash?  On to the next one!”  You do this, too, right? Well, even if I’m the only weirdo imaginative one out there who does this, I’m okay with it – I’m an organic search nerd.  But my strange musings do actually lead to a legitimate question: What does a search engine see when it crawls my site?

Human Vs. Spider

Since we can’t actually turn ourselves into the cartoon search engine spiders of my imagination, luckily there are some kind (and smart!)  souls out there who have developed tools to simulate what a spider sees when it gets to your site.  Let’s take the Hall site for example:

If you’ve been to our homepage, you’ll recognize that this is a snippet of what you see when you get there.  We try our best to make our site both pleasing to our visitors’ eyes as well as informational.  But as you have probably guessed, this is not the way a search engine sees it.

Using a fun tool like SEO-browser*, you get a clearer picture of how the spiders (or bots) see the Hall Web Services site:

Wow, that looks drastically different than what we humans see when we get there!  The only things showing are our text and text-based links.

Text is Still Important

Of course we want to make our websites look attractive and engaging when our visitors come to them, but it’s important to note that search engines really don’t “see” those design elements the way that we can.  At this time, search engines still work best with text in determining what a web page is about.  If the Hall website was built entirely in flash, or the homepage only consisted of images, the tool would reveal that the search engine would see very little about our page.  Without the text, we would not be giving our website the best possible chance to be found in the search engines for our keywords.

When adding content to your site, whether it’s in the form of videos, demos, whitepapers, etc., don’t forget to also have text on the web pages with your keywords in them.  Roughly 200 words of copy is a decent baseline to shoot for with each of your important marketable pages.  Finding the right balance of aesthetics, features, and targeted text will go very far with both your site visitors and search engines.

*SEO-browser is a third-party tool that has no affiliation with Hall Web Services.  We do not endorse this tool and cannot vouch for its accuracy.

Last night I attended a great presentation and discussion called “Search Engine Optimization for Drupal Sites” at TechMaine. Much of what we talked about revolved around website elements that are important for SEO. The CMS tool we used to discuss implementations of SEO solutions was Drupal, but any other CMS or static site would also benefit from an SEO upgrade. When choosing a CMS for your site or evaluating your current system, keep the following “CMS SEO Friendly” checklist handy.

1. Allows Editing of Meta Information
It is important for SEO that each page on your site has a unique title and description. The title is what appears at the top of your browser window and should be a brief and targeted statement about the subject of your page. The meta description is not visible to users on the page, but is used as the brief summary that appears on the search results page.

Both the title and description should include keywords that you have selected for your website. Make sure your CMS gives you the ability to edit these on each individual page so that you can customize them and make sure there are no duplicates.

2. Has Friendly URLs for Content
Often when a CMS is installed the urls will have page id numbers and other system information in them. The ability to have useful urls that reflect page content is a must. Some CMSs allow you to specify what you want in each page url while others automatically use the article name. For example hallme.com/my-great-article is much better than hallme.com/articles.php?id=6054. Just make sure it is informative for both users and search engines.

3. Only One H1 Tag Per Page
The H1 tag is the header that appears in the page content as the title. It is important to have an informative and keyword rich header because this tells visitors what they are about to read and is also one of the first things that spiders crawl on your website. Some CMSs allow for multiple h1 tags or will automatically put the tag around your logo in the header. Others do not use h1 tags at all! You may need to configure your template so that it uses one h1 tag and then uses other tags (h2, h3, etc.) for the rest of the headers.

4. Ability to Edit Page Content
This should be an easy one to check off because if a CMS does not allow you to edit your content then it is really not a CMS. I have included this though because of how important it is to make sure that you use your CMS to create quality content using keywords.

Before even beginning development on your website you should be thinking about what keywords will be used throughout your site. Think about your target audience and what people will be typing in to search engines to find your content. Base your content on those keywords so that visitors see that you have what they want and stay on your site.

Last night the presenter told us that you do not want “false traffic” because you will have a higher bounce rate, so make sure your content is relevant. If you change your web strategy at any time, make sure to go in and edit page content so that it continues to reflect your keywords and calls to action.

5. Easy Site Map Generation
There are two types of site maps; an xml site map that is generated for Google and a site map that is a page on your website with links to all of your content. It is important to have an xml site map submitted to Google so that it is easier for robots to crawl your site. There are programs to create these for you and some CMSs include modules to create xml site maps, which can be handy. Having a visible site map on your website is also important so that users can find information quickly. It can be a pain to update the site map every time a new page is added so try to find a module for your CMS that automatically creates a site map.

6. Access to 301 Redirects
Use 301 redirects on your site to point any old urls to new pages on your site if you are doing a redevelopment. These are also used to point a www domain to a non-www domain or vice-versa. For example www.hallme.com and hallme.com both go to the same page, but if you look up in the url you will notice that the www is always there, even if you typed in the latter. It doesn’t matter which one you use, as long as you pick one and make sure that people can type in both to get to your page. Some CMSs allow you to make that redirect in the system while with others you have to use a .htaccess file. Find out what your CMS does and make sure you are comfortable with it.

How Does Your CMS Rate?

If you were able to check off each point for your CMS then you are doing great! If not, you may not have to dump your CMS, but you should do some research to find out how to apply these important elements. Just remember if your urls, headers, content, and site usability are good for the people who visit you website, then it is good for SEO!

As I’ve said in the past, I think that every website can benefit from search engine optimization.  Employing keywords in the important on-page SEO elements, making sure that the site’s code is clean and lean so search engines can better crawl it, rewriting URLs so they are static and include keywords – the list goes on.  It’s all about giving your website the best possible chance to be seen in a search related to your business, as well as making it as hospitable as possible to those cute ‘lil search engine bots.

Once you’ve optimized your site, you’re done, right?  Shouldn’t you start getting a deluge of emails and calls?  In a perfect world, SEO would be all that you need to have customers banging down your door.  The reality is that a website needs to be approached holistically.  In addition to SEO, your site needs to function properly (solid website development), be appealing to visitors (pleasing website design), be updated frequently with information (content building), and make it clear to visitors what you want them to do (user conversion).  Don’t forget about social media networking and maybe even PPC.

I know this is a lot to digest, so let’s explore a few of these elements a little further.

Solid Website Development

This may sound obvious, but your website needs to work.  First and foremost, it should load quickly.  People are impatient and if your web pages are slow, visitors are very likely to leave – quickly. Google also just started using this as a minor ranking signal which means that slower pages may not rank as high as they could in search engine results.  Speed is key.

Don’t forget that search engines check out sites “under the hood” so to speak.  They crawl through the code of websites to read the text and link to other pages.  Things like nested tables (instead of using CSS), javascript navigation, flash splash pages, or only using images on the pages makes it very difficult for the search engine bots to get through your site and figure out what it’s all about.  Make sure you site’s code is as lean as it possibly can be without a lot of superfluous “stuff”.

Build That Content

People are searching the web for information.  How much does your website have?  Are you offering case studies, whitepapers, demos, videos, a blog, testimonials, etc?  Why not?  Your website is a living and breathing entity and it needs to be constantly nurtured.  The best way to show your website visitors that you are invested in your web presence is by keeping it updated and building content.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t stick around on sites too long that look like they haven’t been updated in awhile.  I imagine that you get a variety of questions from your customers about your products and services; this is a great starting point to building content.  If someone is asking a question, there are bound to be others who have the same questions.  Start adding the answers to your website.

A blog is a great (and easy!) way to add content to your site on a consistent basis.  It also gives you the opportunity to position yourself as an expert in your industry.   Blogs can be very powerful.

User Conversion

The bottom line of every website is to get your visitors to engage.  This could be through submitting a contact form, downloading a PDF, signing up for an email newsletter, reserving a spot in a training workshop, or simply buying a product.  What do you want people to do once they are on your website?  If you’re not sure, it’s imperative for you to come up with a strategy for any of the aforementioned engagement techniques (and there are many others that I didn’t mention).  Then you have to make it easy for your visitors and spell it out for them.  One way of doing this is to have “call to action” elements marked very clearly throughout your site.  Graphics that say “Contact Us” or “Download our Free eBook” made to stand out and be seen above the fold are strategies to let people know that these are the desired actions.

SEO is not a Magic Bullet

SEO is an imperative part of Internet Marketing, but it cannot exist alone in a vacuum.  There are many different pieces of the puzzle that need to be considered when using your website to drive your business’ bottom line.  The effort of optimization is largely in vain if people get to your site and then leave because they didn’t get what they wanted from it and you were not able to engage them.  It’s time to look at your website as a whole and pinpoint opportunities for improvement to finally get those leads you’ve been looking for.