Clueless Web Designers and Search Engine Optimization
By Jill Whalen - June 08, 2001 (From the Rank Write Roundtable Newsletter)

~~~High Search Engine Rankings~~~

From: Laurie Cesario
Subject: Clueless Web Designers and SEO

Jill,

First, I have to say thank you for your fantastic newsletter! I am just starting out in all of this- first of all, because I'm interested in it, and secondly, because I've had to. While our outside web designers are good at graphics, they are clueless in SEO (they will now admit to this).

Back in February '01 we asked our outside web design firm to re-submit our home page after taking it out of frames (it's built in MS FrontPage) and changing our Meta Tag Keywords, as we were told these may be the reasons our rankings were so poor. Recently, I took your advice and typed in our URL on all the major search engines - the results were flat out SCARY and made me a little sick to my stomach! The title and description tags were ignored by our web designers. The results are full of terrible examples like this. In some cases our company name is even spelled wrong in the title! There are also listings of pages that we no longer even use, such as flash pages, etc. We also had zero text on our homepage (I'm currently in the process of adding some - thank you!).

So, my questions are:

1. After I fix all of these mistakes; Title tags, Description, etc., should I re-submit AGAIN? Or, is there a way to have the listings (such as above) CHANGED, as the URL is correct, the title and description are just crappy.

2. What should I do about all the wrong listings search engines have, i.e., links to pages that aren't active anymore?

3. Is it wise to submit individual pages (URL's) within our website to any of the search engines, or do you JUST submit the homepage URL and let the search engine hopefully crawl through and find all the pages?

4. In your recent newsletter, you mention that it is imperative to learn some basic HTML- what do you suggest for learning tools?

Thank you again for all of your newsletter advice! I only wish that I would have started learning about this sooner.

Sincerely,

Laurie Cesario
Industrial Magnetics, Inc.


~~~Jill's Response~~~

Laurie,

Sounds like you've got a long road ahead of you! Unfortunately, I'll bet there are hundreds of subscribers out there who can relate to your situation. Just because a company is great at Web site design, does not make them experts at search engine optimization. In fact, in many cases, just the opposite is true. Many design companies know just enough to be dangerous because they *think* they know what to do. ("You want to be in the search engines? No problem, let's just put in this Meta keyword tag and you'll be all set!") In fact, just because your site was in frames, doesn't mean that it couldn't be perfectly optimizable. (See my article, "Getting Framed Sites Listed With Search Engines".)

You can see what I mean by visiting some random Web design company's site. Click their "promotion" or "search engine registration" button. I'll betcha you'll see stuff about adding/changing Meta tags and probably nothing about doing anything to your content! You may not see any information about changing Title tags either. Doh! There's even a good chance you'll see that they'll submit your site to 500 trillion "search engines." Yeah...umm...that will do you a lot of good ! I kinda have to laugh at some of these, but for the clients who trust that their designer knows what he or she is talking about, it's no laughing matter. Heather and I have *fixed* many a site that had been "optimized" by these kinds of companies. In fact, not surprisingly, these clients are our most satisfied customers!

Thus said, let's take a look at your individual questions and see what we come up with.

1. After you fix things, should you resubmit?

As we've discussed before, if you make changes to your Title, Meta tags and copy, then yes, you should definitely resubmit. When we're done *fixing* sites, we always resubmit the reworked pages. I simply do not trust the engines to respider the new content in a timely manner, and really, why wait? I would strongly suggest that along with changing the Titles and Metas, you also change the visible text copy. I have a feeling that the copy on your pages is probably not up to par where the search engines are concerned. From my experience, it's rare to find a site whose content is naturally search engine friendly. In just about every case, a conscious effort must be made to ensure this happens.

2. What should you do about the wrong listings?

If the wrong listings point to dead URLs, eventually they will be removed from the search engines' databases. If you'd like to remove them more quickly, submit the offending URLs to the engines. This will usually do the trick. However, you may have some old pages that are doing okay in some engines, and these may actually be bringing some traffic to your site. In this case, be sure to have a 404-error page that either redirects people to the most appropriate page of your site, or one that simply IS the main page of your site. Your server techies should be able to quickly and easily set this up for you. An even better scenario would be to continue to use the old file names for your new pages.

3. Should you submit each page or let the search engine spiders find the inner pages?

We discussed this briefly way back in Rank Write Issue 014. Basically, like I said in number one above, why leave things to chance? I believe in submitting whatever pages need to be submitted. Don't submit them all at once, however. Use your own good judgment and give some time between submittals. With Google and Fast, you probably don't need to submit the inner pages, as both of these engines are good at spidering and crawling. Most of the other engines these days seem to have given up the ghost when it comes to getting on their hands and knees and really crawling through sites. They *may* eventually crawl through, but this can take six months or longer! This is a big reason why Google is so much better than the rest of the search engines, in my opinion. It finds obscure pages and adds them automatically. Look up any strange phrase on Google, and chances are you'll come up with some relevant pages. Try the same thing elsewhere and you'll see what I mean. Way to go, Google!

4. Resources for learning basic HTML.

Hmm...let's see. I learned HTML by viewing different Web sites' source code. (In your browser go to "View" then "Page Source.") Also, if you purchase an HTML editor such as HomeSite, you'll find a ton of helpful information on what all the codes mean and how to use them. There's also a great site that is actually written by a kid, for other kids to learn HTML. However, it's great for adults too, because things are explained in simple language. The site is called, "Lissa Explains it All". My 14-year-old daughter learned a lot from this site, and highly recommends it. Another great site with tons of information is Shirley Kaiser's "Web Site Tips". Shirley provides tutorials on just about everything, and also has gazillions of links to other great resources. Beware though...there's so much good info there that you might end up killing your whole day (or week!).

I hope these answers have been helpful to many of you. Keep those questions coming. Although I can't guarantee a personal response, I will often give one if I'm not all tied up. Also, because we now have just about a year's worth of archives, chances are good that your question has already been answered in a previous issue. Be sure to try out the search function on our site that is generously provided by AtomZ search. That search box is how Heather and I are able to reference our past issues so easily. We just search on the phrases from your questions, and bam, the relevant issue appears!

Jill

~~~Send Us Your Questions~~~

If you have questions about online copywriting or search engine optimization (or both!), just zip us an email to questions@rankwrite.com. We've had some folks ask if their question was "too basic" to be printed - and you don't have to worry about that! There are no "stupid" search engine optimization or copywriting questions, so ask away!