~~~Search Engine Optimization~~~
Many of you who filled out our survey and have emailed us over the
past few months have requested some real life examples and search
engine optimization case studies. You ask, and we deliver! Today
we're beginning a case study on my sister's company site, Nobscot Corporation. Nobscot is a company that has
put together an online exit interview system, which enables other
companies to find out the reasons why exiting employees decided to
leave the company. Companies use the information in these exit
interviews to help reduce future employee turnover by learning what
they may have done wrong, and/or why the exiting employees were
unhappy.
The site is actually doing well in Yahoo for the keyphrase "exit
interview," (thanks to the directory submission I helped her with many
months ago). It's also doing fairly well in many of the spidering
search engines. However, she just can't seem to get a high ranking in
Google for that phrase, only related phrases such as "online exit
interviews" (which doesn't bring in as many visitors). This site
makes a nice case study, because judging by the types of questions we
receive, it's at a point that's similar to many of our subscriber's
sites. That is, it's utilizing the main keyphrase a number of times
in the text. Plus, it's got Titles and Meta tags that utilize the
targeted keyphrases, and is doing okay in most of the engines.
However, there are certainly some changes that could improve the
rankings even more, and hopefully we can think of some things to help
it do better in Google.
I'll be focusing on what can be done to improve rankings in the
spidering search engines for the keyphrases, "exit interview" and
"exit interviews." Secondly, I'll be focusing on the keyphrase
"employee retention," as that's the other main one they'd like to
target. Please note that when I discuss the copy today, I'm strictly
discussing it in terms of how it will or will not help get high
rankings in the search engines. In a future issue of Rank Write,
Heather will get down and dirty with the copy and make some
suggestions as to how it might also convert all those new visitors
into buyers.
So, let's get to it!
When looking at the source code, I notice that there's a lot of
Javascript and the mouseover navigation menu taking up a lot of room.
I would move these to external files, and call them up with server
side includes, which will pull all the other goodies up closer to the
top. I feel that search engines are pretty good at ignoring all that
extraneous code, but it never hurts to remove it, just in case. Many
SEO experts swear by it. There's lots of information and resources at
WebSiteTips.com that explain how to do this.
When looking at the visible page, I notice the main text heading (in
red) is not utilizing any of the keyphrases for this site. Currently
the heading is being used to thank people who visited Nobscot's booth
at a Baltimore conference. A nice sentiment, but engines like Google
rightly believe that the first lines of text, especially headline
text, are relevant to what the page is all about. Therefore, Google
may be thinking that the actual keyphrases for this site are things
like "HR technology" or even "Baltimore, Maryland." If it's important
to thank the people, that's okay, however, this text should be placed
somewhere else on the page. It could even be turned into a graphic
that the search engines wouldn't be able to read. Once this text is
moved, I suggest utilizing the vacant spot for a quick sentence, which
uses the main keyphrases and also sums up what the page is all about.
One quick (lazy!) idea would be to start with the description that
Yahoo is using, and edit it to better suit your needs. Put this
sentence in H tags, such as H1 or H2.
The rest of the copy is utilizing the keyphrase "exit interview(s)"
seven times, which is a decent amount, in my opinion. This explains
why this site is doing fairly well in most of the engines for this
term. However, the keyphrase "employee retention" is not in the body
copy at all. If this is going to be a targeted keyphrase, it must be
worked into the copy a number of times. I'm sure Heather will have
some things to say about this once she gets into it.
The Title tag currently on the site is a huge string of keyphrases,
with the company name appearing first:
<title>Nobscot Corporation: Online Interviews for Recruiting and
Retention, exit interview, employee retention, teacher retention, exit
interviews, reduce turnover, student retention, student surveys,
recruiting interviews, online interviews, online applicant screening,
self service interviews, job posting interviews</title>
Something like that may be fine for the Meta keyword tag, but it's not
appropriate for a Title tag. Search engines only show from 60 to 150
characters, so it's a good idea to keep this tag within those limits.
The company name can be removed or moved to the very end of the tag.
The first words in this tag are thought to be given the most weight,
therefore, I wouldn't *waste* them with a company name. I would also
remove most of the keyphrases that are currently listed, leaving only
the ones we're optimizing for, exit interviews and employee retention.
The title tag absolutely has to be focused. I'm thinking something
like this:
<title>Exit Interviews - employee retention - online exit
interview</title>
Personally, I don't like to use commas in my Title tag and would take
them out. I would only put the employee retention phrase in there if
it's also been added to the copy. Otherwise, I would shoot for a
phrase that's naturally appearing on the site, such as "employee
turnover." (See my article, "All About Title Tags" for more info.)
The current Meta description, also appears to be simply a list of
keyphrases:
<meta name="description" content="WebExit, exit interview, employee
retention, teacher retention, exit interviews, reduce turnover,
student retention, student surveys, recruiting interviews, Work life
balance, Workplace Diversity, glass ceiling, the glass ceiling, online
interviews, online applicant screening, self service interviews, job
posting interviews, Nobscot Corporation: Online Interviews for
Recruiting and Retention, Web based interviews">
This tag should also not be a list of every keyphrase under the sun,
but one or two well-written sentences that describe this particular
page of the site and also utilize your keyphrases. In many engines,
the information in this tag is what shows up under your Title, so it
helps if the information in it is enticing to the user. Please note
that Google does not appear to bother with Meta descriptions at all.
Google takes a snippet of text from your site that best meets the
user's search query, and shows that under the clickable link in the
search engine results page.
Off the top of my head (and using the current copy from the site), I'm
thinking something like:
<meta name="description" content="Nobscot's online exit interviews
streamline your exit interview process to improve employee retention
and reduce employee turnover.">
This uses your important keyphrases for those engines that place some
weight on this tag (most notably HotBot), and also explains succinctly
what this page of the site is all about. In fact, something like this
may work for the headline I discussed above. (For more info on the
description tag, see my article.)
The Meta keyword tag on this page appears to be the same as the
current Meta description. As far as keyword tags go, this one is
okay. I personally don't worry about this tag any more, as I have
found it to have minimal to no benefit with most search engines.
Leaving this one as is shouldn't hurt the site, so I wouldn't put much
time and effort worrying about it. (For more info on the
keyword tag, see my article.)
Looks like I'm running out of space and time for today, so I'm going
to have to leave you hanging for any other changes we might want to
make. The stuff I've listed above are some of the basics that should
be worked out before we get into the nitty-gritty. I have some other
ideas on the internal linking structure, as well as getting this site
some external links to build link popularity and Google PageRank, but
we'll talk about those another time. Once Beth makes these changes
and any future changes, we'll keep checking the engines to see what
happens.
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!
