~~~Search Engine Optimization~~~
When building a new site from scratch, there are many considerations
to take into account to ensure that it's built in a way that's search
engine "spider friendly." Many cutting-edge design companies are
great at creating database-driven sites that are easy to maintain, and
that have useful features for the site's visitors. Unfortunately,
many of these "benefits" can make the site hard to find or even
invisible to the search engines.
I've been enlisted to do the SEO work for a company that's having a
new site designed. A software development company that specializes in
all sorts of fancy solutions for Web sites is designing the site.
I've been brought on board during the design phase to ensure that
search engine friendly pages would be built from the start. The
client assured me that they would be keeping the design fairly simple,
so I figured my job would be easy. However, when I checked out the
design company's Web site and portfolio of sites, I started to
wonder...
When I typed in the domain name of the design company's site in my
browser, I was redirected to a different directory on their site;
e.g., this www.designcompanydomain.com redirected to this
www.designcompanydomain.com/main/default.asp. This was accomplished
through a Meta refresh that looked like this:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0; URL=main/default.asp">
Uh-oh. This is just the kind of thing that search engines might
consider to be spam, due to the abuse of Meta refreshes by porn sites
and the like. (They serve up one page to the engines and then
redirect it to another page.) Of course, this design company had no
nefarious reasons for the refresh; it was just a way of enabling their
active server pages. However, seeing this got me concerned about the
techniques they were planning for my client's site. Once I talked
with the guys at the design company, I could tell that they were smart
cookies. They understood that SEO was a top priority for this client
and knew that it would probably be necessary to adjust their usual
design methods to ensure ease of spidering and high rankings.
To make sure things were designed correctly from the start, they asked
me to write up some guidelines. Once I wrote the guidelines, I
realized they might be of interest to anyone designing a site, so I'm
sharing them with you, our faithful Rank Write readers! It's
important to remember that these are all things that should be done
(or avoided) whenever possible. However, if any one of these criteria
can't be met, it doesn't necessarily mean death in the search engines,
it just may make things more difficult. The more SE friendly a site
is to begin with, the more chances for high rankings down the line.
One good way to check your design is to view it in a Lynx viewer. If
the links and body copy show up okay there, then it's likely that the
search engines will also easily index them. (You can view pages
through a Lynx viewer here.)
Here's my list of design elements to watch out for (in no particular
order):
* As mentioned above, the main page should be at www.domainname.com
and NOT redirected to a different directory. If it must redirect, it
should be at the server level. Be sure that the redirect doesn't show
up in the lynx browser. Generally, it's safer to avoid refreshes and
redirects all together. Redirects can also impact your directory
listings, because directory editors may want to use the redirected URL
as opposed to your root domain. If they do this, it can affect the
link popularity of your main page.
* Place JavaScript code like mouseovers, etc., in a separate .js file
in order to create less code for the search engine spiders to wade
through to get to the "meat." I've had many people ask me how to do
this, so I asked our Rank Write Web site designer, Shirley Kaiser, and
here's what she told me:
"Place all your JavaScript into a plain text file. Name the file
whatever you want, and use the .js file extension. You will NOT use
the tags <script language="JavaScript"
type="text/javascript"></script> with your external JavaScript file,
though.... just the JavaScript.
Link to the JavaScript from your web page like this:
<script language="JavaScript" src="filename.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>
With filename.js being the name of your JavaScript file. Like any
other link, make sure you use the correct directory path. The above is
if it's in the same directory as the web page."
* All optimized pages should be as close to the root directory as
possible, as pages closer to the root directory are often given more
weight with the engines; e.g., www.domainname.com/page1.htm as
opposed to www.domainname.com/directory/page1.htm. AltaVista mentions
this in their FAQ for Webmasters. Pages closer
to the root also seem to have higher PageRanks in Google. (This is
probably due more to the internal linking structure to those pages,
but it's something to consider.)
* When naming new file names, try to use the main keyphrase for that
page. This is one of those things that may or may not make a
difference to rankings, but it certainly won't hurt to do it. So if
a page is about widgets, name the page that the engines will see,
"widgets.htm."
Do the same thing when naming directories. If there are a bunch of
pages about widgets, they could all be placed in the "widget"
directory, then named accordingly, e.g., bluewidget.htm,
largewidget.htm, etc.
* Ideally, dynamic pages should not have equal signs or question marks
and other query strings in them. Query string pages are starting to
get indexed by most of the search engines, however, I don't feel
comfortable recommending their usage quite yet. If it's at all
possible for you not to use them...don't!
* All body text copy should be "real text," not a graphic of text,
wherever possible.
* Use the noscript tag for any dhtml menus. Also use plain text links
in addition to your dhtml menus, if possible. (These too can be named
using keyphrases when feasible.)
I purposely left out "Trashing the Flash," because we've beaten that
one to death in the past, and I know you all know this by heart!
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. If any of you have any
other design dos and don'ts that I've missed, please send them in.
Also, Shirley Kaiser's article, "Designing for the Search Engines and the Stars" expands
on some of these things, and has some great links to the work-arounds
for the dynamic URL query string "problem."
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!
