~~~Successful Online Writing~~~
From: Christopher James Morgan
Being new to all this, I am curious as to how I can get high rankings
on ANY search engines or directories with a mainly graphic site with
very little text?
Christopher
~~~Heather's Response~~~
Hi, Christopher,
There are two problems with having a graphics-heavy site with little
text:
1. The search engines don't have any keyword-rich text to spider, so
that hobbles your chances for a prime ranking.
2. Your prospects can't read any text describing who you are and what
you do. So, in fact, even if you *did* drive traffic to your site, a
graphics-heavy site may not convert your surfers into buyers.
You can read more about this in Rank Write Issue 014:
http://www.rankwrite.com/archives/issue014.htm
However, your email jogged my brain about another point:
Know that when you DO change your graphics to keyword-rich text,
you're married to that text for at least three months (which shouldn't
be a bad thing if you wrote your text right the first time.)
Remember, the search engines don't automatically "know" when you've
made your text changes and immediately hop into action. In fact, it
takes up to 12 weeks to start getting even *preliminary* results from
some engines. To pull specifically optimized text without giving it
the time it needs is like throwing money out the window. Once it's
gone - it's gone - and you're back at square zero with your rankings.
This may seem like a basic point, but we've seen companies pull their
keyword rich home page text down after two months or so and replace it
with lots of graphics and non-optimized text. It doesn't have
anything to do with the quality of the copy - the end client even
admits they love the optimized copy. Their reasoning is that they
wanted to take the home page "in a different direction" that they
"hadn't fleshed out before the optimization process." Of course,
their rankings never really got a chance - and what was slowly
building is now dipping into the basement. Sure, they can always go
back to the old keyword-rich text, but they'll have to wait for the
engines to re-index their site.
The lesson to learn with this is to figure out all those variables
BEFORE you start optimizing your site. If "finalizing your marketing
direction" delays your launch a month, then let it delay the launch.
It will be much less expensive and frustrating to get it right the
first time (even if you're doing it all yourself.) And, you won't have
to worry about losing ground with the search engines.
Thanks for your question! Keep those copywriting questions coming!
Heather
~~~Jill's unsolicited 2 cents~~~
How true! Just a quick note to mention that a site with a lot of
graphics can certainly make use of the image alt tag to compensate for
lack of text; however, not all search engines make use of this tag.
The alt tag is great for reiterating your important keywords, but is
no substitute for actual body text.
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!
