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Newsletter - December 2006

A Look Ahead to 2007

Greetings from Sue and Jim! Since it is December, we thought we would look ahead to 2007 and let you know where your company will benefit the most from your web site.

Search engines are constantly refining the algorithms they use to display web sites so the most relevant sites with the most current content appear first. Many things change in search engine algorithms, but the basics always stay the same.

THE BASICS:

  • Think of your web site as a sales tool, working around the clock for you, all over the world. Every page of your site is an "entry point" or landing page. Optimize every page of your site for the target and purpose it has.
  • Continue to get pertinent links to your site. Links to your site are references from other sites. This will not change in 2007, and the quality of these inbound links matters more than the quantity. For this reason, be very careful about link exchanges, and carefully evaluate the other sites you link to. Make sure it is a site you want your visitors to see! If you want to target a local site, try to get local links! If you reach the top three sites in "Google Local", your site will automatically also appear on the first page on a standard Google search for the local keyword.
  • Focus on great content that is unique and current. Web sites with good content are popular with both search engines and searchers. One of the things search engine algorithms are changing in 2007 is their search for new content. They are searching the last updates to pages, the copyright on the site, and the date the pages were uploaded. Creating a site that gets top rankings is not easy and doesn't happen over night. You must continually add great content for high rankings. If your site sells products, make up your own description for each product so that you have unique content.
  • Keep your pages simple, clean, and targeted. It is tempting to heap loads of information on a page because you fear that people will not delve deeply into your site, and it is tempting to create fancy graphics for a nice visual affect. The truth is that most successful sites on the web have a simple and clean design.
  • Have lots of internal links to make it easy for search engines to crawl your site. Your site will have a better chance of registering its own pages as back links
  • Make sure you have a site map and an XML sitemap that includes a link to every page on your site. If you can, link to every single page from each page within your web site.

TECHNICAL ITEMS:

  • Never use 302 Redirects. If you make a change to the URL of one of your pages on your site, use a server-side 301 permanent redirect. This way search engines will know it is legitimate and will index the page.
  • Use Javascript sparingly and within include files. Do not use javascript menus. Use Cascading Style Sheets. AJAX enabled web sites might suffer because of their heavy use of javascript. Put your javascript and CSS into include files rather than imbedding it in the top of each page because search engines give more weight to content at the top of the page. By removing CSS or javascript content and putting it into an external file, you place your content closer to the page top.
  • Session IDs can not be indexed, so get rid of them. If you have a forum or dynamic site that used session Ids, modify it to prevent at least the main search engine robots from seeing the session Ids. For that matter, avoid Flash and Frames-based web site design.
  • Register your domain for several years because it will help protect your brand, and because Google will think you are serious and increase your page rank.

NEW THINGS TO CONSIDER

  • Start a Blog and write about your products and services. Blogs are a search engine favorite. Google owns Blogger.com - a free blog site. Sign up and start blogging today!
    • Have a list of popular search keywords or phrases, put these on each page of your blog and link to the search results (assuming your blog has a search function)
    • Setup tags and/or categories and classify your blog entries - make sure the tag list and categories show up on every page like a navigation bar.
    • Create a "related articles" blurb for each article - most blogs will either support this feature or have a plug-in to support it
    • Link your blog and web site together
  • Consider adding video and promoting on You Tube or Yahoo Video.
  • Use images and name them wisely. Check your web stats to see if visitors are finding you by searching Google images.