Can Search Engines Find Your Site?

Caro Consulting Newsletter, Volume 2 Issue 1

When designing (or redesigning) a web site, just about everyone carefully considers their target audience in crafting their content and message. But many companies fail to consider another audience-search engines. Studies show that 84% of people find new web sites via search engines, so this is definitely an audience you'll want to take into account. Get your site into the search engines' databases and ranked well, and they'll drive an untold number of warm prospects right to your site.

Often, right after a new site is launched, the company then asks their site developer to register the site with search engines. That's good, but it doesn't always do the trick. Unfortunately, search engines aren't as sophisticated as we'd like them to be. There are many techniques used by web sites today that the engines can't understand. The decisions companies make during the site development process will ultimately affect how "search engine-friendly" that site is-how easily it will be found in the search engines and how much traffic the engines will drive.

Optimizing a site for search engines is complex, but it starts with designing a site that the search engines can access and understand. Here's a checklist of the things you'll want to keep in mind.

1. Architecture: When sketching out the site's architecture, be sure to keep key pages just one or two clicks away from the home page-don't bury them too deeply.
2. URLs/File Structure: Along the same lines, keep your URLs short and sweet. Search engines often don't go beyond the second "slash" after the domain name, so don't put important content any deeper than www.sitename.com/products/productname.html. And this may sound obvious, but place the home page at www.sitename.com, not www.sitename.com/home.html or any other deeper place. Search engines give a boost to pages they recognize as true home pages, at the root level.
3. Technologies: Just say no to Flash splash screens, frames, and dynamic content (web pages generated from a database). For the most part, these techniques are unfriendly to search engines. There are some workarounds, particularly for the dynamic content issue, but if you can keep it simple and get the best search engine rankings possible, why not do so?
4. Links: Ensure that there are text links pointing to every page on your site. Search engines usually can't follow graphic navigational buttons or other fancy links. So if there's not a text link somewhere that points to a particular page, that page won't be found. Your best bet is to take the graphic navigation at the top or left side of the page, and duplicate it at the bottom in the format of text links.
5. Page Text: Search engines can essentially only read HTML text. So you'll want the copy on your pages-including the home page-to be in HTML format rather than graphic format. If, while in your browser, you can highlight page copy with your mouse and copy and paste it into Word, it's HTML and the search engines will be able to read it. Be sure to work search terms-words and phrases your target audience may type into a search engine to find you-into this HTML text. Ideally, spread your list of targeted search terms across your site, working just one or two different ones into each page. (Be sure to use the same search terms in your title tags too-they appear at the top of your browser window in the blue bar.)
6. Site Map: Site maps are great for human visitors, and search engines love them too. This is a great place to put text links pointing to every page on your site in order to ensure they're all found.

Whether you decide to optimize your web site during the development process yourself, or you decide a year down the road to hire professional help, following these guidelines will ensure that your site is as search engine-friendly as possible. If done right, get ready to watch your site traffic increase dramatically-along with your leads and sales.