Is Your Web site Search Engine Friendly?

Is Your Web site Search Engine Friendly?

Many of the "old timers" in the wedding industry remember (perhaps somewhat fondly), that it wasn't that long ago that a website was a luxury...a novelty if you will. The arrival of the digital age was kind of a shock for many. Within the space of only 10 years the personal computer became an absolute necessity for most of us in the industry, from word processing to graphic design to scheduling and yes...the internet.

During that same time frame a major shift in the marketing paradigm took place...perhaps unequaled since the invention of the TV and radio in terms of it's impact. The internet has become a dominant force in marketing, and those without a website are getting left further and further behind.

Indeed, many companies who started with a simple, basic website are now looking at major overhauls or even complete redesigns.

Website design has come a long way in the last ten years or so, moving from a text based information resource to a graphic rich database driven environment where bells & whistles and the latest technology are being used by web designers to coax businesses into major redesigns of their existing websites for fear of being left behind again.

Unfortunately, what some of these designers fail to tell their clients is that in more than half of these major redesigns the web developer is actually HURTING the company's prospects of obtaining business via their website.. How you may ask? Well, without getting too technical, let's dive in and take a look.

Basics: What Is A Search Engine?

Google, Yahoo, and MSNSearch are all search engines. Stick a .com at the end of any of their names and you'll be taken to their websites. Google is currently far and away the most popular of all the search engines. In fact, it's become so popular that it's now used as a verb, as in "go and Google this term to find it's meaning".

A search engine is a website that uses what are called "spiders", little robots that automatically go out into the World Wide Web and follow links. As they visit a web page they "index" it, that is, they save every word they find on a page. This is critical...they index WORDS. Text...you know, those little combinations of letters that form words. (Yes...there are specialty search engines that look for graphics and even movies, but we're going to bypass them for the moment as they don't have a direct bearing on this discussion.)

Once they finish indexing a page they send the text back to their home server for storage. The words are stored in huge databases at the website. There are currently TRILLIONS of words stored, and well over 8 BILLION web pages indexed.

When a spider finishes with a page, it looks for a link to a new page and follows it. If it reaches a dead end, it goes back and finds another new link to follow, and so on. These spiders are actually the real "surfers" of the internet, as it is their job to do nothing but ride a sea of links from one site to another, indexing words to their heart's content.

Once a page on a website is indexed and added to the main database, it is ready for searching. When a bride-to-be types "wedding photography" into the search engine, she is presented with several hundred thousand web sites that have that particular term listed. Most likely she will then refine her search by trying again with "wedding photographers Maryland", or something along those lines. If a site has all three of these terms listed, these sites will be displayed.

The order in which the results are displayed is critical to the success of failure of a website. The higher the placement the more likely it is the bride will actually click the link to YOUR page. The process of obtaining higher ranking is called "Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and is a whole new topic that can be covered at another time, but you do need to be aware of the need for good optimization.

So What Does "Search Engine Friendly" Mean?

Let's use a common mistake make by thousands of website designers.

Many people want the company's name and perhaps their mission statement to really pop out at the visitor...

Joe's Wedding Photography - Fabulous Photos at Affordable Rates!!!

In order to make this "pop", many designers create a graphic image using fancy fonts and graphic images, and place that at or near the top of the page. So, while the visitor to the site sees a really cool image heralding Joe's Photography, do you know what the search engine finds? It finds a file called "image1.jpg", or some other indistinguishable filename such as that.

Remember what search engine spiders are looking for? That's right...TEXT! If the graphic is the only time on the page that "Joe's Wedding Photography" is mentioned, it means that the spider will never find the actual NAME of the company, let alone the great search term "wedding photography". In other words, in converting the company name to a pleasing, eye popping graphic, it means the search engine won't even index the company name, so if someone searched for "Joe's Wedding Photography", they probably won't find you.

Spiders don't read the text in a graphic image. Joe might just as well had the phrase "Bulldozers "R" Us" on the image...the spider still doesn't know what it says.

Links Links Links

Remember how that spider works? It reads a page then follows a link from that page to another. For this reason you should have links to every other page on your site accessible from your home page. How else is the spider going to index ALL of your pages?

Remember, when people search, they might not be brought into your home page. Depending on the text they searched for, they might be brought into an internal page, say the "About Us" page. You need to get the spider to find all of your pages.

To help establish high relevancy on your link it is generally preferable to make it a text link containing specific keywords, such as "Wedding Information", rather than a graphic image that takes you to a new page.

By far the worst option, one favored by many bells & whistles designers, is to have a fancy script that may do all kinds of really interesting things visually when you move your mouse over it or when you actually click on it. Unfortunately, in most cases the spider can't read these scripts and won't be able to follow the link, thus, your internal page doesn't get indexed.

Use A Site Map

Perhaps you've seen links to a site map on some web pages. These sitemaps are seldom for human visitors to your site, although they can be helpful. However, by far they are used mostly to provide the spiders a roadmap to all of the pages on your site. They find the site map off your home page, and from the site map they can follow links to every other page on your website.

If you don't have one, get one. It is easy to do, and the benefits are significant.

Beware of Flash Presentations

Have you ever visited a site's homepage, and the first thing that happens is you get a message that says "please wait...loading"?

Most likely this is a site that uses a web development language called "Flash". It is made by a company called Macromedia, and web designers are herding to it in droves, enthralled by the really cool graphical displays it is capable of.

There is no doubt that Flash is a really cool program, and the effects you can get for your site can be stunning.

However, Flash has almost single-handedly killed more sites search engine rankings than any other web modification.

This is because since Flash is basically a graphical program, the spiders cannot read the page. ALL of the information stored on a page written completely with Flash is hidden from the spiders. One much leap tall buildings in a single bound to get search engines to find the actual text, and it's something most web developers don't bother with.

Also, since Flash is so graphics intensive, people using a dial-up internet connection must usually sit and wait minutes for the page to load. Remember that more than half the country still uses a dial up connection to access the net. Yes, they may have a high speed connection at the office, but when they get home it's back to old fashioned dial-up.

A great many of these visitors are going to leave before the page finishes loading. In other words, you've lost the sale before you even had a chance to pitch it.

If you are absolutely enamored with Flash and simply must use it, offer your visitors to your home page an IMMEDIATE opportunity to view a standard HTML page as well. It means double the work, but it also means more sales, and isn't that what your site is all about?

A quick qualifier - Some designers use Flash to animate portions of a web page, such as a photo viewer or a business reply form. Since there is no text to begin with that is critical for the search engines to index, limited use of Flash for purposes such as these are perfectly justified and won't cause you any trouble.

Getting Started On A Search Engine - Your First Listing

It is clearly better to update an existing website than to create an all new one. Search engines like sites that have been around for a long time, and all other things being equal the site with the longest track record generally ranks higher.

Don't worry...search engine spiders revisit sites on a regular basis to watch for updates to the site. In fact, search engines LIKE sites that update their content regularly.

However, let's say you've got a new site, and you want Google, Yahoo, and the others to find it, or perhaps the existing engines haven't found you yet. What do you do now?

There are literally hundreds of search engines out there, but according to the Nielsen ratings 80% of all search is done from the top three, Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Indeed, the fourth place finisher AOLSearch is actually powered by Google, so if you're in Google you're also in AOL. Most of the other search engines are similar in that they use results based on one of the other three company's engines.

So...how do you get the big three to find you? Well, the most common answer is...nothing. Remember that part about spiders following links? If you have links from other websites pointing at your site, the odds are they will find you. Indeed, this is the preferred way of getting listed. You are more likely to receive a decent ranking if you allow the search engines to come to you, rather than the other way around.

However, if time is pressing, or if you don't have any sites pointing to you, you can submit to the engines. Each site has a link from their homepage to their submission page, where you give them your information. It is best to be prepared in advance with a short description of your company. Use as many words as they allow, but don't go over. Strategically placed keywords will help with your submission, but be careful not to overdo it. If you submit a description with repeated or unintelligible keyword phrases you risk getting banned from a search engine.

It is for this reason that I highly recommend that you stay away from automated submission software! This software goes out and in a shotgun blast of information sends information to hundreds of engines and directories. Unfortunately more than half of these submissions will fail, and many more engines will ban you for incorrectly using their submission process.

Submit carefully to one site at a time and you'll be rewarded by higher rankings and faster acceptance.

Conclusion

I guess the simplest question to ask is, "What use is it to have the neatest, slickest, baddest website on the net if nobody can find it? Sure, you can hope that you'll receive traffic from sites where you advertise, and of course your web address IS on your business card and stationary...right?

But, as we've seen more and more at the AWP focus group meetings, brides and grooms are increasingly using search engines to find their vendors. While it is definitely beneficial to have listings on other sites, having a good strong search engine friendly website is likely to drive far more visitors to your site, and more visitors mean more bookings, and that's something we're ALL looking for.