by Mike Banks Valentine
Small business webmasters often believe search engine optimization
is a complex and mysterious art that they must struggle to understand
and master. It couldn't be further from the truth. SEO is basic
and simple - TEXT.
As a search engine optimizer, I'm faced daily with the errors
of well-meaning webmasters who have unknowingly done their best
to hide their site and its topic from the search engines. They
do this by naming image files with numbers or word fragments unrelated
to the image. They have splash page with an image named "product.gif"
containing no "Alt" tags, no text and a link to their
inside page named "intro.html" which is full of images!
Even if you use the most basic of web authoring software, SEO
can be built in to your site simply by naming your HTML files
with important keyword phrases, naming the image directory with
more important keyword phrases dropping those same keyword phrases
into headlines and body text. Oh, and let's do have body text
of at least 500 words. Many site owners seem to believe that a
few product photos and a nice looking logo will suffice.
Wrong. You must have text using keyword phrases within your
site or the search engines have no way of knowing what those products
or services are that you sell.
Text is all that the search engines have to determine what your
site is about. Text in your metatags, text in your headline, text
in your body copy, text in image filenames and text in your domain
name and directory names. SEO is all about words on the page NOT
images of words in gorgeous graphics created by your designer
and displayed in IMAGES of words in fancy fonts. This includes
those menu links from image maps and buttons.
I have a new client whose resort has been positively written
up in dozens of national magazines. I was glad to see links to
those articles within their site until I clicked on one and got
an IMAGE of the magazine page instead of text from the magazines.
Many magazines do not allow reproducing their content without
licensing, but all allow a limited quote with attribution along
with links from the quote to the article on their site.
Those quotes would serve as dramatic testimonials for the client
and there are dozens of important keyword phrases in those rave
reviews that would be good stuff for both the search engines and
the site visitors. Even if there were only one paragraph from
each of the dozen great reviews on a single page, that TEXT would
be just what the search engine doctor ordered. This will be our
first move in working with this new client.
I've got another client that sends out press releases on a regular
basis discussing their latest partnership or new product. These
press releases are chock full of keyword phrases and important
industry lingo and buzz- words. The catch? They distribute these
press releases as PDF files and serve them to visitors via FTP,
which essentially hides them from the search engines! Their partners
then distribute them via FTP as well because that is how they
received it. This strategy cheats my client out of links from
their partners because those press releases are NOT posted as
HTML pages anywhere!
The thing that I always emphasize to new clients is that search
engines read text that appears on their web page only. Search
engines don't read images or pretty graphics, they can only make
assumptions based on those image names and the image "alt"
tags. Try doing an image search at Google for "logo"
and see what you get. Now try an image search for common words
to compare the filenames used to describe those images. Search
for any number combination and you'll see how common numbers are
as image filenames.
Try another image search for keyword phrases that are important
to your industry and I'll wager that is your competition. If you
take an extra step and review the filenames in the URL that appear
directly below those results describing where that keyword named
image turns up. I'll bet the competitors who are tops in non image
searches for similar important keyword phrases use those phrases
in image filenames, directory names and domain names.
I've had clients that get their site redesigned soon after I've
done site optimization who come back to me asking why their search
engine rankings dropped.
Inevitably their site designer has not only used word fragments
or numbers as image and page filenames, but removed hyperlinks
from important keyword phrases in body text, text that was maintained
at our instruction. Text hyperlinks are another important ingredient
to SEO that designers dislike because it changes text colors in
order to help visitors know it's hyperlinked phrase.
Although designers and search engine optimizers rarely work
together, they should be required to. Even though the SEO's job
would simply be to type keyword phrases in the "save as"
box because designers won't do it on their own. If a copywriter
is hired, they should work with the SEO as well, although the
SEO's job would be only to convince the copywriter that it's OK,
indeed is necessary, to use keyword phrases more than a single
time. Copywriters don't like repeating themselves and often pride
themselves on saying the same thing in various creative ways.
Search engines don't yet fully support using a thesaurus to determine
page content.
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Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist
practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement,
Optimization, Marketing http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/SEO_articles.html
http://SEOptimism.com/
