by Mike Banks Valentine copyright
© 2003
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
buzzwords. 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.