Good Traffic

Effective Websites Rely on Aid from Search Engines to Attract Visitors

By Dana Caproni
SEO Specialist, Running-Code.com

Nobody ever built a mega-market in Antarctica.  While there may be little competition there, and loads of free parking, it just wouldn’t make sense to invest in a shopping center constructed in a barren, frozen wasteland.  After all, there’s nobody there to work in the store, and there’s nobody there to shop in it.   

Given that basic truth, why do businesses continually invest in websites that relatively few people ever see?  The Internet is jammed with websites erected in good faith, but that few people stumble across.  A website can be an enormous waste of time and money – not to mention a source of lost business and crushed hopes – unless it is promoted.  Like everything else, if a website is to be successful, it has to be marketed.

That doesn’t necessary mean that it is necessary to buy banner ads or send out bulk e-mails to generate traffic to your site – though advertising is certainly a reasonable option.  There are several easy steps that a website designer or a corporate IT manager can take that won’t cost anything, but which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Yandex locate, assess and index your website so that it can be presented to the world.

With millions upon millions of websites on the Net, and thousands being added daily, search engines give us direction.  They simply, intuitively and quickly send us to the sites that contain the information we seek.

If your IT manager lacks the time or expertise to modify (or ‘optimize’) your site to attract the search engines, there are consultants that specialize in search engine optimization who can be called in.  The cost involved with hiring a consulting firm depends on the size and complexity of the site and other factors.  Like Running Code, reputable firms are more than willing to estimate work and discuss fees in advance.  Generally, performing an optimization for a straightforward one- or two-page site can cost as little as a couple of hundred dollars.  Large, complex sites require more work and are therefore represent a greater investment.

‘Investment’ is really the key word.  Designing an attractive site that really sells your product or service takes time, energy and cash, but that’s just half the job.  Optimizing your site so that it can achieve high rankings on search engines is often neglected and should be a key factor in your site’s marketing plan.

Do-It-Yourself SEO:
Seven Things You Can Do Now

1. Keep it fresh and relevant.  A website that isn’t updated won’t achieve or maintain high search engine rankings.  Include a calendar of events and add items to it regularly.  Post your company’s news releases.  When site content changes frequently, the ‘spiders’ that search engines send out to roam the Internet go on red alert. Activity gets the site noticed by the search engines.  That’s just what you want.

2. Write for your audience. Your site content is the most crucial element and writing it should be the first step when optimizing. If your site is for a piano bar in Kyiv, it’s likely that potential customers would conduct a Google search for “Kyiv piano bar.”  Don’t make it tough on them – use those words, and other logical search terms, in the text on every page of your site.  When indexing web pages, Google considers the length of time readers stay on a page. Therefore, if your pages lack depth and length for a particular topic, most likely readers won’t stick around very long on the page.

3. Don’t spam.  In the early days of search engines, ‘black hat’ spammers typed “piano  piano piano bar bar bar bar free drinks sexy girls” repeatedly in black type on a black background to fool the search engines.  No more.  Today’s search spiders are clever beasts and don’t have much of a sense of humor.  Search engines like Google have tools to detect hidden text and will flex their muscle by banning your site.

4. Keep it clean.. Your web programmer knows what we mean – you don’t have to.  Search engines don’t like poorly written code. Make sure your code is written in HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Clean code enables search engines to go through your content quickly without hiccups and also helps to reduce the size of individual pages and minimizes download time.

5. Get linked! Backlinks are links to your site on other websites. Also known as inbound links, backlinks are valuable to search engines. However the issue here is quality over quantity. Make sure that if you have backlinks, that they are from high-quality, reputable sites, meaning that they have good search engine reputations and good, solid content.  

6. Be user friendly. Your designer may have a number of fun, artsy, creative ideas for the website, and that’s great, but the site is not for the designer, it’s for customers.  Don’t make them work to unearth your information.  Sites that are cleanly designed without the use of too much Flash programming work best.  Sites that are reader-friendly and feature logical, well-thought-out site architecture are light years ahead so far as search engines are concerned. Customers like them, too. 

7. Be patient.  After you’ve done everything you can do, sit back and wait.  With all the sites on the Internet, it can sometimes take six weeks or more for the search engines to find your optimized site and integrate it into top page ranks.  Better yet, use this time to contact a professional SEO firm and see how we can add value to the great work you’ve already done.