As a website designer/developer who has several years experience (short explanation: since 1998 - long explanation: before Wordpress, Digg, Technorati, Google, even Blogger...and all these content-is-king sites!), I have had the pleasure of reviewing/critiquing websites for people. It can be interesting, to say the least. It's hard to tell someone flat out that their site sucks, and you don't want to do that anyway if you want to be respectful and actually help them... no one (I don't think) would have the gall to do that if they are a professional. However if you are one of those people who gets in line to critique a website for someone at their request after you've just a had a bad day, take a number and come back tomorrow! But you do have to be honest, by the same token. Being diplomatic and helpful at the same time is a good combination that does the job.
Anyway, I'd recently reviewed a Yahoo store site for someone who sells handmade jewelry[1]. I've decided that it's a good article to share with others. So here is an excerpt of my review and critique, which I'm presenting here on this site as part 1 of a few in a series.
I've seen many a Yahoo site and some are pretty horrid / atrocious, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that this one was actually looking and functioning pretty nicely.
People often call me and ask what I can do to improve their site. Why is no one visiting or calling? Is it the color? The logo? The font? Usually none of that really matters when it comes to getting good traffic. I've seen of websites that were total trash dumps in the look/feel department, yet still they don't need any help getting found because they have focused more on that than look and feel. Your mileage may vary on that. One man's dump is another man's treasure, as they say. Er, that's not the expression.
Anyway!
So when this jewelry designer asked me pretty much the same thing, I told her I didn't think there is much wrong with the design, just her search engine optimization and sales strategies that could benefit from a tweak or two.
And so I went into my critique and offered up a whole lot of advice. Perhaps too much? That's why it's not always a good idea for people who want to do e-commerce, to design their own website... they ought to save the time and effort and hire people like me!
*Ahem* Onward!
(NOTE: Some of this has been paraphrased or restated from my original site post, to change the reader's point of view for better understanding, i.e., instead of "you", "you're", "you've", "you should", I may have changed to "a website owner", "one ought to", etc.)
Website Tactics For Success: A Beginner's Guide to SEO
Part I - Search Engine Readiness and Understanding Basic Optimization
In this first section of part I, we'll talk about preparing your content for the search engines, and learning how they work before starting...
Search engine stats:
A quick glance at your site page rank according to Google reveals that it is X number out of 10. Although not a precise indicator of how well your site ranks in the search results for your targeted key words, Google Page Rank [2] does determine: a) whether your site has been crawled by them and is indexed in their search engine somewhere, and b) out of 10 important things Google thinks your site could be doing, you are doing X of them.
Keyword research:
* Determine your targeted key words/phrases that you want to be found by in the search engines. This is a crucial first step to resolve and then you can go forward from there.
* Once you've figured out which words/phrases you will hone in on, you will want to do some searching yourself in the search engines to see who your competition is. Try localizing your search to your region/county or metro area if you are finding that your search results are x out of xxx,xxx. This means that your site's subject matter/area of topic is not uncommon and among way, way too many to really stand out.
Unfortunately, websites devoted to say, jewelry sales (even handmade) are a very popular thing (as is web design which is my industry) and it's easy to find one's site being a needle in a haystack, so to speak. It's hard to compete with all that! A cool way to check out keyword analysis and suggestion is the Google keywords suggestion tool[3]
(You don't have to have an AdSense account to use this tool offered mainly to AdSense users).
Match your content with your key words and giving them emphasis:
If your key words are dollhouses, hot dogs and carnival sideshows, you want to ensure that you have written about these things at length in your site's contents/body text. Think of your website as a book, and your meta keywords tag as your table of contents for the book. If people came to your site because dollhouses was a search word in results that led them to you, but then you did not include anything about dollhouses in your text/body of your site, they will leave, and fast!
Another thing I notice in many websites is the lack of linked or emphasized key words within text content. It does help to do this when the website in question is selling something online, as well as with any other kind of site.
Once you have matched your targeted key words / phrases with what you are writing about in your pages, you can further point these words out by making them bold, linking them with the product that matches from within your store, etc.
Anything to make them stand out is good. So long as you don't [u]underline them with no link. Underlining text implies that the word or sentence is clickable as a link. If there is not really a link there it only frustrates viewers and it is also unattractive unless it is on paper.
[Psst! Did you just try to click on that underlined phrase up there? See how frustrating that was? :P Told ya]
Anyway, my point was... keyword emphasis
...in the case of the jewelry website, I have an example of how this would work.
Instead of:
...We have many types of gemstone jewelry designs using Onyx, Amethyst, [etc.]
I would suggest doing like so:
...We have many types of gemstone jewelry designs and pieces including Onyx earrings, Amethyst bracelets, [etc.]
You can see where I not only bolded the words, but also added extra descriptives like "bracelets" and "pieces" if these were key words, which have just increased your usage of them by a fair percent. To make sure that the key words you really want to be found by on search sites are emphasized even more, it helps to also try to increase their use in the contents / body of website text.
For example, there was a particular phrase I wanted to be found for when people searched in Google, but after doing some research I realized that this would be tough. I narrowed it down to my city, rather than state and made sure that, that phrase was used quite often in my body text. The one or two key words/phrases that you really want to by found by, should have the heaviest weight/highest percentage of appearing on your site's pages.
This is a great seguey into my next rant, which I'll touch briefly on and continue in the next part of the series...
Meta Keyword Tags and Their Sticky Rules:
Meta tags such as for keyowords, description, etc. can be configured in Yahoo store websites, I bet, as well as many site builder programs out there, and some hosting companies and e-commerce software providers will supply guides on how to do so.
Many people believe keywords in meta tags are unnecessary, some will even go so far as to say they're the spawn of the Devil, and that only your content and proper HTML tags should suffice, still further many other people believe that you ought to cram about 170 of them into your meta tags. Both are wrong.
Using too few or too many will harm rather than help. Most search engines have a limit of how many keywords/phrases in meta tags which their robots will actually read. Some have 25 as a hard limit. Google I believe, is one of them.
Generally a good rule of thumb is 10-12 key words/phrases PER page. Key words don't necessarily mean just one word. They can be a short phrase of words, but try to use no more than 1-4 words in a keyword/key phrase "pearl anklets under $20" is a good example, but I am not saying that should be your key word.
You'll find that using these tips, combined with other various and sundry resources found online, will lead to your eventual success in getting your sites the attention they deserve in the search engines.
Stay tuned for Part II - Traffic Requires Links! Links! Links! Which need to come from Marketing! Marketing! and Marketing!
Thanks for reading! Good luck with these tips!
Bobbi Jo Woods, CEO/Fanatic
B. Woods Design - Steering Professional Managed Websites for Business
© Bobbi Jo Woods - B. Woods Design
