HOW TO DRAW MORE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE BY PARTNERING WITH THE SEARCH ENGINES.

Here are some Don'ts and Do's for drawing more qualified traffic to your website. These practical hints are the result of six years of website design, research and consulting with hundreds of preservation and custom building specialists.

By John Corbett, Meetinghouse, Inc.

You know that you have a wonderful website, but do the Search Engines know it? When your potential Prospect searches for websites offering your unique product, are you among the chosen? Your carefully crafted online message won't close a sale if no one ever sees it. Qualified Visitors are truly the most indispensable element of a successful, productive website.

Every day, 4,300 new websites are added to the over 28 million already competing for the web user's attention. To sort out the clutter, people depend on Google and the other Search Engines for relevant information. Probably you do yourself. Increasingly, the Search Engines are where you, me and your Prospect turn when we are seeking goods and services. That reliable standby, the Yellow Pages, has experienced a 25% decline in usage since 1996. The Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association, a trade group, attributes this decline to the Internet, primarily, and to increasing availability and efficiency of the Search Engines.

It is clear that the Search Engines are the "engine" for growing new qualified web traffic to your website, but how can you get them to work for you? Simply by understanding that the Search Engines win when they bring your Prospect useful, relevant information. This puts you and them on the same team. All they require of you is to provide your Prospect with relevant, useful information and to follow the Search Engine rules.

Perhaps inconveniently, those rules are secret. To do their job, the Search Engines must filter out millions of irrelevant websites. Many websites employ deliberate tricks to deceive the Search Engines into furnishing your Prospect with irrelevant advertising, also known as "spam". To sift out the bad, every Search Engine employs a highly proprietary software program, known as an "algorithm". This algorithm varies from Search Engine to Search Engine and changes frequently and without notice as they try to stay one step ahead of the spammers.

The rules may be secret, but their intent is well understood. It is to keep everybody honest, not to prevent your Prospect from seeing your website. The Search Engines will partner with anyone furnishing good legitimate content and penalize anyone they catch peddling spam. Penalties from a Search Engine involve loss of ranking and are applied with no announcement, no explanation, no term of expiration and no means of appeal. The Search Engines are the law. Avoid these nine common website mistakes and have the law on your side:

NINE COMMON WEBSITE MISTAKES:

1. Unfocused Content.  If the Search Engines can't easily tell what your website is about, they will bury it too deep in the search results to be found by your Prospect. Focused, relevant content is the gold standard of the web. Relevance is measured by the percentage of keywords present and how they are distributed through a body of text. Don't fail to use your Prospect's keyword phrase and its variations throughout the main body of text and especially at the beginning. The algorithms are not writing professors, but they will take note if you fail to mention your keywords frequently and early in the text. They don't want to let you waste their Visitor's time. Sharp, well written content pays off by impressing the Search Engines and by better converting your Prospect.
2. Deceptive Content.  Use keywords but don't overstuff the text with your Prospect's keyword phrase in an attempt to influence the algorithm. This is deceptive and you run the risk of an "over optimization penalty" if you overdo it. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Good writing addresses the concerns of your Prospect directly, clearly and naturally. Bad, repetitive writing can earn a penalty. The smartest algorithm (Google's) not only expects to find the keyword phrase, but also looks for related phrases which it believes should share the page. Just communicate effectively to your Prospect and the Search Engines will do their best to refer your message.
3. Buried Content.  Don't hide your good, relevant content deep in your website or the algorithm will conclude that you don't really want your Prospect to see it. For example, if your Prospect is vitally concerned with "stone restoration", don't bury it at the bottom of a page on the more general subject of "masonry techniques". A web page that is about something will always outperform a web page that tries to be about everything. If the subject is important to your Prospect, dedicate a page to it so that the Search Engines and Visitors can easily recognize your commitment to the topic. Don't link your dedicated "stone restoration" page only from an obscure subpage or the algorithm will, again, conclude that you are hiding it because it is unimportant. Instead, link to this important page from every page on your website so that the Search Engines know that you mean it.
4. Invisible Content.  Creative webmasters like to use web techniques such as flash, java, frames and image text, but use of these formats can render your message invisible to the Search Engines. The algorithms don't penalize these formats, but the "spiders" (programs which visit your website to collect text), often can't read them as well as they read HTML. As a result, your complete message may not be available to the Search Engines. Work arounds which offer duplicate content in HTML aren't always effective and may trigger penalties if they seem deceptive. If in doubt, suggest that your webmaster stick with pure, natural HTML. A beautiful, clever website that nobody sees will produce no qualified leads.
5. Inaccurate Keywords.  If you don't anticipate the exact keywords that your Prospects enter into the Search Engine, it is unlikely that your website will turn up in their results. Over many years in business, you have no doubt learned to listen to the concerns of your Prospect. Your website needs to do this as well as you do. Use the words your Prospect naturally uses when first inquiring about your work, even if they aren't technically correct. Be sure to research and incorporate possible alternates, plurals and even misspellings. If you work with dissimilar groups using different language for the same work (conservators and church trustees, for example), consider furnishing pages of dedicated content targeted to their respective concerns and keywords. Use what you already know about your Prospect to make sure that his or her web search leads to your website.
6. Improper Tags.  Your good, relevant content will not rank well if it is not "tagged" according to the most current requirements of the algorithm. Besides the main body of text, content consists of an assortment of "tags", well defined fragments of text distinguished by specific coding, placement or appearance. These include but are not limited to metatags, title tags, heading tags, alt tags and link text. Over time, informal conventions have been established for their most effective use. Although the experts disagree on what exactly these conventions are, they do agree that tags must be used properly in order for your good, relevant content to be ranked fairly. (More about tags, below.)
7. Bad Company.  Your website can be penalized for outgoing links to a "bad neighborhood", defined as any community of websites who link for the sole purpose of manipulating the algorithm and not because of related content. To avoid penalties or loss of ranking, avoid outgoing links for any purpose other than the convenience of your website Visitor. (More about links, below.)
8. Illegal Tricks.  If a Search Engine decides that your website is cheating, it will penalize it. Even if the algorithm doesn't catch you, they employ human investigators and informers (perhaps your competition) who probably will. If caught, expect no due process, even if your transgression was inadvertent. The safe course is not to use any suspect technique, ever. Don't participate in linking schemes. Don't hide or switch content on your Visitor using such well worn techniques as same color backgrounds, tiny text, frames tags or page redirects. Don't worry about what the competition is getting away with. If they choose to risk the penalties, that is ultimately to your advantage.
9. Inconsistent Effort.  If you want your partnership with the Search Engines to continue to grow and flourish, don't take your partners for granted. Theirs is a competitive business. They change their algorithms constantly in an unceasing effort to refer their Visitor to the best possible search results. They want your best. They will notice if you fail to update your content or if you have dead links. They expect your website to remain compliant with their current rules. Yesterday's innovation can be considered a deceptive practice today. Monitor what they think of you. Don't neglect to track your performance in their keyword search results and in your own web server statistics. The Search Engines like to favor old friends, but they need to be reminded that you still care.

FIVE LINKING NOTES

1. Important, Relevant Incoming Links bring Traffic.  You have perhaps heard that linking is good. It is links between pages and websites that make the web a web, after all. Incoming links from important, relevant websites help the Search Engines to confirm the importance and relevance of your web page. Important, relevant incoming links can help build ranking for your website.
2. Outgoing Links Can Get You in Trouble.  Only link out to other websites if the page you link to is related to your content and reputable. The Search Engines can hold you accountable if you link out to a website that they believe to be deceptive or irrelevant. Links out to websites that are important or relevant, on the other hand, do not help to confirm the importance or relevance of your own. The only good reason to link out to another website is to serve the interest of your Visitor.
3. Incoming Links Can't Hurt.  The Search Engines won't hold you accountable for incoming links from irrelevant or disreputable websites because you have no control over what other websites do. To do so would allow competitors to create disreputable links to your website to damage your ranking.
4. Outgoing Link Text Makes Your Own Pages Important.  To let the Search Engines know the importance and relevance of any page on your website, be sure to link to that page from every other page on your website. This also allows your Visitor to navigate to your important page from anywhere on your website. Link in html, not script. Use text, not images. Duplicate your links at the bottom of the page if you use any either of these.
5. Keywords Make Your Links More Relevant.  Use keywords in the "anchor text" (the linked text). For example, it confers more relevance to link to the "stone restoration" page with a text link that says "stone restoration" than with the words "Coole Supply". To benefit from incoming links, whether from your own website or from another, try to be sure that the anchor text on the incoming link is in text and contains your keywords or a variation. If the link is an image, be sure to carry your keywords in the alt tag.

FIVE TAGGING TIPS

1. Metatags,Just in Case.  Search Engine metatags are visible to the Search Engines but invisible to Visitors. They are no longer used to rank sites for relevance because they allow spammers to furnish one version of content for the Search Engines and one for the Visitor. Nevertheless, since the algorithm can confer whatever importance it chooses on both the "description" and "keywords" metatags, at any time, it is prudent to supply both. Search Engines sometimes furnish the "description" metatag to their Visitors to describe your page, so make sure that it does the job in one brief sentence.

2. Title Tags are Important.  The page "title" (the text in the blue bar that appears at the very top of the Visitors browser) has considerable influence in determining your page's ranking. Google also uses it in the first line of result that they furnish their Visitor. To rank well, the title tag on our hypothetical "stone restoration" page should assert "Stone Restoration is Easy With Innovative Technology by Coole Supply, Inc.", for instance, rather than the noncommittal "Coole Supply, Inc., Pioneers in Innovation and Technology". Note that our example starts with our keywords because we assume that early text is most important. Your unknown Prospect is searching for "stone restoration", not "Coole Supply".
3. Alt Tags, Because Spiders are Blind.  Because Search Engines know that images are an important part of your website, they pay attention to alt tag descriptions, especially when linked. Spiders can't collect images, only text. Use keywords.
4. Emphasize Text for Importance.  Search Engines recognize the importance of text that you emphasize for your Visitor with heading tags or bolding. Use keywords.
5. Vary Keywords, Avoid Repetition.  Use the natural keyword variations that your Visitor and the Search Engines expect in good writing. Avoid "over optimizing" your tags and text by repetition of a very few keywords.

Do the Visitors Visit but never call? Better web design can produce more qualified leads. Here are some Don'ts and Do's for converting a Visitor to a Qualified Lead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John M. Corbett is president of Meetinghouse Enterprises, Inc., a website consulting and hosting company serving the needs of the architectural preservation and custom building specialists exclusively. He has written numerous published articles about working with the artisans on design issues. He also consults with publishers on building web traffic to their websites. Before Meetinghouse, he worked for 30 years as a preservation tradesman, owning and operating his own steeplejack company.

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