Organic Search Engine Optimization by Jeff Palmer

Organic Search Engine Optimization by Jeff Palmer

Organic Search Engine Optimization
What it is and why its so important.

By Jeff Palmer

Search engine optimization can be broken down into two separate yet intertwined categories. Non-organic or paid search optimization and organic, or unpaid search optimization. Paid search advertising relies on purchased search phrases to drive visitors to a website, while organic search optimization focuses on developing web sites that are naturally search engine friendly and appear in the unpaid or "organic" search engine results pages. (SERPS)

Successful organic optimization combines technical know-how with persuasive marketing.

Organically optimized web sites contain content that visitors find informative and relevant to their searches. Content is further optimized for search engines by incorporating relevant key phrases or words into the site's literature.

Organic optimization is holistic in approach. Every aspect of a web site is analysed for it's level of search friendliness. Aspects like the site's title, meta-tags, editorial copy, structure and design, usability and function are all taken into consideration. These aspects and many others are equally considered when optimizing a web site. There are, however four main points of interest:

1. Key Phrases:
One of the first steps in organic optimization is determining which key phrases are to be targeted. This is determined by researching which words or phrases a target audience is most likely to search for. These target keywords are then incorporated into the title, description and content of a web site.

It is important to note that the overuse of keywords in a web site can result in a search engines indexing software to considering a site as abusing or spamming the search engine and can result in that site being removed from the search index.

Generally a key word should appear five to eight times within a sites editorial content and content should consist of between 200 and 400 words.

2. Site Structure
Search engines are somewhat limited in the way they can index a web site. Search engine robots or spiders are chiefly concerned with determining two things, what is this web site all about and where should this site show up in the search engine results. Often the way in which a web site is constructed can have negative results in how effective these search spiders are.

It is important to understand how search engine indexing works in order to create web sites which are fine tuned for optimal search results

Search spiders look primarily for text content when judging how a site is to be indexed.
Sites which are built entirely of graphic elements or flash are not search friendly. Sites which feature an overuse of javascript and other dynamic content are not search friendly.

A multitude of factors are considered when optimizing for the search engines. Since different search engines follow different rules, and the rules often change, it is unlikely that every aspect of a web site will be perfectly matched to every search engine. The important thing to strive for is eliminating the elements of a site that are known to cause problems, and emphasizing as many search friendly aspects as possible.

3. Usability
A site which is difficult to navigate, slow to load, or leaves a user wondering exactly what the site is all about is a site that is not going to perform very well. The flow of information within a web site must be logical and intuitive. Optimizing a site for performance is critical to its overall level of success. After all, what is the point of having a web site that ranks well in search engines if nobody can use it?

4. Inbound Links:
The amount of inbound links to a web site has a direct effect on the search engine page ranking of the site. Virtually all of the popular search engines have methods of calculating the link popularity of any given site. This makes inbound links an important area of organic optimization. The quality of the inbound links can matter more than the quantity. Search engines place more importance on relevant links from sites which they consider to be authorities on any given key phrase. Search engines strive to provide the most relevant results possible by filtering out meaningless or junk links to a website. In some cases, large numbers of irrelevant inbound links are seen by the search engines as abuse or spamming. Practices such as link farming and free-for-all link pages are frowned upon.

As the popularity of paid search advertising grows so does the need for organic optimization. While paid search campaigns can offer short term exposure, organic optimization involves steady, long term results. And as the costs of paid search advertising continues to climb, organic optimization offers the assurance of appearing in search pages for natural searches.

By combining aspects of search engine technicalities, site structure and usablity, organic optimization not only focuses on search engine results but offers the end user of a site a quality experience.
About the Author
Jeff Palmer is a Search Engine Optimization specialist and Senior Interactive Designer for Openvision an Internet marketing company located in Hilton Head Island South Carolina.

http://www.openvision.com
succeed@openvision.com

The Top 10 Most Ludicrous Things You Can Do on Your Web Site by Courtney Heard

The Top 10 Most Ludicrous Things You Can Do on Your Web Site by Courtney Heard

We have a running joke in our office that one day well load a page and it will say You have reached the end of the World Wide Web and it will be the truth. Ive visited so many web sites in my time, its unreal. There are a few web site features and practices that keep popping up, in spite of their highly detrimental nature. I find myself, day in and day out, advising clients to remove something or other from their web site, as it is stunting their online business potential. But cleaning up the World Wide Web one client at a time isnt very efficient, so Ill share with you the Top 10 most ludicrous things you can do on your web site, and hopefully well get this mess cleaned up.

1. Frames - Most of you are probably rolling your eyes right now, saying I know, I know but there not only still is a large amount of sites that use frames, theres actually a very dangerous counter-argument to this going on.

Frames section off your web site, making multiple smaller windows within one page. It sounds harmless enough, but the code behind a page with frames is very short, only referring to the pages that fill in the smaller windows. This hides any text you have on the page, any headings, any links, image names and alt text, comment tags, and a lot more from search engines. In short, frames hide 99% of your sites content from the view of search engines, fooling them into thinking your site is virtually bare.

Now, recently Google has announced that their search algorithm is newly able to see past frames and find all of your sites content. Problems remain, though, in that the algorithm does not yet index pages with frames well. This also doesnt fix the problem with other search engines.

Theres some kind of Rebel Frames Force or something that use Googles new indexing ability as an argument for frames, among other even less valid points. But what about this and what about that? they argue. I say to you, rebel framers, why bother? I really dont understand why this inane argument continues. You can easily avoid any potentially harmful side-effects of frames by using tables. It looks exactly the same, if not better, and we know for sure that all search engine robots can decipher the uncomplicated table code. A smart site owner would simply not take the risk.

2. Keyword-rich Text Embedded in Images - Another fabulous way to shoot yourself in the proverbial foot. Search engines cant read text in an image, so if most of your web sites textual content is within images, youre pretty much done for. Come on people, keywords are what make the Web go round! The idea is to have as many applicable keywords as possible within your site visible by search engines, right? So it really doesnt make much sense to take some of those keywords and hide them. There is no counter-argument to this. Its simple, if you want traffic, get your keywords out of images.

3. Entrance Pages/Flash Intros - This practice will not just have a negative impact on search engine optimization, it also subtracts from your sites user-friendliness.

Search engine robots want to find out what your site is about as soon as they can. In other words, they want to find content on the front page. This means that there absolutely must be keyword-rich text on your opening page. It is fairly easy to comply with this while having an intro page, but it doesnt solve the user-friendliness issue.

Think, for a moment, about how you surf the web. If youre like the majority of surfers, youre looking for information and you want to find it fast. Simply put, an intro page is one more step that has to be taken before getting to the good stuff. Speaking from personal experience, if a site has a flash intro or an entrance page and Im in a rush (which defines my life), Ill leave and find another source of the info Im looking for. Essentially, I feel that sites with such opening pages, have little respect for my time and I dont want to venture into the site any further to find out how many other ways the site owner has found to elongate the simple act of supplying information. Its simply easier to find another site. Really, what exactly is the purpose of an entrance page? Try as I might, I just cant think of one.

4. Music - O.K., This is my biggest pet peeve. There is nothing more annoying than sitting down on Sunday morning, steaming cup of coffee in hand, opening iTunes to listen to the latest R.E.M., starting to surf the web and suddenly hearing a midi version of Greensleeves turn Losing My Religion into something that sounds more like a cat dying.

With the growing popularity of mp3s, youll be hard pressed to find someone who doesnt listen to their own music while theyre on the web. It is absolutely guaranteed that youll turn some visitors away from your site if you insist on having music load with it.

But, what if I offer a button that will turn the music off? some people ask. Most web site visitors who are listening to music wont stick around long enough to find your off button. In my case, as soon as I hear one note, I hit the back button. There is always another site to find the information Im looking for.

5. Large Media - Java applets, video media and images can be a real pain in the you-know-what when they havent been optimized. There are so many poorly written java apps out there that will actually crash browsers. Large videos and images will cause your site to load slowly and visitors to leave before they even see the fully-loaded page.

Make sure you test any java apps across several browsers. If theres any delay in loading, trash it or fix it.
Optimizing large images is also necessary. Adobe ImageReady will significantly cut down the loading time of your image while saving its quality and dimensions.

Video should be an option. Never have it load with your site. Most people dont have the time to sit around watching videos on web sites, let alone wait for videos to load. Pictures and text will tell your story just as easily.

Internet users still use dial-up accounts and with the rise of people accessing the internet from their mobile devices, shaving every second possible off the loading time of your site will ensure that visitors do not get impatient and leave.

6. Limited ways to contact - Believe it or not, Ive actually come across commercial web sites that have absolutely no way to contact anyone associated with the site. Unless you hope your web site visitors reaction to the online representation of your business to be a string of profanity, I wouldnt suggest taking this route. In fact, Ive always urged clients to offer as many ways as possible to contact them on their web sites. Phone, fax, e-mail, contact form, mailing address, etc.

Everyone has their own preferred method of contact. A lot of my clients prefer talking on the phone and probably wouldnt be my clients if all I offered as a contact method was e-mail. Me, I hate talking on the phone and filling out forms. If you dont offer a link to your e-mail address on your site, you probably wont hear from me. But what about spam, you say? Well, youll just have to decide for yourself whats worse, losing potential paying customers or getting more spam.

7. Long Pages/Entire Site in One Page - When loading a site, finding a page that seems to go on forever can seem daunting. The same amount of information, organized into several pages will seem a lot less scary to your visitors. Labeled pages and sections will lead your visitor to exactly the information theyre looking for as opposed to making them search lines and lines of text to find it. Well organized content on several pages is also something that pleases the search engines.

8. No Link Exchange Policy - A lot of web sites out there dont exchange links as a rule. This will not only stunt the growth of your link popularity, but potential traffic that could come directly from those links would be lost. You dont have to exchange links with every interested site, but turning them all away is a dangerous practice.

9. Cross-Browser Compatibility Check - Always, always, always check what your web site looks like and how well it functions on other browsers. Do this whenever you update, make new pages, or new versions of browsers come out. Ive seen some pretty funky stuff around the web thats been caused by non-compatibility. Title images on the bottom of the page, invisible links, missing images, even some sites that cause browsers to crash.

Here are some of the more popular browsers:
Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)
Netscape
Opera
Mozilla
Apple Safari

Download a copy of each of these and check your site! I realize most of you use Windows and cant check your site on Safari, so find a friend who has a Mac. Mac users are growing in numbers and can be some of your web sites visitors. Make sure what they see is what you want them to.

10. Free Web Space/No Domain Name - This one is all about professionalism. To avoid having your business seem about as serious as little Sallys lemonade stand down the street, dont host it on free web space like Geocities, Angelfire, etc. Get your own domain name. It costs an average of $30/year and you can find good hosting for $10/month, sometimes less. If you cant afford that, I suggest you turn off your computer and sell it for food. Free hosting is straight cheese, and your visitors will get the feeling youre not taking your business seriously.

So, there you have it. The top 10 most ludicrous things you can do with your web site. Ive heard some web site owners argue that their site visitors have complimented their videos, java apps, music, etc. Just keep in mind, the visitors who dont like this stuff leave and you probably wont hear from them.

The goal of your commercial web site should be to soak up every last potential paying customer from the web. Any of these 10 points can turn paying customers away. Respect your visitors time, try to make their experience on your site as quick and full of information as possible. Be organized and professional and let your audience see that you know what youre doing.
About the Author
Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles are available at www.abalone.ca/resources/