I’ve had several clients in the past few months who raised questions about Search Engine Optimization [SEO] and what exactly it means and what they should do to ensure that their web site is found online. So, I thought it may be beneficial to provide a brief explanation of how Search Engines work to locate your Web site and what you need to know before contacting someone to actually build your website – if that is something you are now considering. If you are already an online guru – that is, if you’ve already registered your name and you understand what google does when searching for a hit and how meta tags and meta data work – skip this info. If, however, you are thinking about having your website built – or are wondering how you can get a blog to function as a web site – and have no idea where to begin, here is a primer that will provide you with the necessary information, which will in turn, help you make an informed decision about what you need to do and what you need to ask for when considering your new web site. Ready? Here we go…
Yes, you must register your name
You really don’t have any rights to your name online – until you pay to register it. Crazy, I know, but true. Take my name, for instance. A lawyer in Texas named Deborah Johnstone has claimed “deborahjohnstone.com” for the next 2000 years. What this means is, she went to register.com or any one of the thousands of places online available and entered the pertinent information, paid her money and registered her name. Now, I can no longer use the domain “deborahjohnstone.com” because she paid for and owns that name online. What did I do? – A couple of things. I registered deborahjohnstone.net and deborahjonstone.org and called it a day. But I also called my online business something other than my given name. That way my theatrical business is a separate entity from my web business – sort of like the separation of church and state. Well, maybe not quite, but you get the idea. Yep, I made up a name and registered it before anyone else could think of it. Hence “DelphicMedia” was born.
Host
No, this is not a human that has been taken over by an alien. Once your website is complete it needs to live somewhere so that people can find it. Once you have registered your name, you will select a web host (often you can do the two things simultaneously). The web host is the cyber-space place holder for your website. This is where your web site is published, lives, and where people can find you from anywhere online. A good analogy is to think of it the host as a “garage” – the place where your website is parked. [One of my clients came to this conclusion as he was trying to understand the concept of a “host” and I think it’s a great analogy].
Now, I’m a huge advocate of everyone being self-sufficient [a former employer actually called me a “Marxist” but that’s another story…] and retaining a host of their own choosing. However, if you just don’t want to deal with that issue – and it can be complex for a novice to set up – then the person or people who actually do build your web site should provide this service to you at no additional charge.
What that means is this: I’ve already secured a host and paid a yearly fee to park my website/s there. I use DreamHost, but I don’t recommend them to clients – unless you are a back end developer – because DreamHost is tech heavy and can be very complex to navigate. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with you securing your own host – and I encourage people to do so if only to become familiar with internet protocol.
Why secure your own host? My worse case scenario is this: Say I build your site and we host it at DreamHost but then I leave the country because I win the lottery and I’m going to live in Paris and never some back and I’m also not going to renew the yearly hosting fee to DreamHost and then guess what? All of a sudden your site will disappear off the face of the online landscape. I know that’s extreme – really – but my point is that there is nothing wrong with you being in control of your website. Yes, someone else will build it for you and make it look nice and work correctly, but since you are paying to have your site developed, it makes sense that you should have control of where the end product lives. And yes, you may have to learn a few more web tricks but it will be worth it – knowledge is power, particularly online.
And how do you select a host and register your name?
A reliable domain name registrar is: one who has been around for a while and proven their service; a registrar who has all the necessary management tools to make your domain name into a successful site; and also provides affordable domains through a renowned registry. Register.com remains the #1 rated domain registrar online and I highly recommend them. They now have hosting packages as well, and if you are a business [Such as an actor or voice over artist] and only need one website, then it would be a great way to go. They have customer support available 24/7 via phone, online, or chat, so if you get stuck you can talk to a human – always a big selling point with me. It should cost somewhere between $14 and $20 to register your name only, a year. If you tack on a hosting package you may get your domain name registration for free. You’ll pay around $80 to $100 to host your website a year and you’ll pay significantly less if you commit to longer periods of time.
Another reliable place that offers domain name registration and hosting is GoDaddy. GoDaddy.com’s 36-month [3 year] host package is only $4.25 a month – that’s $153 for three years and comes out to $51 a year. You can’t beat that with a stick. Check out Register.com as well – they have a similar fee structure. There are a lot more out there – take a look around online and check out fees, but please do your research and make sure they are reliable. A simple “google search” for “Best host and registrar” will return several top ten lists. If you are considering a host, feel free to give us a call and we’ll help you check them out.
OK, so you’ve registered your name and decided on a hosting package. Now what?
Planning your Website
“Usability” … Structure before design … why a webpage is like a building
If you were an architect, you would not design a building before you knew what the building was for or what size you needed it to be. It is no different with a website. The framework of a website must be crafted before anyone makes decisions regarding color or images. The basic layout of the elements of a page must be decided upon before you consider color, fonts, and effects. Deciding on the important elements that will become your navigation is paramount. And it’s much easier to do before you have settled on a final design and color scheme. The navigation should remain constant on each page so that visitors to your site will be able to find all pertinent information easily. It also adds to the “stickiness” of you site. If people know they can easily locate information at your website, they are more likely to return.
Target Audience – the people looking at the page will not be you
Keep in mind that the person looking and using your website will not be you. If you are targeting an older audience, they may have trouble reading a smaller font – as aesthetically pleasing as it may appear. How much information will the target audience need in order to understand the ideas being conveyed on the site? Also, all parts of a web page are not equal. There are parts of a page where our eyes go first and you really do want important information to be placed there. Most people tend to look at a webpage in an “F” or triangle shape.
Their eyes will go along the top of the page from left to right – just as we would read an article in a magazine – just below the logo all the way across. Their eyes will return to the left hand side and go across about half way then return to the left side. After this, their eyes go down to the fold on the left hand side. This is a typical pattern for a visitor to use when they scan a page online. Oh, and by the way, it all takes about three seconds. That’s how long you have to grab them.
Design vs. Content
Any time you add a design element to a page you should ask yourself, “what is the value of this element?” Visual value or “eye candy” as we called it in news production, is not enough. A design element must somehow add to the ultimate goal of a site or it is essentially wasted space. When a web page is displayed on a computer screen each inch of the screen has real estate value. Consider each design element and make sure that it will actually add to the value of the space it is occupying on the computer screen. Never underestimate the value of simplicity to get your point across. Use text as often as possible, to indicate “calls to action” as opposed to images [a “call to action” may be a special offer or a link to another area of your site.*]. Spiders cannot index images – cute as they may be, so content really is “King” on the web.
* Images and banner ads are often used for “calls to action” online, but to be effective, they are used sparingly and usually in concert with ample descriptive text and a unique landing page for the offer. Unless you are an e-commerce site you probably won’t be dealing with this specificity.
And finally, remember, people don’t dwell that long in cyber-space, particularly when they are trying to find something … which leads me to…
It is a fact that web visitors hate to scroll …
A significant portion of visitors will never see anything beyond what they see when they first hit a page. As was just stated, every inch of a design has a quantifiable value and the value of the space that falls above the fold is significantly higher than the space that falls below the fold – that point at which someone must scroll to view the remainder of your webpage. Essential design and navigational elements should appear above the fold. Same rule applies to E-mail newsletters. Most email clients open only the top third of an email and often, this is all most people will view. Are they lazy? No, it’s normally a matter of time constraints. We are a civilization rushing to complete activities in a given amount of time and reading e-mail and searching for something online is no different. We want information instantly and often just don’t have time to search endlessly for clarification. Usability tests confirm that 90% of people will abandon a web page if they don’t locate what they are looking for – or expecting to find – in ten seconds. What does this mean? Your navigation, fonts, design, text, and images had better be clear and concise.
OK, your Web site is done and now people are looking for you
SEO in a nutshell
Search Engines are the preferred way to locate websites. When they return results for a search they are making their best guess as to which sites are the best matches for your query. Below is a list of some commonly used search engines: ALTA VISTA, AOL SEARCH, ASK JEEVES, DOGPILE, EXCITE, GOOGLE, LYCOS, MSN, NETSCAPE, WIKIPEDIA & YAHOO… there are many more…
Spiders
Search Engines do not know all the pages that exist on the internet, they send out little programs to find new pages. These programs are commonly called spiders or robots. It is the spider’s job to follow new links and examine the pages it finds on the other end of these links. Because spiders are only computer programs, they are not as sophisticated as a human so they don’t see images. They read a page but do not comprehend what the page is about or if it even makes sense. Spiders can only retrieve the information on the page and return it to the search engines, which will then determine what the information may be about or related to.
Search engines also do not know what the best pages are for a search. It is the human engineers deciding what elements on a page can be used to decide the relevance of that page to any random search. Some search engines have over 200 different variables they look at when deciding how relative a webpage is to a search. These variables are worked into a mathematical equation called an algorithm. The search engine runs through this algorithm every time someone searches for a phrase. It returns the pages that are the most relevant for this search based on the algorithm. But the algorithm is not perfect and the engineers are constantly adjusting and testing new algorithms. So the results you get for the same search may change over the course of a few weeks.
SEO – Page Elements
Of the 200+ elements that a search engine looks at when determining the relevance of a page for a search, about half of them are what would be called “on-page” elements and can be directly influenced by the person creating the page.
Title Tags
To a search engine, the title tag is like the title of a book on the spine. When or if, you go the library all you will see is the title on the spine. You don’t have time to pull every book off the shelf, so you make an initial decision about which books you will examine further based on the titles on the spines. It’s the same for search engines (and the site’s target audience) and title tags.
Meta Tags
Meta Tags are text that is only seen by search engines. They can be used to identify the owner/creator of the page, the title, the keywords and description of the page, and the refresh parameter (which can be used to cause the page to reload itself, or to redirect a user from one Web page to another automatically).
These tags include “description” and the “keyword” meta tags. The “description” Meta tag is also used on and off by the search engines as the text that appears beneath the page title on the search engine results page. It does have some bearing on what the search engines decide a page is about and is frequently used by search engines to determine duplicate content. For this reason, it is important that each page has a unique description Meta tag.
Use Keywords for Search Engines
Many search engines will use the name attributes in the meta tag to properly index your pages – this meta element defines keywords for your page. As an example, here are “keywords” meta data for my home page:
“postcards, email newsletters, website design, graphic design, actor websites, marketing for producers, email newsletters for actors, marketing for small businesses, marketing for actors, custom flyers for productions, posters, artist marketing, print design, online marketing”
Below is the descriptive meta data [what you’d first see when looking at the Spine of a book in the library]
“DelphicMedia marketing for the performing arts specializes in creating marketing promotion via print and online for working artists and small business, web site design and custom graphic web design services, postcards, flyers, and email newsletters”
There will most likely be some overlap in the meta data description and keywords and that’s OK.
If you want more in depth explanation for the meta data [and you have nothing but time on your hands] take a look at Georgetown University’s great information services page.
At this point, I think you’ve got the idea of what you need to come up with to get your site indexed by the search engines. As always, you can give us a call at any time to go through the steps. And remember, you don’t have to know all this stuff to begin your website, but any designer will most likely ask you for meta data and key words and you should know enough about your business to be able to jot down a paragraph of descriptive phrases that you and your designer can then work with and form into meta data.
Well, you’ll probably never see a post from me that’s this long again…. but I really wanted to clarify a lot of the confusion surrounding SEO and web site creation. Did I miss anything? Let me know!
Cheers,
Deborah
- Need your social media network set up? – Want to create an online presence in record time? Let DelphicMedia guide you through the process!
This is first in a series of articles I am writing as Women’s Issues Examiner for Examiner.com Read the entire article at Examiner.com and let me know your thoughts.
The real value of social media networks lay in creating successful online communities and developing relationships where people are actively engaged with you or what you have to offer. Unfortunately – or fortunately for all those who brand themselves SMM evangelist gurus – there is a conversation going on that involves reducing humans to a demographic and squeezing out the largest common denominator. Intense commercial marketing is conducted toward this juicy demographic by the hippest hucksters on the planet. 
The Title Tag is the most important element to optimize on a your webpage because…
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