|
We accept Visa Mastercard and American Express
|
Following is a list of ten things that will, together, help put your website on the first page of Google. Remember, the only people putting your company's name into a Google search are people you already know. Everyone else is looking for something fairly specific. Getting on the first page of Google under the key phrases your potential customers use the most is the key to doubling your website's traffic, getting new customers and building sales.
I have reduced 10 years of research into ten bullet points and I've not held anything back. If you designed your own website and are reasonably comfortable working with html, you have everything you need in the ten points below. It WILL WORK. If you don't think you can do it and your web designer seems reluctant, or gives you ANY crap about not wanting to "change the look" or "upset my programming", call me, Tom Wyckoff 630-260-2525 or email me at tom@wyckoff.com . Our web optimizing services are very affordable and will pay for themselves in a matter of a few months. Once done, they don't need constant attention or a contract or anything like that. Just call me (or e-mail, if you like) for a quote and we'll get you to the first page! After you're on the first page, talk to us about a new company brochure or a catalog.
You can input these changes to your website yourself, have your web designer do it or call us. If you are not comfortable modifying web pages, we highly recommend that you contact your web designer or us.
1. Description META TAG - Here is an example from our own website:
<meta name="description" content="Chicago area advertising agency specializes in advertising, both print and web based. All the skills you need in one place. Optimized website design, photography, copywriting, design and production of catalogs, brochures, direct mail, trade ads, retail ads for small and medium-sized Chicago businesses"> . This is about the right length, mentions everything we want to emphasize and we have a DIFFERENT one on each page in our site. It is not only imperative that each page has this tag, but that each one is different from all the rest. Most web designers leave the description tag off entirely. WRONG! It is the first thing that Google looks at!
2. H1 Headline tags - at or near the top of your first page, usually named "index.html" or something like that, there should be a simple headline that mentions your key phrases and is surrounded by <h1>.......</h1> tags. See, there's one at the top of THIS page. If you are using CSS style sheets, you can make this headline unobtrusive on the page to the viewer, but you cannot make it invisible to them. Having an H1 Headline on each page (as long as they are all different) will multiply the good effect.
3. Image ALT TAGS - Every photo (and image of every kind) needs an ALT tag. This tag allows you to put pertinent text behind every single image on your page. Your viewers don't see this text, but Google does. It is a big mistake to simply copy and paste the same ALT tag into every picture - Google penalizes you for this. Make each picture "tell Google a story". Here's an example: <img src="all_thumbs/bath3a1.jpg" alt="Wyckoff Advertising - photography web design optimized wesbsite desgners catalogs brochures magazine ads trade ads printing" height="50" width="50" border="0">
4. Page Name - Every page in your website has a name. You can't do anything about the first page which is "index.html", but all the others have the potential to be named something that means something. Instead of "aboutus.html", try something like "truck_tires_in_chicago.html" (presuming, of course that you sell truck tires in Chicago, but you get the idea). When changing page names, you will have to revise your navigation buttons so they link properly, since they only know to look for the old page names. Some work? Yes. Worth it? Definitely!
5. Page Title - Every page has a title by default. Yours might be "Welcome to our website" or "Page 2". Both of these are meaningless to Google as far as knowing what your page (and your company) is about. Make each of your page titles different and informative and be sure to include the page-relevant keywords (including your location) in each one.
6. Body Text - Any page without at least 200 words of relevant, informative text is a waste of space as far as Google is concerned. 500 words or more is even better. It's not always easy to write a lot of text for every page, but it is worth the effort. A picture may be worth a thousand words to humans, but not to the Google spider! Write, write, write!
7. Keyword META TAG - Although not weighted heavily by Google (and today, the other search engines just don't count for much), it is still important to get this right. Keywords are misunderstood by most web designers. It is phrases and combinations of words that people type into Google. So, if you are a restaurant, having "food" as one of your keywords is useless. Instead be as specific as you can be. For instance, instead of "food", use "steak dinner in naperville". Nobody in their right mind would Google "food" if they wanted to go out to dinner... you get the idea. Use no more than 30 keyword phrases in your Keyword META TAG. After 30, Google starts to count them as spam. Not good.
8. Flash Animation and Splash Pages - Our best advice for websites that use animated front pages is simple: ditch them entirely and replace them with good ol' html. You can imagine that we've had some resistance to this idea, so we came up with a workaround. Create a plain html first page and embed it in your Flash page between <noflash> and </noflash>. It works almost as well as having a regular html front page.
9. Internal Links - Google puts a lot of weight on text links. And what they actually say is of high importance. So, while the buttons across the top or down the side of your site might read "company history", "contact us", etc., at the very bottom of each page should be a text-link directory that substitutes full descriptive sentences or phrases that link to these pages within your site.
10. DMOZ.ORG - DMOZ.org is a human-edited web reference site. Google places a very high trust in the DMOZ listing and gives a lot of weight to a site that gets listed there. There are no secrets to getting listed on DMOZ.org, just go there, find your best category and submit the site. The trouble is, it can take anywhere from a few months to a year to actually get in their database, since it is actually edited by humans who really visit and read you website. Be sure to pick the most relevant category and subcategory for your submission - and be patient. There is no penalty for re-submitting if you don't see yourself there in a couple of months.
|
