Websites in the Desert

This may be a slight exaggeration but here goes: 90 percent of all small business websites will never get found on search engines. The number is not based on a scientific gathering of data but we did take a pretty big sample.  To be clear we are not talking about typing in your company name and finding you. That’s easy and only allows customers that already know you to find you.

Finding New Customers

The real power of Internet Marketing is having a customer who has never heard of your business find you. Let’s clarify. Say the name of your company is “Florida Business Blue” and you make blue widgets. You hire a web developer to build you a web site, you struggle over the colors, the words in the top navigation, and of course your logo. A few weeks later you have a website. Now the magic is suppose to happen, new customers start calling. But the phone never rings.

Website Building versus Search Engines Optimization
Here’s the rub, most web developers don’t know anything about search engines. Building a website and getting it found by searchers on Google, Yahoo, or MSN are two different skill sets. Even many people who try to sell you “Search Engine Optimization” as a service don’t really know what they are doing.

Website Rescue – 3 Easy Fixes

Here are three common mistakes you can find on most small business websites and how to fix them.

1. Page Titles

Mistake: All the web pages are titled with your Company Name.

As you browse a website take a look at the page title. The title appears in the top of your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox). 

The page title is generated by html and looks like this:

<title>Florida Business Blue</title>

On many websites you will see that the title is the company’s name and that it appears on almost every page of the website.  This is great if you only want people who are searching on “Florida Business Blue” to find you. But if you want to get found by people searching on the phrase “Blue Widgets” you’d better change that page title to “Blue Widgets”

The Fix:
Each page on your site should have a unique title and description. The title should contain only one key phrase and should be a maximum of about 5 to 7 words.

Avoid the temptation to add extra words or your company name to the title. Our company name is “Net Builders” but if you go to http://www.netbuilders.com you will see that our home page is titled “Florida Internet Marketing”. And if you search on that phrase on Google you should see netbuilders.com on page 1 of the results.

In HTML:
A title looks like this:

<title>Blue Widgets</title>

A description looks likes this

<meta name=”description” content=”Quality blue widgets made in America for use in flux capacitors, and warp drives” />

Descriptions should be a maximum of 2 sentences. Note that the description is what most search engines will display below the page title. For that reason it should be concise so that a user can instantly know what the page is about.

2. Graphics and Images

Mistake: The information about your product, service, or company is contained in an image (e.g. jpg, gif, png files).

About a year ago Net Builders was asked to evaluate a website about learning to speak Chinese. The site owners wanted to know what they could do to show up in search results.

In 10 seconds we knew the problem. Almost every word on the page was contained in images. Search engines cannot read words in images. To a search engine an image is a blank slate.

The Fix:
Use images sparingly. Content (words) should be text.

Notes: If your use of images is an attempt to create a certain look on the page consider using a colored background or background image. A skilled web developer can give you the look you want and make your pages readable by search engines.

3. Links

Mistake: The links to pages on your site contain multiple segments with specials characters such as “?, &, =”.

Note: this problem normally only appears on websites that are dynamic. Meaning that the content is stored in a database. These sites are built with either a custom built tool or a web publishing tool.

Here is an example of a problem Link (AKA a URL)

‘www.someboatstore.com/product.asp?
urll=Marine_Antennas_AM_FM&categoryid=Electronics
&subcat1=Antennas&subcat2=AM%20/%20FM’

In most cases search engines will not follow links like this. Meaning that the search engine will not record the page or any of the information on it.  This type of Link is “not search engine friendly”.

The Specific Problem: The link contains multiple segments that include special characters.  Search engines will typically follow a link that includes one (maybe two) segments that include strings like “&categoryid=electronics” but in most cases the search engine will give up after one of these segments.

The Fix:
Generate Links that do not include special characters. Here is an example of a search engine friendly URL.

‘www.someboatstore.com/products/marine_antennas/
electronics/am_fm’

These days most web publishing tools will automatically generate search engine friendly links but it is critical that you confirm this before you commit to a tool. In some cases you have to select the option “Generate Search Engine Friendly URLs”.

The Wrap Up
Avoiding these three simple mistakes can put you on the road to getting found in natural search results. That’s the goal, people search for the product or service you provide, they find you, and you get a new customer.

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