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Friday, January 30, 2004 11:45 AM

Here's some great info regarding what the common mistakes are in developing a search engine friendly website. It covers all the main topics such as the title tags, body copy, excessive code, and targeting the wrong keywords.

Top Site Clinic Problems

by Christine Churchill

Bad Title Tags

I would have thought that the importance of good Title tags had been drilled into every Webmaster in the world, but I can't remember a Site Clinic yet where we didn't encounter at least one site with poor Title tags.

Title tags continue to be the most important item on your page. They tell the search engines and human visitors what the web page is all about. The contents of the Title tag are what you see at the top of the web page in your browser and are the first text you see in the listings on the search engine's results page. An eye-catching title can get the searcher's attention when they scan through the results.

One of the most common errors related to the Title tag is just sticking the company name in it or using the same Title on every page. We've even seen sites that left their Title tags completely blank or simply "Title." Remember - each page on the site should have a unique title.

Lack of Visible Copy

The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" isn't true when it comes to search engines. Search engines can't read text embedded in a graphic. You need visible copy on the page for the search engine to be able to know what your site is all about.

A general guideline when it comes to page copy is to include at least 200 relevant, plain-text words on each page. You need at least this much to elegantly insert your vital keywords without diminishing the quality of your marketing copy.

Lack of Relevant Links

Repeat after me: "No links equals no rank." Competition has raised the bar for getting a good ranking. Now you need relevant links from sites in a related field.

A few years ago it was possible to get a good ranking by just adding keywords to the page, but now all the major search engines include link analysis as part of the ranking process. If you want a search engine to consider your site important for a keyword phrase, get listed in major directories or find friendly sites that already rank well for that keyword phrase and negotiate a link from them. Links from your nephew's hobby site aren't going to help you much (unless, of course, your site is about the same hobby).

Query-string Overkill

Getting feedback on how consumers navigate your site is valuable information, but it shouldn't be done at the expense of your search engine presence. When you start using long tracking codes and session IDs in your URLs, you risk having your pages not picked up by the search engines.

Bad HTML and Broken Links

Many people believe that if a site looks correct in a browser then the HTML must be valid. This is not true. Internet Explorer is a very forgiving browser, but search engines are not as forgiving. They may skip the error (and with it large sections of your page) or they may just leave your page when they encounter an error. Either way, this is not an ideal situation. The easiest fix is to run an HTML validator (like the W3C's <http://validator.w3.org/> or NetMechanic's
<http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm) over the site and fix the errors.

In addition, if your page has bad links, neither the human visitor nor the search engine spider can follow them. Plus, your visitors may lose confidence in your company. The best advice is to run a link checker every week.

Excessive Code

Losing 10 pounds is on everyone's New Year's Resolutions list - including your web sites! Want to know the fastest way to put your site on a diet? Use an external cascading style sheet (CSS). Font tags have been discouraged for years, but many WYSIWYG editors (FrontPage included) stick them everywhere. That alone ought to be good reason to motivate you to learn HTML.

If you're not familiar with CSS, there are a number of good reference sites out there. My two favorites are WebMonkey and my dear friend Brian Wilson's site, "Index Dot CSS" .

Excessive code can also manifest itself in the form of long JavaScript. Instead of having line after line of JavaScript in your web page, place it in an external file and link to it. Removing it from your page trims down the file size, reduces download time, and keeps the JavaScript from pushing your main content down the page.

Targeting the Wrong Keywords

Some Webmasters choose keywords without doing any analysis. This is a mistake that can cost money.

If your company sells "widgets" but the consumer refers to your product as "wagets," you have a problem. You have to speak the same language as your target market and include "wagets" in your web page
copy. If you hire a search engine marketing company and they don't
talk about doing a keyword analysis as the first step, then you need to hire a different firm.

Look at the Big Picture

Many times we get so focused on the other aspects of our web site (e.g., design, color, marketing copy) that we forget to step back and take in the larger view. Even the best of sites, Fortune 500 ones included, can suffer from problems like these. Take the time to review your site and you will be able to reap the rewards.

Christine Churchill
KeyRelevance
Focused, Relevant Search Engine Marketing http://www.keyrelevance.com

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