This is live coverage of SES Munich 2007 by Gilad of SearchMarketing.co.il contributed to the Search Engine Roundtable conferences coverage series.
Tim presents Shari Thurow, webmaster / Marketing director from GrantasticDesigns.com , actually reads most of her bio from here - http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/munich07/sthurow.html
Define a search engine friendly web design – search engine design is NOT: - A user friendly web design that can be easily accessed by end users, users are primary. - Human based search engines and crawler based SE are secondary.
5 basic rules of web design: - Easy to read - Easy to navigate – where am I? give the user a sense of place. - Easy to find - Consistent layout and design. - Quick to download All in all: EASY TO USE The focus of this presentation: Easy to find, what/where should it be easy to find?
- On search engines, web directories, industry related sites. - User lands directly to the relevant page, where am I? - Within 7-8 clicks, preferably less, as long as – scent of information, where can I go? Use KW focus to find user's goal. - Put the most Important information above the fold (shows an example) - Contact Information – Users look for it, don't hide it.
How search engines work? (Shari: this is the most important slide here) : - Index text (all crawlers. On page criteria) - Follow Links (all crawlers. On page criteria, I guess she means Internal links) - Measure popularity (off the page criteria)
All 3 components are Important.
The biggest mistake in SEO – promote the site AFTER the design and the site's launch, instead you should practice SEO as early as possible.
What kind of text to pay attention to? - The words your target audience is typing into search queries - When visitors view a web page, does the content appears to be focused (Title, heading, Introducery, Conclusion, shows an example)
Primary VS. Secondary text: Primary – Titles, Visible
,Top text (including header), In and around hyper text links Secondary: Meta tags, Alternative text, Domain and file nameIf you have the time – do both, If you don't – focus on Primary.
Link component: - site navigation scheme - cross linking - type of web page - text anchor links - URL structure
Types of site navigation from most friendly to non friendly: - Text links - Navigation buttons - Image maps - Menus (form and DHTML) - Flash
Shows navigation and sitemap samples.
Informational Pages - What is the target audience interested in? - Do not use a lot of sale hype but rather factual information - Spider friendly pages - Often have simple layout - Visually match the rest of the web site
Doorway pages - Pages that rank but usually don't sell - Extra clicks and/or redirects - Often reside on different server - Poor quality link development - End user and SE don't see the same page
Tips from samples: Create an Industry Glossary, use Call to action, show locations and contact details, use relevant cross links.
Shari shows some non recommended methods – Hallway pages, directory information pages, shadow domains, channel pages and more.
Link component summary: - provide access and relevancy - use at least two forms of navigation - use text links effectively - spider friendly URLS - Usability counts
Popularity - Number of links - Quality links - Number of times people click - How long end users visit the site - How often people returns to a site First two apply to ranking, other 3 don’t, at least not yet
Check if your site visitors: - continue navigating the site - link to the site - bookmark the site - return to the site - Answered YES? Popularity is going up, NO – going down.
Popularity component summary: - quality is far more important then quantity - high quality links takes time - Usability counts
More basic samples – alt tags, title tag, splash pages, flash usage
Conclusion – Pay attention to Human based percpective : easy to read, easy to navigate, easy to find, consistent layout, easy to download.
Crawler based: kw rich text, site & page architecture, high quality link development
Q&A
Mostly basics, Sari speaks about her book, writing a second one
Disclaimer- Sorry for any grammar or other mistakes…
Gilad, SearchMarketing.co.il
