KAPSENBERG WEB DESIGN - SEO: the art of search engine optimization
The importance of search engine optimization. Suppose you have a company that rents out tour busses in San Francisco. You have a stunning looking website and you are waiting for the phones to ring. But the phones don't start ringing. What went wrong?
Keywords. Those words you typed in with Google are called keywords. Google will consider those words or phrases carefully and only show websites that match them the best.
Google rating. Try for yourself if Google or other search engines, like Bing and Yahoo will show your website. Imagine you are looking for the goods, services or information you offer. Think of the keywords potential clients or customers will use to find you and check if the search engines show your website. Are you visible on the first page, the second or not at all?
Why is Google not showing your website on the first page? Google and other search engines keep it a secret on which grounds it decides to show websites and in which order. They also change their strategy frequently.
SEO or search engine optimization. There are ways to influence the search engines. The easiest is to bribe them and pay for advertisements. You will show up on top, before all others, or on the right side of the page. Personally I always ignore them and far more effective is to adapt your site so Google finds it attractive enough to mentioning it on its own. It is the task of a good website designer to optimize the website for the search engines.
How do you optimize your website? One of the core issues is making your website rich in keywords. Mention them frequently in your text. Ask your website designer to use them as well in the coding, the programming the website designer writes to create the website. For example each image has a name. This name is normally not visible for the visitors, but Google does read it in the coding and if it contains one of the keywords it will give the website a higher ranking. This is just one example of how your website designer can adapt the coding to make your web site more important for the search engines (SEO) and one step closer to be mentioned on the first page.
Templates. Many website are based on templates. Templates are pre-programmed pieces of software you and website designers can use to built your site. You only have to fill in your text and off you go. They are cheap and quick. They may look great, but the code is not optimized for getting a good Google ranking. If your website doesn't show up with Google it might be better to get rid of that template and ask a website designer to program a custom made website completely optimized for search engines.
Google is partly blind. Ok, now your website is rich in keywords inside the text and coding, but you are still overlooked by Google & Co. The next step is to take care that Google sees all the information you write. The search engines don't "see" websites like we people. For instance, they can't see flash movies, like we do. They only read the coding. They can't follow drop-down menus and won't follow the links leading to the other pages. They don't see images, which might contain text, but only read their names. Does this mean you can't use these website elements? No, a good website designer knows how to show the search engines the information they can't "see". Having said that, I have seen many websites that were nearly "invisible" for Google and therefore completely unnoticed by the potential clients.
Effectiveness of the website. Of course I only mentioned a few issues concerning website optimization. It is more complicated than that and is not finished after the completion of the site. Once the site is up and running you best test the effectiveness of your site and keep an eye on the search engine (SEO) ranking. Are the keywords you used leading to more hits? Are you attracting the right customers?
Website analytics. Every website designer can show you which pages were visited and how long. What keywords did visitors use to find your website? Maybe the above mentioned bus company's website only attracts visitors that wanted to hire a school bus and you wanted to push renting out your new tour bus for longer trips? In that case the website isn't effective.
It is also interesting to know which pages the visitors looked on afterwards. Did they go to the contact page or did they jump away immediately? If you are not satisfied with the results it is time to change the website.
Google analytics. Google analytics and other software could give you a good inside in the function of your site. Be aware that Google analytics is a so-called third party software (after your website and the visitor) and can be blocked nowadays by the new browsers. Still it gives you a good idea how effective your website is functioning. With these results in your hand you can fine tune your website in text and code to get the best and most effective website optimization.
Kapsenberg Design takes care of your website optimization. We only design custom made websites. We will analyze why you need your website, what you want to push. We will help you find the keywords that emphasis your strong points, give your clients reasons to buy your goods or services or read the information you provide and won't stop when the website is launched. Together we will make your website not only eye catching, but also effective and successful. Maybe a good reason to jump now to our contact page and set up an appointment to discuss your future website or call (530) 229 1621 and ask for Barbara Kapsenberg.