Introduction
Welcome to our February newsletter. We hope you ended 2009 on a high note and are on your way to a successful 2010. This month Celeste Coudron, one our newest team members, discusses some of the basics of search engine optimization (or SEO). While Rivertown’s primary products are custom e-learning systems and video training programs, we are often asked to develop related websites. We program our sites to be as visible to search engines as possible using basic, accepted techniques. For more exotic (and potentially risky) optimization techniques we recommend contacting a specialized company. We can provide referrals to a local provider if needed.
Robb Jacobs
President
Rivertown Communications, Inc.
SEO for Web Owners
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes the techniques and practices used to make websites visible to search engines. Search engines use robots or “spiders” that “crawl” (search) websites in order to gather information. They use this information to indentify key search words. When a user types these words in a search engine, websites “magically” appear because the search engine has associated those words with those websites. It sounds easier than it really is. Differences in the way various search engine spiders work and ever-changing technology are just two factors that contribute to SEO unpredictability. Thus, an entire industry has sprung up around SEO, producing businesses whose sole purpose is to make their client’s website visible to search engines. Many of the “experts” disagree on SEO techniques. A web owner and even a web developer must work hard at SEO to keep in step with changes and gain some measure of success in applying SEO practices. Fortunately, there is a wealth of advice that’s available to anyone who’s willing to take the time to research SEO on the web.
Most experts agree that it is important to use “keywords” throughout the content of one’s website. Keywords are simply the words that an online user might type into a search engine to bring up the products or services they are searching for. However, it can be challenging for the web owner to know what words people are going to use. There are web-based tools (some for free) that help the web owner come up with their own site-specific keywords. Just go to a search engine and type in “keywords”. Even with a list of keywords in hand, it can be daunting to know when, where and how to include them. A website contains far more than what appears on the surface. There are meta tags, meta description tags, meta keywords tags, title tags, alt attribute tags, image ALT tags . . . and more, all hidden in the website's source code. There are page titles, headlines, linked text, content text, file names, directories, anchor text, and image tags, which amounts to a complexity of places to include keywords. A web owner may want to enlist the help of a professional web developer in order to correctly format and include keywords in all of these places.
Links to and especially from other websites is another way that many experts say increase website rankings. The reasoning is that the more sites that choose to link to yours, the more relevant your site is. On outgoing links, it would seem that a web owner could not go wrong by linking to a huge number of sites. However, some experts believe it’s better to link to a smaller number of “authoritative” sites than a huge number of “non-authoritative” sites. Authoritative sites are sites that have a higher Page Rank (PR). PR is a ranking system that indicates how important a website is on the web by the number assigned to it by a search engine. The relevancy of a site is another factor to consider before linking to it. Relevant sites are sites that you have a legitimate, logical reason to link to. To learn more about linking just type “website linking” into a search engine. Help will be a click away.
A third area that is becoming recognized as generating a good search engine placement is how fast the home page loads. The faster the better! According to Google, a page is considered slow-loading when it exceeds the regional average by three seconds. The regional average is based on the geographical location of the host server. When a page’s load time is faster than the average, the page’s rank score is affected positively. Page content and redirects are some factors that can slow down a page’s load time. (Redirects automatically send a site visitor to another Internet location.) Contacting one’s service provider to discuss improving load time and compressing the size of a page are steps that can be taken to speed up load time. Google’s tool to test page speed is at http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/.
Here are just a few more suggestions for improving page rank. Include your web address on all correspondence, such as business cards, letterhead, newsletters, etc. This encourages your contacts to go to the website. Hits to a site count for page rank. As a web owner, don’t become discouraged if your website isn’t as visible to search engines as you would like it to be in the beginning. Search engine rank actually improves as a site ages. Registering your site’s URL (web address) with search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing is another good idea. This can be done free of charge and doesn’t take a lot of time.
For the web owner or prospective web owner, awareness is the starting point of SEO. The acronym of SEO can also be construed as, “Seize Every Opportunity”. Seize every opportunity to learn about Search Engine Optimization. Every web owner’s goal is to have their website be the valuable tool for which it was created. The role of SEO in facilitating this goal is undeniably an important one.
About Rivertown
Since 1991 Rivertown Communications, Inc. has been designing and developing custom e-learning systems and websites. Our clients range in size from small, single office organizations to global corporations. For more information on our services, click below:
E-learning systems Custom design and development, including learning management systems
Compass Plus™ Online survey tool to get the data you need
Video production To integrate into e-learning or stream from the web
Websites Learning sites - accessible and Section 508 compliant
If you are currently in the planning stages of a technology-based training or marketing program, call us. We would be glad to meet with you to explore how we might partner with you to help develop your program.
Initial meetings are always without cost or obligation and we genuinely enjoy getting to know new people and organizations.
Rivertown Communications - 651.430.0353 - Stillwater, Minnesota |
Rivertown
Communications
651.430.0353
Stillwater,
Minnesota
Future Topics:
360-degree assessment surveys to target learning
Language trends in Minnesota as related to training
Developing accessible e-learning and websites
Managing the gap - The art of presentation/
application/feedback |
