Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

Webmasters sometimes believe that they already know the “best” keywords for their website, or ecommerce store. Most of the time they are wrong, and here are some reasons why.

Your customers don’t know as much as you do about your products or business in general. They don’t know the terminology and they might use different keywords to search Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. For example, a recent study found out that many people search for nose job instead of the clinical term or keyword “rhinoplasty” resulting in lower quality results for the potential client, and less business for the doctor.

It’s very important that you find the right keywords to not only get you more traffic, but to get you the traffic that will convert into sales. For example, one keyword that seems to get the most traffic in the web design business in the Cleveland, Ohio area is Cleveland Web Design. This keyword alone gets us about 20 - 30 unique visitors a day. Unfortunately, the keyword phrase does not convert into sales. So, just because you may get traffic on a certain keyword, or phrase, doesn’t always mean it will convert. The reason being in this case is, 80% of the traffic we get is from our competition checking out our website.

Are you laying the groundwork with a designer to develop a new Web site for your company? Here’s a suggestion: ask the designer to use flash items sparingly. Granted most designers find animation and graphics to be an integral part of a nice looking Web site, but an overabundance of flash can hinder your site’s search engine optimization efforts.

You just can’t imagine what a disadvantage flash is with search engines – it is a top rankings killer! Although search engines are being able to index content inside a flash animation, keep your important information away from flash animation. A search engine may simply ignore the animation altogether.

Further complicating matters is the fact that your visitors may not be able to view your flash content. Your site must make accommodations to provide alternative content for when flash does not load properly. Other problems may arise as a result of using flash. Visitors will use their Web browser back button when viewing a flash animation to try to return to the Home page, but this process reloads the entire animation. There are many usability problems like this. A designer needs to keep these in mind when building a flash interface.

Ideally, your site content should open within 15 seconds. While flash can do a lot for your Web site’s presentation, from the SEO point of view it should be used sparingly – or not at all. If you must use flash, use it only on non-crucial content pages (http://www.blue2.com/art-03.htm).

Contact ATXWEBMASTERS in Cleveland, Ohio for more information on web design, ecommerce, email marketing, and of course, search engine optimization.