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Introduction
Following the tutorial published on February 3rd entitled ‘Internet Marketing Basics’, we move on now to planning a website designed to attract optimum traffic without breaking any of the stringent rules set by the major search engines; an increasing risk that many site owners and some less experienced search engine marketers are falling foul of.
Search Engines
Most visitors to a website will come from major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Search engines use a mathematical calculation programme called an algorithm to work out which pages are the most important. The understanding of these complex algorithms has spawned a whole new industry called SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Sadly, however, the internet has become the new‘Wild West’, and there are many snake-oil salesmen out there masquerading as search-engine optimisers.
Search Engine Optimisation
SEO, despite its complex nature, can be broken down into many smaller bite-sized pieces of logic. As a professional search-engine optimiser, I often get called in when a site is not performing well in the search engines.
It's such a shame that most people do not understand the basics that are needed; a beautifully well-designed site is no good at all if people can't find it!
Page Titles
The single most important element on your page for success online is the page title. Despite this fact, many people – professional designers and novices alike – get it wrong.
So what exactly is a page title? When you view a web page you use a browser like, for example, Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, AOL Browser etc. At the top of the browser you will see the page title, normally white text inside a blue bar.
You can also see the page title when you carry out a search-engine search. A search for the phrase ‘Staying in Wales’, for example, returns ‘stayinginwales.com’ in positions 1 & 2 in the listing page. (This may change many times a day, though, as Google run their 'Everflux' system, updating pages continuously.)
In the blue text above each result you can see the page titles, although the top two ‘staying in wales’ titles are purple as they have been visited. Also in the blue bar at the top of the page you will see the page title ‘staying in wales - google search’ clearly displayed.
For a moment, let’s compare a website to a book...
A book has a main title that runs down the spine telling you in general what the book is about. Inside that book will be a breakdown of content into chapters, each one with a specific title.
This is exactly how your website should be, save that in a website the titles go all the way down to page level! Every page on the web has a title element, and every page on your site should have a unique title that tells the viewer AND the search engine algorithm what that PAGE is about, NOT what the website is about.
The biggest mistake is to ignore the page title altogether; the second (and most common) is to use the same page title throughout the site. We have seen startling results for clients simply by carrying out keyword research and correcting poorly constructed page titles.
Page Titling
Time after time I see a website that has the same title for every page, such as ‘Cosy Side Hotel’ or the likes. Your title needs to represent what the page is all about, so ‘Family Bed & Breakfast Accommodation in Tenby at the Cosy Side Hotel’ is how it should read.
All other page titles should then be according to their content, e.g. the page containing your room rates shouldn’t carry the title ‘Prices’. It should read, for example, ‘Cheap B&B Prices at the Cosy Side Hotel Tenby’.
If someone types a search for ‘hotel Tenby’, your title contains that phrase. It also contains the words ‘cheap B&B Tenby’, ‘B&B Prices Tenby and ‘Cheap hotel Tenby’ to name a few.
Hopefully now you can see the importance of the page title, although it has to be said, that a page title alone will not guarantee you a position in the search results, but it will certainly help.
Keyword Research
One thing I hope you will have noticed is that you have to find out what people are searching for when looking for your service, and that is called keyword research, which is a whole new element.
We'll be covering this in the next month's tutorial.
End Note
Over the series of these tutorials I'll be covering everything from the basic stuff covered in the first tutorial, right through to the dark and shadowy aspects of Search Engine Optimisation, a process that ensures your site appears at the top of the search engines when people search.
Some of the items covered will be:
- Web site design packages
- Web site design best practices
- Making a site that sells
- Usability that improves your bookings
- General web marketing
- Making use of free directories
- Directory submitting help
- Building links to your site
- Getting more visitors
- Combining online and offline marketing
- Keyword research how to find what people are searching for
- Optimising your page titles for the search engines
- Structuring your site for best search engine ranking
- Email marketing
- Making the most of your visitors.
This is just a short list. I'll notify you of forthcoming articles as they appear. My aim is to help you with your online marketing, so feel free to ask me any questions you might have, and I'll answer them in the next edition.
J Christopher Edwards Bio
James Christopher Edwards is a highly respected search engine marketer whose clients include Adobe Inc in the USA and the Norwich Union Insurance Company in the UK. He specialises in the improvement of website revenue and moderates a number of international online forums dealing with this crucial subject. He also finds time to help small start-up businesses and charitable organisations to improve their search engine positioning. James, who is an ardent Welsh rubgy fan, has joined the Wales.info team to help promote Wales more energetically to UK, European and international visitor markets.
Tutorial Archives by James Christopher Edwards
>> Internet Marketing Basics : 3rd February 2006
>> Website Planning for Success : 1st March 2006
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