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  • Importance of a SE Friendly Website

    SiteProNews: August 21, 2006 Feature Article

    Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
    HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html


    The Importance Of Sound Website Design & Search Spiders To Internet Marketers
    By James Opiko (c) 2006

    Google currently is reported to have indexed 8 billion pages
    and counting. Google utilizes an array of bots A.K.A. spiders
    or crawlers.

    Among the specialized bots Google uses include: The web spider
    Googlebot, the Adsense spider MediaBot, the image spider
    ImageBot, the AdWords spider AdsBot, the RSS feed spider
    FeedFetcher-Google, and Googlebot-Mobile spider for mobile
    devices. MSN & Yahoo, the other two of the 'big three' have
    their own proprietary versions of spiders.

    Why is it important for an Internet Marketer to know how
    spiders crawl your website?

    A search engine crawler is your best visitor. Giving a crawler
    easy and uninhibited movement in your website is necessary for
    good search engine rankings.

    Your website must be spider (search engine) friendly if you
    want any traffic from the search engines. A search engine
    spider does not read your website the way we humans do. The
    spider reads web-page source code (HTML) that renders your
    page, therefore 'bad code' can be an impediment to the spider,
    sometimes causing it to give up crawling your website.

    Spiders love content (text) and do not read JavaScript at all,
    therefore a website that is packed with images with no ALT tags
    to assist the spiders, and heaps of JavaScript may not be
    indexed successfully. So, when designing your website you must
    incorporate structural website design principals that elicit
    search engine friendliness.

    An astute marketer should also desire to see how search engines
    see his or her site. This may be accomplished by a Lynx Viewer
    which is a text-mode web browser. Additionally, a Lynx Viewer
    can help you determine if your web pages are accessible to the
    vision impaired, an assemblage of visitors that should not be
    ignored ---yes, there are millions of visually impaired people
    surfing the Internet regularly.

    A quick search in Google for "Lynx Viewer" will yield numerous
    sources from which you can download this important tool for
    your use.

    Even though you must design your website with your visitors in
    mind first, it is crucial that you accord the search engines
    top level priority too, since the vast majority of these
    visitors will arrive via search engines. Practice good SEO
    (Search Engine Optimization) but not at the expense of your
    visitors' experience -- it is a balancing act that must be
    accomplished with prudence.

    Also of significant importance is the fact that web browser
    standards are not yet fully harmonized. A web page that looks
    great in Internet Explorer might look atrocious in a Mozilla
    based browser like Firefox or Netscape. Additionally, with the
    proliferation of hand held devices for browsing the Internet,
    compliance with W3C standards is becoming more and more
    critical. A marketer must therefore be conversant with the
    intricacies of cross-browser design -- designing for one
    browser (IE) is no longer ideal, as the Google backed FireFox
    is eating up Microsoft’s browser turf at an alarming rate.

    Anybody can "whip up" a web page in FrontPage without
    sufficient knowledge of HTML, but may not be able detect and
    correct the messy code that FrontPage generates underneath the
    page, some of which is proprietary to Microsoft. Consequently a
    website that looks superb in Microsoft Internet Explorer may
    look and load dreadfully in Opera and/or some other browser,
    denying you visitor traffic.

    Never use a Word Processor to design your website. Word
    Processing software generates tremendous amounts of code that is
    not search engine friendly. If you cannot hand-code using a text
    editor then it is necessary that you use authentic and industry
    standard web design software that incorporate the most up to
    date design principles. Macromedia's Dreamweaver and the latest
    version of Microsoft FrontPage are good candidates with
    Dreamweaver getting my partisan nod.

    A first-rate design strategy should include the use of CSS
    (Cascading Style Sheets) and valid XHTML, the most current in
    the HTML generation of standards. Websites designed in strict
    W3C standards tend to be lighter, faster and cross-browser
    compatible. This is not to insinuate that table based design is
    going anywhere anytime soon, for it is my humble disputation
    that if strict W3C standards were to be enforced in browsers,
    95% percent of websites would go out of business, furthermore
    the lack of inter-browser synchronization just worsens things.

    According to some surveys, more than 86% of all people arrive
    at websites through search engines. In 2006, PC World, arguably
    the most authoritative and widely-read computer and business
    magazine, reports that Google remains the site of choice for
    most surfers.

    "The double-digit increase in online search activity marks a
    significant milestone in the evolution of Internet consumer
    behavior," says Ken Cassar, senior director of analytics at
    Nielsen/NetRatings. "Online search is the primary tool most
    people rely on to do everyday research," he says.

    So, from a marketing perspective unless your site appears in
    the top 30 listings of the major search engines & directories,
    you will hardly get any worthwhile traffic. Therefore, Search
    Engine Positioning is vital to your marketing success on the
    web!

    A top ranking in the search engines can bring you highly
    targeted traffic. If someone visits your site after searching
    for a product or service that you are selling, it means that
    he/she is interested in what you are selling and hence is a
    potential customer for you. Thus, search engines send
    pre-qualified customers to you.

    You can sell virtually anything on the Internet, but in order
    to succeed you must bring "targeted traffic" to your
    website....people who are ready to buy your products and
    services, the vast majority of who will arrive at your website
    through search engines. If your website is not designed
    suitably, Google and other search engines will disrespect your
    website. Respect brings in traffic which translates into the
    all important Dollars, "Kwacha," Euro or whatever you wish to
    call money.

    Remember, search engine bots are your most important visitors,
    you must seduce, "open your doors" and accommodate them in
    order to gain any measurable success in your Internet Marketing
    endeavor.
    ================================================== ==============
    James Opiko owns http://www.AfroArticles.com, an article
    marketing directory. Dig here -
    http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Category/SEO/239
    AND here: http://www.apondosystems.com/marketing/
    Articles-on-Search-Engine-Positioning/ for more articles on
    Search Engine Positioning
    ================================================== ==============


    Copyright © 2006 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.
    Beth
    A Child's Palace - Pinata Palace - Moxie Enterprises

    SEO and Marketing Tools
    SEO - The Basics

  • #2
    Re: Importance of a SE Friendly Website

    Very good article Beth!
    At a future date I will be having a database that will have pass word/login protection, presumably the search engines won’t be able to access this part of the site nor is there a way for them to crawl this area & still keep the security of the pass word/login area. There must be lots of sites that have this dilemma & I wonder how they get round this type of problem. If at all. Some sites are totally password protected & i am not sure how they get rated. But I am glad to have read some of yours & other articles before I go properly live with my site. It’s a good learning curve to where we go wrong.
    (And a pain in the backside as well) But still enjoyable.

    Chris.
    Regards Chris.

    Collectables, Collecting, collectors-info.com

    www.chrismorris.co.uk

    House build project

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Importance of a SE Friendly Website

      I suggest you only password protect necessary pages - not all pages - give your home page and some very well written pages about the product/service the full treatment - then - for ordering, or whatever, have members enter the password protected area. That way you can still get the se's sending you traffic and potential new customers.
      Beth
      A Child's Palace - Pinata Palace - Moxie Enterprises

      SEO and Marketing Tools
      SEO - The Basics

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Importance of a SE Friendly Website

        Originally posted by Bethers
        I suggest you only password protect necessary pages - not all pages - give your home page and some very well written pages about the product/service the full treatment - then - for ordering, or whatever, have members enter the password protected area. That way you can still get the se's sending you traffic and potential new customers.
        Thanks Beth. Glad I am still building & getting used to web sites in a practice mode & not gone in head 1st. Have a nice list of rules to go by when I hope to start building the site for real. Building a personal site is fine, but to earn a small income is something else.

        Thanks

        Chris.
        Regards Chris.

        Collectables, Collecting, collectors-info.com

        www.chrismorris.co.uk

        House build project

        Comment

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