Websites Under Your Control Blog

We concluded our blog post on July 6 with the caution that "Google can get pretty cranky when you try to trick them" and included a link to a CNN article from a few years ago where it was reported that Google delisted websites owned by the auto manufacturer BMW for attempting to manipulate Google results.

Barely two weeks later, it strikes here in Frisco.

It seems that a perhaps less-than-reputable "search engine optimization" company visited and told a website owner they could hide key words by putting them in white text on a white background, and Google would index the words and thus garner additional search engine results for the extra key words.

Next thing you know, an email from Google shows up...

Sure enough, a Google search revealed no entries at all for the website, which was previously prominent on the first page of numerous Google searches...

The message

Sites built correctly, with meaningful titles, headlines, and content that addresses the visitors' interests will get good results. 

If you are doing anything to try and "trick" the search engines, it will backfire.

Think about it: Google didn't get to be a $150 billion business without at least enough smarts to detect such tricks.

31. More than 10 pages, but no Search
32. Built using software not designed for making websites
33. Most links simply say "click here"
34. Attachments can't be displayed for users who don't own Microsoft Word
35. The published email contact doesn't use the business domain name
36. There is a screen-grab of a MapQuest or Google map on your site
37. Every title on every page says the same thing
38. www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com don't result in the same page
39. Won't display correctly on an iPad or iPhone
40. Garish colors and irrelevant animation
41. Customers have to register before they can buy anything
42. Visitors have to look on a separate page to find out the phone number
43. It takes 5-6 clicks to reach some pages
44. Website traffic and analysis isn't readily available to the site owner
45. The blog is at a different website like yourname.blogwebsite.com
46. Designed for the business owner, not the customers and prospects
47. The business doesn't even have a website

16. Talking characters walking around the screen
17. Uses fonts not commonly installed on most computers
18. Online sales send customers' credit card info by email
19. Links to other sites that no longer work
20. The site navigation is hidden in ways that people can't see what is offered
21. Visitors have to use an external service to sign up for the newsletter
22. Out-of-date information
23. The site uses "frames" and the site URL never changes
24. Much of the text on the site is in an image
25. Web forms ask more questions than are absolutely critical
26. Built using web design software not even made anymore
27. It takes more than 3-4 seconds on the home page to figure out what the business does
28. The site is all or mostly done with Flash
29. The site was last updated in 2006
30. Justified text

 

1. Designed for 800x600 screens, popular in the late 1990s...
2. Only the web developer can make changes or add a page to the website.
3. The title bar for the home page says "Untitled Document"
4. Built using cheap web page design software not compatible with modern browsers
5. Visitors can't sign up for a newsletter on the website
6. A splash page that people have to wait through or click to bypass
7. Blinking or moving text
8. Pop up windows
9. Intro text saying "Welcome to our website"
10. Music that starts by itself
11. The "free" software used to make the site function keeps requiring changes and plugins
12. The kid who built the website can't be located
13. Has hidden text to try and fool Google
14. The technical stuff was obviously done by an artist
15. The graphics stuff was obviously done by a techie

Stay tuned -- more to come!

30 Seconds -- that's all you have!

Scientific studies and our own server statistics on hundreds of thousands of web page visits agree -- visitors who don't leave the page immediately will spend roughly 30 seconds on a web page, and it doesn't matter all that much if you double or triple the amount of text.

Adult reading speed is about 250 - 300 words a minute, so there is only time for the interested visitor to read about 125 - 150 words on your web page (which, if about average, has around 600 words).

How do readers learn anything when they read only 20% of the words?

By being very selective. They scan down the left side of a page very quickly for topics that catch their attention and spend most of their time in those topics. 

The eye tracking chart here, from web usability guru Jakob Nielsen, shows results that have been repeated in numerous studies.

7 Tips for getting your message across in 30 seconds...

1. Keep it short. If people will only read around 100-150 words, don't write 1500 words.
2. Stay above the fold.  80% of reader attention is in what they can see without scrolling, on pages too long to fit.
3. Skip the blah blah. Don't waste valuable space with meaningless filler text.
4. Use lists and bullet points to focus attention on key points.
5. Put key words at the beginning since readers scan down the left side to decide where to focus attention.
6. Use interesting, descriptive headlines, followed by short paragraphs.
7. Link to other pages with meaningful "anchor text" to both grab the readers' attention with the link itself, and to move longer narratives off the page.

What is "anchor text"? It's the text the reader sees in a link. Your reader (and Google) will pay more attention to a link that is descriptive such as "headlines are crucial for search engines" rather than "click here for more" or http://txzz.com/06. 

If you are using our Online Business Partner, just highlight the text you want to use as your anchor text while in the editor, click the link manager, and select the page you want to link.

We get asked repeatedly about adding "meta tags" to websites, usually the "keywords" meta tag.

Let's deal with the myth first. Meta tags don't help your search results in Google.  Period, stop, done, over and out.

All the major search engines stopped looking at the keyword tag in 1997, when the "adult" website industry started stuffing innocuous but popular search phrases into their website meta tag keywords, to hijack searches.

The only meta tag that Google looks at that we care about today is the description tag.

How is the description tag used? Google will randomly select snippets of text from your web page and display that as the text in their search results.

If you add a description tag, then Google will throw that description into the mix, along with whatever random snippets it finds on your page.

That's all. It won't boost your ranking at all.

According to Google's Matt Cutts, "Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking."

So, meta tag keywords? Don't waste your time. 

Meta tag description? As a low-priority task, put some creative and compelling text there, and it will show up once in a while in Google's results.

To add text to the description meta tag (or the keywords tag, if you really want to cover all bases), just click on "Add meta data to Web Page" link in your Online Business Partner page editor.

Then, type the text you want to be occasionally used by Google when it displays your page in search results, and click "Publish".  You are done.

(If you're not using our Online Business Partner, check with your webmaster, who will be able to revise your site to add a description tag.)

This won't get you higher up on Google, but it will give you a chance to provide one more bit of compelling text, so when people see it, they won't be able to resist clicking on your link in Google!

(Of course, don't fib. Google can get pretty cranky when you try to trick them!)

We get asked occasionally about optimizing for Yahoo, Bing, and others, rather than Google.

As with any expenditure of time and money, you have to decide where to do your spending.

As of today, Google owns the search world, without question. As you can see from the following graph, Google has 85%, Yahoo and Bing split 10%, Baidu (Chinese language search engine) has 3%, and the remaining 2% is divided among thousands of search engines competing for the crumbs... so why even think about anything other than Google? Go where the searchers go!

Source: NetMarketShare

 

The purpose of search engine optimization is to get traffic to your pages, but your site must be written and formatted for those who visit.

Your headlines serve both purposes. The visual formatting makes the headlines stand out to your visitors. The designation of some text as a headline (using "heading tags") makes it stand out to Google and other search engines. For both, the headlines make it immediately obvious what topics are covered on your page.

How to make a headline

Headline levels, defined using "heading tags," can be numbered from 1 to 6, with 1 being the most important in terms of indexing.

For best results, place the main topic of your page in "heading 1" tags, and the subtopics in "heading 2" tags. If you care about Google showing the page, use words in the headlines that your visitors are likely to search for.  For example, a headline such as About Our Company informs your human visitors what is to follow, but a headline that says you are a company "serving the needs of North Texans needing ambulatory and wheelchair transport" is more informative, and certainly helped Preston Trail Transport to reach the first page of Google. Notice how it tells what they do, and where they do it.

If you use our Online Business Partner^® service, just log in and open your page, click in the relevant text, and click to set the heading in the tool bar. Otherwise, contact your webmaster with your instructions.

The bottom line: Optimize your pages with well-written content that uses important keyword phrasing in the headlines. It is one of the easiest ways to improve your search engine results.

Someone defined "insanity" as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

If you try that in Google, you might actually get those different results - but don't worry, it's not you!

A few days ago we blogged about the need for titles on web pages, and while doing so, we searched for a handful of different phrases to find the most illustrative example for our screen shots.

First we searched for "health insurance frisco tx" and then "physical therapy frisco tx" before finding what we wanted when searching for "pizza frisco tx."

On the third search, we saw Google results that included items from the previous searches, totally unrelated to "pizza." See the screen shot at the right.

(The screen shot was fortunate, because trying to replicate this several times resulted in a different set of links each time.)

So no, you are not losing touch with reality -- Google really does vary its results on one search based on what you searched for previously.

This means that your results will vary from one search to another even on the same topic, and if you are on the phone with someone telling them to Google something, their results might very well vary from yours, even at the same time.

 

In website terminology, the "title" is the text that appears at the very top of your browser window when you visit a web page, such as the white text in the blue Internet Explorer window shown here. In tabbed browsers, the page title also appears in the tab.

It's not merely cosmetic!

Search engines use the title as the most significant indicator of what that web page is about, and also as the headline for your entry in their search results.

Note the entry for Palio's on the first page in Google for a search I did for "pizza frisco tx"...



Don't leave your web page with a nondescript title like "home page" -- make it meaningful, and include the 3-5 words that your ideal customers are most like to search for, and you will dramatically improve your search engine visibility!

How you set the title on your website will depend on what tools you have at your disposal to make changes.

If, like Palio's, you are using our Online Business Partner®, just login, go to the web page details screen, and type in the title -- that's all there is to it! (Not using our service? Check with your webmaster for an estimate for changing the title on each page.)

(By the way, Palio's makes awesome pizza, voted best in Frisco! Go visit, and tell 'em we sent you!)