Is your website optimized for search engines?

If your answer is ‘I don’t know’… chances are that means it’s not. Unfortunately, unless you know your way around html or have researched search engine optimization, it’s difficult to know if your website is optimized. As a website designer, I am constantly thinking about creating websites from a search-engine-friendly perspective. I try not to push additional services onto my clients, however, I am very familiar with optimizing for web and have had great success with improving organic search results. Some of the things to consider for optimizing your website for search engines are the following:

• Meta tags – particularly the keywords and description. You can see if you website has these important meta tags by right-clicking on the background of your website and selecting ‘view source’. Do a search for ‘keywords’ and ‘description’ – they will be near the top of the code. Many websites do not have these, and while they are not THE biggest factor in search engine optimization, they can definitely help and should not be ignored.
• Title tags – these are a very important factor and should be optimized for each specific page. The title can also be found in the code, but always appears in the very top of the browser as well. Title tags should include your main keywords. For example, if your company name is KDesign (like mine), putting KDesign alone in the title tag is a bad move. Instead I put keywords like ‘custom website designer’ in there. That way, people searching for ‘custom website designer’ will find my site as opposed to just limiting my results to people looking specifically for ‘KDesign’ which would obviously be far fewer people.
• Heading tags – these are part of the content of your website but are given more ‘credit’ with search engines as they are considered ‘headings’ instead of just plain text. Headings have a hierarchy (h1, h2, h3… tags) in which the most ‘credit’ is given to the h1 tags. Again – your main keywords should be utilized within h1 tags. Again – you can see if your website has these by viewing the source and searching for ‘h1′.
• Content – this, of course, is the text on the website and is easy to find and review. Again, your keywords should be utilized throughout the content, while still flowing nicely and easy to read.
• Fresh content – another huge factor in search engine optimization is fresh content. If you do everything else on this list and then let your website sit stagnant for 5 years… the search engines won’t care about you anymore. Content should be refreshed as often as possible. Weekly, monthly, or at least quarterly to keep the search engine spiders crawling your site. The more fresh content and the more often, the better. If you want an easy way to do this… consider a blog!
• Domain name – this is debatable, but I’m a believer! The domain attached to your hosting account should contain a main keyword. Using my company as the example again… I have ‘webdesignnebraska.com’ – and I am #1 in google for that search term. I also have ‘kdesignweb.com’ which I put on all my marketing materials, but really – it just forwards to the ‘real’ domain name, which contains my keywords. I have seen great success with this theory, however, the bad news is that if you rearrange those words at all (like Nebraska web design) then it’s not #1 – but it is still 5th. Just choose your domain wisely! Enlist the help of a professional who can assist with researching great keywords if you can.
• Analytics – you absolutely HAVE to enable some sort of analytics on your website so you (or your web designer) are able to track and analyze the results of any keyword changes you have made. Google analytics is free and easy to install. A must have.
• Don’t overdo it – if you know for a fact your main keyword is ‘custom website designer’ and you put it in your meta tag keywords and description, title tag, h1 tag, and content… then you’re off to a good start. BUT… if you overdo it or abuse it (like putting it in every single sentence on every single page) the search engines will eventually punish you for it. In other words – they know you’re trying to cheat. (Not to mention the users attempting to read this content will think you’re a weirdo.)

In my opinion, the best way to improve search results is to have long term goals, stick to ‘best practices’ (avoid black hat techniques that will work quickly, but eventually get your website punished) , use a variety of keywords that are appropriate for your company and industry (not unlike diversifying in investments), and do the appropriate research/analysis at least once a quarter to determine what keywords are working, what aren’t, and what other trends you can find and take advantage of. If you are paying a web designer for a search engine optimization campaign, then they should be doing research and utilizing tools or software to optimize the keywords, descriptions, title tags, heading tags and content. Such campaigns should be ongoing – quarterly is a good time line as it typically takes a couple months to be able to see the results of the previous changes on the search engine results.

Clients often ask about ‘pay per click’ campaigns (like Google AdWords) which is a totally different ball game. This is not a service I provide and is a completely different strategy and process. I would always recommend giving an organic campaign a shot (for 6 months to a year) before paying the big bucks for a pay per click campaign. Unless immediacy is a factor – pay per click results can be much quicker.

Do you have a Blog yet? Some ideas for incorporating a blog

My favorite piece of social media would have to be the blog. It is so versatile, so search-engine-friendly, so easy to use and so delightfully free! If you don’t have a blog yet…you should definitely consider starting one. Why? I’m so glad you asked…

• Number one reason (from my standpoint as a website designer) – search engines love blogs. Blogs generally do very well with search engines. Because of the constant fresh content (assuming you actually create posts for your blog regularly) and because of the popular platforms (wordpress, blogger…), blog content can definitely boost your search engine ranking. Sure – you still need to follow guidelines to make your content search engine friendly, but if done appropriately, blogs can yield great results!
• Almost as important is the fact that blogs are so versatile. You don’t have to be a published author or journalist to have a blog – break all the rules. Use a blog as a portfolio of your work, use it for your latest news, use it for upcoming events, press releases, white papers, a diary, random thoughts… or all of the above! Use it AS your website! You can create as many pages as you want, plus you’ll have a content management system built right in – so you won’t have to pay someone else for updates. As with any ‘free’ service, there are of course pros and cons and limitations with using a blog as your website, but it’s worth looking into. KDesign can customize your blog to give it the look you want as a website, with all the functionality of a blog. Or we can very easily integrate your posts into your existing website, so that fresh content appears there too!
• As mentioned above, blogs can be customized. Again – there are limitations and pros/cons, but with some minor upgrades and an unlimited selection of plugins, your blog can do virtually anything you can dream up and have a completely customized look to go with it. Chances are, you’ll need to enlist the help of a designer/css guru to do this. Contact KDesign for a quote!
• Blogs are easy to use. All it takes is  some poking around on your own and you’ll likely figure out how to create posts, categories and pages without any training. As mentioned above, blogs are being used more and more as content management systems for websites. This gives the client full control over the content on the website – new posts, updates to static pages, new plugins and widgets. Of course, this can be a double-edged sword! There’s no wordpress hotline to call, so if you are an ambitious do-it-yourself type of client, and go changing settings that aren’t meant to be changed, you could mess up the whole site very quickly and it might take a professional a long time to figure out what you did and how to fix it! But with appropriate training and access to the professional support of your website designer, you will love updating your own blog.
• Blogs are free! What’s the catch, right? Well, there’s a lot of them There are certain paid upgrades likely required to get your blog to do what you want and look how you want – but the good news is they are cheap. $15/year for css editing (for a designer to customize the look). $12/year for your chosen domain to point to your blog (instead of myblog.wordpress.com). AND of course the costs of enlisting a website designer to customize the code and integrate fancy plugins when necessary. The upfront costs will be worth it in the long run as the ongoing costs will go down since you are doing the site updates.

So what are you waiting for?! Unless your business is in a perfectly static state and no changes ever occur (anyone? anyone?) then a blog would likely fit in well with your online marketing strategy.