Website redesign: Don't forget about search engines
“Right, we’ve finished our web re-design, now we need one of those search engine people”
Cue disappointed look from ’search engine types’.
Getting Search Engine attention is at least as much about what is done on the website as it is about external factors. These are far better thought about during the re-building of a website rather than afterwards. Not only that, it’s always difficult to propose changes to people who have waited a long time for their new site, hence the downcast feeling.
What to think about when re-designing a website
First things first: get some analytic software running on the site, so that you know which pages are getting traffic. This will help planning.
Do think about the existing ‘URL’s – the page addresses.
These are often changed, without a thought, to match the new schema. Of course, by ‘changed’ what we really mean is deleted and completely new pages put in their stead. They didn’t move them, they knocked the house down and built it elsewhere.
Redirects are important. Whenever you change an address, tell the people who send you things because if not, it will be ‘return to sender’.
How much that matters – probably depends on the page, but if visitors matter, then lets send them to a page that looks like something they were expecting, instead of a home page, or black holes.
The next thing is to check for Page Titles and Descriptions. Relevance is important, and if you were receiving visitors it was because Search Engines thought your page was relevant for ’something in particular’. The ‘in particular’ is usually from the page title, content, and incoming links, but descriptions can help improve the number of visitors.
For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how Google uses page Titles, Descriptions and URL’s
All these things are inserted during the page construction, during the (re) building phase.
Yes, the external factors are important for SEO, but if the website isn’t properly organised, then it will never work as well as it could.
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Sell what people are looking for, it's easier
Lead generation on the web is as much about the visitor as the website.
If you had a sales meeting, and your prospect walked out half way through the conversation then you’d be doing some pretty deep soul searching.
Pitching the right thing to the right person is obvious isn’t it, when you think about it.
Yet, on your website, we come and go without offending anyone. In fact, most of us leave your website without doing anything. Are you thinking hard about that?
How can I help you?
For most companies, the website is a sales tool. And the place to start with any sales process is to ask “What are you looking for”?
And you can’t sell me anything unless you know what I’m interested in.
Business served up on a plate
What if Google told you what people are looking for….and offered to send them over? Would you then go ahead and build a page specifically addressing those needs?
That would be better wouldn’t it? That way, you’re only selling to people who are already interested, and you don’t need worry about covering a range of subjects, not yet.
Most people just guess when building a website. But you can find out what people are searching for with a very impressive service from Google – cunningly disguised as the Adwords keyword tool.
Before you put words on a website, use the tool to see what words people are using.
We’re always surprised at how many words people use to search for the same thing, and even more surprised at the variations within phrases.
Be Careful out there
The hidden catch, the one nearly everyone misses, is that the terms you look up on the tool, well, they’re like inside out russian dolls. The most important paragraph was that last one above – the one about variations of phrases.
One short phrase includes thousands of others. Intuitively, this is the wrong way round and we would expect that a long phrase includes plenty of short ones, but no, that’s not correct.
Upside Down Marketing
The term “shoes” gets 100 million searches. Only, it doesn’t, because although those searches include the word shoes, there are millions of variations – many of which will have absolutely no chance of converting into relevant business.
Why try and sell to them all?
This is upside down marketing. Get specific first and go for the low numbers.
As an aside, the numbers of people searching for ‘terms’ is amazingly consistent, and without being completely sure why, we think it’s something to do with the law of large numbers. Ironically.
So, although you’ll be pitching to low numbers of people this week. It does mean you’ll be doing that next week, and the week after that.
If you’re worried about the low numbers thing. We would recommend you sell to large quantities of small numbers.
At last, a proper website plan
Knowing that people are looking before you build your page, does motivate and give you great confidence that the effort you put in will be worthwhile. You’d be amazed how much difference this approach makes to everything you do on a website.
With search engines delivering over 90% of traffic to a website, it pays to know how to use them properly.
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Bloggers vs Blaggers
Blog technology has huge business benefits, but the best in business say it’s about more than that.
In the last few days, several people, in quite different industries told me they felt integrity was crucial to their business. Pointedly, they also said they were competing with people without.
Underneath I’m not sure they really believe that’s true, but what if all the good people wrote blog articles regularly? I like to think it would help us all rise above the blaggers – and in a very literal way, with Google in mind, it probably will do.
When you write stuff down, good things tend to happen.
A friend sent this to me, I’m guessing it’s because I’ve been too busy to write lately. Perhaps if they would be so kind as to send this over about once a week or so?
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Inspirational HR?
A collection of inspirational web content is building on a hidden page in the Conversationware Web Vaults.
This time, a strange source. Not some wacky software entrepreneur, or some compelling life lessons for us this week -
Oh no….. it’s a presentation from Netflix, a monolith that is a publicly quoted company – they just shared a slide deck (meant to be read online) about HR.
Click image to Inspiration Page
Ok, so that shouldn’t be inspirational. But it sets out how it sees the development and most importantly the retention of talent within the company, and how to escape from HR as a business process…. their words, not mine!
It’s extremely interesting for those with 10 minutes to spare.
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The lifetime value of internet marketing
Internet marketing, or more specifically, search engine marketing, when done brilliantly, is the gift that keeps on giving.
It is most rewarding on a number of levels, and not least because enquiries are generally from new prospects.
But someone reminded me that levels of business generated over the last 12 months is important, but can be dwarfed when considering repeat business. Add to that any residual income such as support and training, those golden ongoing references and referrals, it is staggering how much more a happy customer can generate over and above the original order.
In search terms (sic), given that search engines give you plus marks for longetivity and credibility, your pages and content can improve their performance over time, and generate on an ongoing basis. Compare that to the cost of transient advertisements, as I heard someone do today, and the value becomes clearer.
I’m grateful to be reminded that I do important work, even if I was the only one who heard it that way.
Thanks to all at BNI Milton Keynes this morning, I enjoyed it immensely. See you next week.
I have set you a challenge. Why would I take this picture of my office for you?
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| From Conversationware |
You would need to see it in more detail, but feel free to submit your entries in the comments, the winner might even get a prize.
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