SEO Training

Using pictures that include a female eye will draw attention to your page.

To date none of the posts  on this blog have contained pictures.  Why?  Frankly there is not good reason for it whatsoever.  In fact it is really inexcusable, lazy, and nearly guarantees that I do not get anybody reading much, if any of what I write.

Pictures speak a thousand words as the saying goes.  It is true, but not the whole story.  If you realise that good Search Engine Optimisation is not purely about search engines, then you have to look beyond text on a page.

Search engines love text.  That is how I got away with not putting any pictures into previous blog posts.  To a search engine a text only site is a sort of nirvana.  To real live humans, a site without pictures is boring, uninteresting, bland, heavy…… in short, it is not going to hold the attention of the average web surfer.

What sort of pictures should I use?

You need to captivate your audience.  Your pictures should be relevant to the text on the page.  They should also draw your readers to the page.  The rules for pictures online are no different to the rules for pictures in magazines.  Go into a newsagent and look at the magazine rack.  You will be met with row after row of faces looking back at you.  The reason is that people love to look at people.  I used an eye as the picture for this post to prove a point.  The human eye is about the most universally alluring image you can use.  Female eyes in particular.  This is because men are not as drawn by other mens eyes, yet women do not blank other women in the same way.  We all crave eye contact – even online.

But that is not the end of our story.  Pictures are all very well for people, but what about those search engines?  This is an area where many many web publishers fall down, all through not following W3C standards.

All images must include an alt attribute!

The alt attribute is where you get to tell the search engines what your picture is of.  Search engines can’t see pictures, they can only read the text that is attributed to them.  By leaving out the alt attribute, you are putting a blindfold over any search engine that crawls your site.  That’s plain stupid!

In the case of this post the alt text is the same as the picture title.  The line starts with the words “using pictures” which is the same as the blog post title.  In other words I have just managed to get some keywords into the page again without being spammy.  The alt text is descriptive.  It gives an idea of what the picture is about.  It could be better, it could say “picture of a single female eye”, but that would not work as a caption.  This post is all about people, search engines come second (but they still receive all the attention they need).

Even the file name of the picture is “eye-picture.jpg”, lest there be any confusion.

Choose your pictures wisely.  A few more minutes sourcing your pictures could make quite a difference to your site.  Try to use your own pictures (or make up your own if you are a dab hand at photoshop).  That way you are serving up original content which is a good idea.

How many pictures? Well this post could have done with at least one more picture.  That should give you an idea.  A lot of surfers will only look at pictures and captions.  They will only read the text if the caption of the picture gets their attention.  If you have got this far, then the picture did its job!

The other benefit of pictures is that they get indexed by Google images.  It gives another route in to your website that you have worked so hard on.  It’s all about using pictures to drive traffic, keep interest and in the case of original and eye catching pictures, get links.

You have a business, you need a website.  Where do you go from there?

Prices for web design vary wildly.  You can get a website for a few hundred euros up to several thousand. So who should you pick and why?

Website design is about much more than just design.  Your site needs to sell your business.  To do that it has to be found.  So you should budget for some SEO work as well.

The wool can be pulled over your eyes in many ways.  A good website design will incorporate many elements that come under the SEO heading too.  There are far too many website designers that are happy to knock out frankly substandard work and charge handsomely for it.

Picking a web designer is a quagmire.  Here are some points that may help (or scare you off completely)..

1. Your Website should conform to standards. Use the W3C standards checker to assess sites previously done by prospective designers of your site.  Your business has standards.  So does the Internet.  Unfortunately, because most customers are unaware of those standards they are ignored by many designers.  If a designer tells you this is not important, remind them that Google webmaster guidelines say that it is important.
2. Qualifications don’t really count.  Even in our universities web standards are not top of the priority list when teaching web design.  Previous work that includes designs you like and are standards compliant are the best gauge you can use.
3. Do you need a CMS (Content Management System).  A content management system allows people with no web experience to write and edit their own content.  If you do not have personnel in your organisation that can edit a web page then this is really a must.  Otherwise you are stuck with having to get your web designer to change your site every time you need to update it (and it should be updated often).
4. Word of mouth referrals are not worth a damn.  Lots of business customers are very happy with their websites and should not be.  The site looks good to them and they have been told by the designer that it is great.  The reality may be far from that.  Looking nice and performing well are not synonymous.  Many even have basic errors like not working properly on all web browsers.
5. A web designer should not be charging extra for some forms of SEO.  SEO is essentially following standards guidelines and link building.  A good web designer will include good practice in the design.  There should be as little code on a page as possible (javascript, ajax and css all kept off page).  In english: There should not be any code on the page that does not absolutely have to be there.   There are “designers” that are still making websites in tables (It is now done through <div> and Css (Cascading Style Sheets).  That does not mean that there should be no tables on your site, just that the structure should not be made up of tables.

When you approach web designers you should find out exactly what they are offering for the money.  Get them to write out a proposal for you.  Then when you have several you are in a better position to make a choice.

Remember, Cheap is probably just a template that has been used on other sites and with no CMS or some flaws in the coding.  But… Expensive does not necessarily mean better.  You could pay over five grand and still end up with a pile of poo as far as SEO or usability are concerned.  Just make sure you know exactly what you will be getting for your money before the project commences.

The proposals are not the end of the line.  You can still go back to each company/individual and ask questions.  If you don’t understand something get it explained.  If something is included on one proposal and not the others ask the others about it.  I hope this was useful to some of you.

Most SME’s in Ireland do not have an IT department. Of those that do not many of them have somebody that specialises in Search Engine Optimisation.

Surprisingly many firms still fail to see the need for any SEO services.  There are thousands of Irish business sites that do not even cover the basics of good web practice.

What I’m talking about here is conforming to W3C standards.  Check your own site now on this link http://validator.w3.org/

Just enter the url of your site (http://www.mysite.ie) and press return.  Did the screen go green and give you a congratulations message.  For most of you the answer will be no.

Some of you may be quite angry about this, having paid “professionals” to do your website for you.  It may look great but if it does not comply with web standards then it is sub standard work.

If you ask them about it they will probably tell you that it’s not important.  Too many “SEO professionals” hold this view.

Google on the other hand disagrees.  In their webmaster guidelines good code is listed as one of the many things that you should ensure your site has in order to rank well in google.

Why then do any self professed and experienced professionals in Search engine Optimisation claim that it is of little importance?

Their experience has taught them that even a site with bad coding can be made to rank well in all the search engines.  Rather than taking a holistic look at your site they concentrate on one or two activities like link building.  They even get results.

So why am I harping on about web standards?  That’s simple.  Your results could be better.  In practice you can get away with a few short cuts on any website.  But ignore too many of Googles guidelines and you will be giving your site less than a helpful start.

The other more salient point is that you have paid for a service, and should expect it to be of a reasonable standard.  If a builder leaves out your damp course and tells you “It’s not that important, sure isn’t your house still standing” you would not take it lightly.  So why would you allow a website builder to take short cuts on your business web site (unless of course you don’t like your business).

Good code is a solid foundation on which to build your online presence.  Without it you are off to a shaky start.  Pseudo web developers have been getting away with it for years because you don’t know any better.

There are no professional organisations to ensure standards.  I couldn’t call myself a doctor in the morning, but there is nothing to stop a doctor calling themselves a web developer.

Arm yourself with knowledge when you are getting your website done.  Acquaint yourself with the W3C validation tool on this post and with others that will appear as this blog develops.  Talk to more than one designer/developer.  Check the sites they have done.  Check how they rank in Google.  Find out exactly what they propose for your site.  After all, your site is your shopfront to the entire world.