Why is SEO Important? A Search Engine Optimization primer from Richmond Media

SEO is important because there is no use having a business website if no on goes there. Web companies that sell template or Flash websites are lacking in SEO implementation. Most competitors in our price range do not have the expertise to get good Google ranking for their websites.

There are several things that Google loves to see, and a few things that will help get a good Google listing regardless of a website’s flaws.

PAGE CONTENT – Google looks at the actual text on the web page to find keywords to list the site appropriately. You can’t use too many keywords, or too few, you have to know how to use the right amount per text. Also, there are header tags (programming) that can highlight important text, so Google sees it as more important than other text on the page.

PAGE TITLE – This is the text on the top of the browser window. Google places great importance in the title tag. Have you ever seen a title tag that is so long that it literally runs off the top of the browser window? Our own Richmond Media pages do that. That is to get a lot of important words there for Google to see. How can you know if a website is badly designed for SEO? One easy way is when you see a title that says, “Welcome to (company name)”. First, what is there that Google can use? People usually search Google for services and products, they rarely Google the actual name of your business. Second, there are over 80 million websites with the word, “Welcome” in the title. How can THAT help your website?

BACKWARD LINKS – Backward links are links from other sites leading back to your site. This signifies to Google that your site is “important”. To see the backward links for Richmond Media, click here. For other sites, replace richmondmedia in the address bar with the other site’s name. One reason that we put “website designed and maintained by richmond media” at the bottom of all our websites is because we list those websites on our own site, creating backward links for both them and us. Also, Google judges the importance of backwards links by relevance to your site’s key words. So the “link farms” from the nineties do not do any good any more.

URLs – Google likes it when the actual URL (.com) address of the website contains important info. So buying “hamptonlampsales.com” is going to be much more effective than buying “ronslampsales.com”, because the name itself will attract Google hits.

RESOURCE WEBSITES – Rather than just highlighting your product or service, if you can become known as a place for people to get information about the field you are in, Google will list your site higher. This is obviously more useful for a medical practice than for a restaurant, but many types of clients (including retail clients) can post industry info that can draw site visitors.

LONGEVITY – One indisputable fact is that the longer a website is online, the better the Google ranking it will get, so even a badly designed website can get a decent ranking eventually. If you see a bad website that does well on Google, this is probably why.

MORE – I don’t want to write a book here, so other important things for a good Google listing are XML sitemap submission, blogs linking back to the website, addition to free business directories (LinkedIN, Plaxo, etc.) creating a relevant Wikipedia page (for relevant clients) and more.

Keep in mind that Richmond Media KNOWS THIS STUFF, and cheaper web design companies do not.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH FLASH WEBSITES? - With a Flash website, all text is embedded into Flash media itself. Google relies heavily on the text in a website, and cannot see the text imbedded in a Flash website. Many Flash site designers try to use metakeywords, an old programming tag that Google doesn’t even use anymore. Aside from a good page title, there’s not much that a Flash site can do to get a good Google ranking.

In addition, Flash websites are very difficult to update and edit. Most potential clients do not know this. Flash sites arcan be useful for bands and other entertainment website, but NOT for business websites.

HOW CAN YOU TELL IF A WEBSITE IS FLASH? - We design sites with Flash elements, not actual Flash websites. This allows us to use motion in a site, but still utilize a good SEO strategy. To see if a site is an actual Flash website, left click over some text on the page. If you get a window with options like, “Reload” and “Bookmark this page”, the site is not a Flash site. If you get options like, “Zoom In”, “Quality” or “About Adobe Flash Player”, you are looking at a Flash website.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH TEMPLATE WEBSITES? - Template websites are usually very professional looking, and are sold much cheaper than the sites we design. We have gotten a lot of business from clients who bought a template website, but became discouraged because the website didn’t perform as well as it looked. A web company buys a template, and then they add the client’s text and pictures to it. This saves a lot of development time for the web design company, but template sites’ Google rankings are generally horrible. Also, many Flash websites are also templates.

If someone says they got a great deal on a good looking website, chances are that it’s a template or a Flash website. Even though our sites cost more, the skill required to build a good Google ranking makesour websites a better deal. In addition, most web design companies who use templates are not skilled at things like email marketing and other helpful skills.

One more thing; CLICK HERE for Google’s Ultimate SEO Tool. You can enter in any URL and see how Google sees their keywords (make sure to enter the “www”). If you already have a website, run it through the SEO Tool. Compare it with the Richmond Media SEO Tool results (type, or copy and paste, "www.richmondmedia.com" in the form field, without the quotation marks), which are VERY good.