Web Design Wikiclass | Lecture / Website Promotion

A Web Design Lecture by Steven Choy

Overview: Search engine optimization - Submitting your site to search engines - Keywords - Inside the mind of Google - Search engine myths - Some worst SEO mistakes - Why web standards matter in SEO? - Online advertising - Other ways to promote your site - Getting real world exposure - Email marketing.

Introduction

How can you get people to visit your websites?
The most well-know way to get people coming to your site is through search engines.
Helping your site perform as well as possible in search engines is called search engine optimization, or SEO.
Alternatives to SEO
- Advertise your website through some online advertising scheme
- Blogging, podcasting, social networking
- Sending out a press release
- traditional advertising through local newspapers or flyers.

Search Engine Optimization

How can you ensure people will find your website (among hundreds billion web pages indexed by search engiens)?
There are hundreds of techniques to help web pages appear higher up the search engines' results page.
Two types of technique:
On-site optimization:
- It involves changing the actual website.
- It is about placing your keywords in the right places on your website and making your website accessible to search engines.
Off-site optimization
- It can be achieved through online marketing and through link popularity.
- The more websites that link to you the more people will find your website.
Because search engines don't want to be spammed, they keep the way they rank web pages (their algorithm) top secret.

Submitting your site to search engines

Submitting your website to every search engine is an incredibly time-consuming process. There are hundreds and hundreds of them out there.
The vast majority of search engines have a very low usage rate and will drive hardly any traffic your way.
In fact, it's only a handful of search engines that drive the majority of traffic from search engines to websites.
The most important search engines are: Google, Yahoo!, Bing.
Submitting your site to Yahoo! - https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Submitting your site to Google - http://www.google.com/addurl/
Submitting URL to Bing - http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

Keywords

Keywords are words or phases that people search for on search engines.
The first step towards performing well in search engines is to compile a list of keywords and phrases you want your site to rank well for. (You should be looking at key phrases; individual words are usually too competitive.)
Then, for each of those key phrases, you create a page that is optimized for them.
You should include the key phrase:
- in the URL; with each keyword separated by a hyphen
- in the <title> tag
- in the main heading (the <h1> tag) and, if possible, some f the sub-heading (<h2>,<h3>)
- several times in the first 200-300 words of content
- in the ALT text of some of the images
- in the text for inbound links to that page; this includes links from other pages on your sites, as well as links from other sites to yours.
Example: <a href="http://www.stepwise.hk/blog/">Steven Choy's Blog</a>

Inside the mind of Google

Keyword position and density
Important tags

Google gives more weight to text that appears in certain HTML tags, like the <title>, <h1>, <h2>. It considers text in these tags to be more important than ordinary text on the page.

Link popularity

Google counts each link to your web page as a vote for that page. The idea is that if lots of people link to your site, they probably think it's a good one.

Page rank

Google assigns each page on the internet a number between 0 and 10, called its page rank or PR.

Demo: Google PageRank Checker

Sites with a high PR generally appear higher in Google than ones that don't (if all other things being equal).

Link quality

A link from a site with a high page rank will help boost your site's own PR much more than one from a site with a low PR.

Link text

As well as the number of pages that link to yours, Google also looks at the words they use in the link.

Friendly URLs

Google also looks at the words used in a page's web address (or URL).

You can usually set up your server to use friendly URLs.

Reading for you: Google PageRank: What Do We Know About It?
Frequent content updates don’t improve Page Rank automatically. Content is not part of the PR calculation.
High Page Rank doesn’t mean high search ranking.
.edu and .gov-sites don’t improve Page Rank automatically.
Sub-directories don’t necessarily have a lower Page Rank than root-directories.
Links marked with nofollow-attribute don’t contribute to Google PageRank.
Example: <a href='http://www.example.com' rel='external nofollow'>Hong Kong Pet Site</a>
Efficient internal onsite linking has an impact on PageRank.
Related high ranked web-sites count stronger. But: “a page with high PageRank may actually pass you less if it has more links, because it’s spread too thin.”
Links from and to high quality related sites have an impact on Page Rank.
Multiple votes to one link from the same page cost as much as a single vote.

Search engine myths

META tags help you rank well
Page rank is everything
An SEO expert can guarantee a number 1 spot

Some worst SEO mistakes

Making your whole site from Flash
Using Javascript for your navigation
Using frames
Frames are used to show more than one web page in browser at the same time.
The problems when you use frames in your web site
1) Your site will do worse in search engines
2) Your visitors won't be able to print your page properly
3) Your visitors won't be able to bookmark pages in your site
4) People who reach your site through a search engine won't see your navigation
Using table for layout
Misusing images

Why web standards matter in SEO?

Websites that are accessible and use web standards techniques (like XHTML and CSS) tends to do better in SEO than other sites. Why?
Web standards pages have less code (and more real content) in them.
Web standards pages use headings more properly.
Web standards pages rely less on normal images (using the <img ...> tag) and more on background images.
Web standards pages are much more likely to include ALT text when images are used.

Online advertising

Some common pricing models

    1) Cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM)
    2) Cost-per-click (CPC)
    3) Cost-per-action (CPA)

Some common ad unit formats

    Medium Rectangle 300x250
    Rectangle 180x150
    Leaderboard 728x90
    Wide Skyscraper 160x600

References: Ad Unit Guidelines

Other ways to promote your site

Add your website to free web directories
Post on message boards, and discussion forum.
Write some articles

You can use search engines to find websites related to your industry that would welcome interesting articles and press releases. Include a short bio at the bottom of the release, including a link to your website.

Ask other sites for links

There are two ways you can find websites that might want to link to you:

1) Go to your favourite search engine and type in some words related to what your organisation does.

2) Find out who's currently linking to your competitors.

Getting real world exposure

The bare minimum

Most business have some kind of real world presence. Make sure whenever yo make contact with your customers, you remind your customers about your website.

Among other things, you should include your website address on: letterheads, invoices, business cards, receipts, bags, staff uniforms, shop window, etc.

Traditional advertising
- TV and radio ads
- Newspaper and magazine ads
- Newspaper and magazine editorial (news stories and reviews)
- Direct mail and flyers
- Posters and billboards

Promoting your website with email

One great way to get people to return to your site, is to get them to sign up for your email mailing list.

Then, you can send them regular emails reminding them about your site, as well as telling them about your latest news and special offers.

You will get a much better response if you offer your visitors something in return.

You should pay special attention to the way the email is written. (Don't overdo the hard sell.)

Thanks for Reading

If you would rather like to have this lecture note in printed format, please click the print action link in the top right corner.

If you find any problem in this lecture note, please feel free to tell Steven via steven [at] findaway.hk.