Notes on Website Search Engine and Social Media Effectiveness

We had a very informative event at OTBC on May 17 that featured an SEMpdx panel providing hot-seat reviews for three companies.  The SEMpdx panel members were (from the left):
Mike Rosenberg (Ethology) discussed offsite search optimization
Ben Samples (CMD)  discussed social media
Lisa Williams (Media Forte Marketing) discussed website usability
Hallie Janssen (Anvil Marketing ) moderated the process
Ben Lloyd (Amplify Interactive ) discussed onsite search optimization

The three websites  reviewed were:

   www.valerie-antoinette.com - Consultant for international business
   membean.com - Helps students get a higher score on SAT/GRE tests
   accumulus.com - Service for companies that have subscriptions or other recurring revenue. 

For each of the three websites, the panel members discussed four different perspectives on website effectiveness.  Those four perspectives were:

    - Onsite optimization for search engines
    - Offsite optimization for search engines
    - Social media effectiveness
    - Website usability

That covered a lot of territory - too much for one blog post!  So I've collected my notes into 4 posts, one for each of the above items.  If I made any mistakes in my note taking, hopefully people will post comments to correct me!

So here's post #1: onsite optimization.  My notes from Ben Lloyd's comments.

Onsite search optimization - Ben Lloyd

Ben explained that onsite search engine optimization (SEO)  is primarily focused on three factors:

    1. Technical items - source code, title tags, meta descriptions, coding descriptions
    2. Content - does it match the key words you care about?
    3. Authority/credibility - internal links (anchor text) and external links

The first question Ben asks a client is: What key words do you think people are searching for to find products/services like yours? 

Your site should have a page dedicated to each of the keyword phrases that you believe are important to your customers.  The goal is that the page that focuses on that keyword is the one that you want to have pop-up when they search for that page.  Got multiple keywords?  Devote a separate page to each one.

Then, on each page that's focused on a particular keyword, be sure that the keyword is included in the title tag, the meta description, headlines, and the body copy of that particular page.  And you'll want to make sure that there is anchor text on that page that is pointed to by links from other parts of your site that reference that particular keyword.     (Anchor text, by the way, are links from another page on your website; when you mention the keyword on some other page, link to that keyword on the page that focuses on that particular keyword).

This means, of course, that every page of your website should have a unique title tag.

Feedback: Membean doesn't have individual pages for different topics.  Their home page has Javascript-linked pieces of the home page that tells the Membean story.  Search engines likes pages to focus on specific topics.

What do the title tags for your pages say now?  Find out by bringing up a page in your browser and see what the label is that is displayed in the tab for that page. 

Often the title tag will have navigational text in it - which doesn't help with search engines.  You need a custom tag for each page.

Where do you set the title tag?  That's a question for your web developer.  (Note to self: figure out how to do this on a Drupal site - like OTBC's...)

Don't use title tags that are too generic. Example: Valarie probably shouldn't use "consulting" as a keyword. She's not likely to ever get a good search placement for such a very broad tag.  Something more focused, like "international consulting" will be more effective.

Membean feedback: It took Ben a while to figure out - what exactly does Membean do?  Be very clear in your messaging on your home page.  You only have a very few seconds for people to figure it out...

Tool tip:  To check for critical problems in the way your site is set up, use Aboutus.org site report tool.  It  shows warnings and problems, page by page.

Tool tip:  Google Key Word tool   (adwords.google.com)

Tool tip: Google Webmaster tools.  Shows what Google sees when they crawl your site.

That's all my notes for onsite optimization.  Stay tuned for the next post on offsite optimization. 

And if you'd like a certificate for One Free Month use of the Aboutus.org site report tool - the SEMpdx folks kindly left me 15 One Free Month coupons for that very service, so let me know via our Contact form if you'd like one and I'll keep it reserved for you here at OTBC for whenever it's convenient to drop by and pick it up.