|
/pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> |
?Google Friendly? Solutions to Graphic-Intense Sites
We all know that the search engines can't "see" or "read" the graphics on our pages. We also know that we need to provide text on a page, so the spiders will have something to crawl and index.
After all, we have to prove to the search engines without a shadow of a doubt that our pages are about what we say or claim they're about if we want to achieve top rankings. That's why I believe so strongly in focusing each page on one single keyword phrase only. As soon as a spider hits a page, I want the spider to know exactly what that page is about.
But, many sites out there are graphic intense, often by virtue of their very nature. The sites may sell prints, wallpaper, pictures, graphics, or posters. Or, the sites may sell hats, for example, so that each page is full of pictures of a particular type of hat.
Many Web site owners don't want to add text to those pages, because they want to highlight exactly what they're selling. They've created the site with their audience in mind, which is as it should be. After all, when visitors stop by a wallpaper site, they want to see loads of pictures of the different wallpaper samples. They don't want to read about them!
So, being careful to adhere to Google's Guidelines that prohibit hiding text, what options do we have with our graphic-intense site?
Let's look at some possible solutions.
1. Can you put visible text above or below the graphics on the page? If so, this is your best solution, because you're giving the engines some content to crawl.
Simply add a paragraph of content above the graphics, and then a paragraph or two of content below the graphics. Make sure the content focuses on your keyword phrase and that it describes the page accurately.
If you don't want to add a full paragraph of content above the graphics, try adding a heading tag containing your keyword phrase. Then, add content beneath the graphics.
The bottom line is: you want to start the page with text if at all possible, not graphics.
2. Be creative! Can you add descriptive text about each graphic under or beside the graphic? Can you add little "Tips" or "More Info" boxes on the page that contain valuable information for your users and keyword-containing text for the engines? Can you include testimonials from happy customers that will add valuable keyword-containing content to your page?
3. Leave your existing graphic-intense pages the way they are, and create some new text-based interior pages that are full of valuable content related to your graphics. Pull in traffic through those pages, and provide text links to your pages full of graphics. Be sure to use your important keyword phrase in the link text that links to the pages of graphics.
Keep in mind that these new pages are interior pages, which means that they should provide a link to other pages on your site, and your site should provide a link back to those pages. If you've done your homework right, these new pages are providing value to your users, therefore providing value to the search engines, so there's no reason why you wouldn't want to link to these new interior pages.
Can you use redirects from the text-based pages to the pages of graphics? I highly recommend not doing so. The engines have never been fond of redirects for one thing. But, even if your redirects aren't "sneaky" (as Google says in their Guidelines), if you don't use text links with the keyword phrase in the link text, you're missing out on one of the most valuable search engine optimization strategies available to you: using your keyword phrase in link text pointing to your pages.
4. You can leave your existing graphic-intense pages as they are, and instead concentrate on "off page" factors such as building link popularity to those pages and making sure that the pages linking to the graphics pages use link text that contains your important keyword phrase. In other words, you can work on your "link reputation."
After all, you can compete with the big boys using almost any strategy that is detrimental to search engine rankings if your link popularity and link reputation is strong enough, and if the sites linking to you describe your site using your important keyword phrase.
By "strong" enough, I mean that the links should be from popular, authoritative sites in your topic area. Sheer numbers aren't what we're after here. We're after links from popular and authoritative sites in our topic area. We're also after links that use our important keyword phrase in the link text describing our pages.
In Conclusion
Though the best solution is to add text to your pages of graphics, sometimes you (or your client) won't want to go that route. They may want to keep the existing pages just as they are.
In those situations, it's important to have some "Google friendly" solutions that will give you the best chance at achieving top rankings for your pages, while making sure that you're following the guidelines as stated by Google.
About The Author
Robin Nobles is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with John Alexander. They teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive "hands on" search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. She also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and she's a member of Wordtracker's official question support team. With partner John Alexander, she's co-authored a series of e-books called, "The Totally Non-Technical Guides to Having a Successful Web Site." And, they opened a networking community for search engine marketers called The World Resource Center for Search Engine Marketers.
robin@searchengineworkshops.com
.com Not Listed in Regional Yahoo? Don?t Despair!
If you're a non-American business with a .com web address, and your regional Yahoo ranking is important to you, then my story might interest you.
The Benefits of Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you're going to sell any type of product or service online, you're eventually going to have to optimize your Web site for the Search Engines, in order to boost traffic and sales.
Monitor and Increase Your Search Engine Visibility with the DIY SEO Tools
In this three part article, you'll find many tools that any webmaster can use to monitor your site's search engine position, and use to increase the visibility of your site in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Keyword Targeting Strategy In Your Site
Once the keywords have been decided for the site one has to come up with a strategy to target those keywords across the site. Here is a primer on that.
Determining the Value of Your SEO Service
Every once in a while--and probably more often than we should--we find ourselves reviewing our SEO pricing models. Pricing SEO has always been a real sticking point for me because there is no one-size-fits-all pricing metric. As I began our most recent review of our pricing something really starting to become quite obvious; search engine optimization is requiring more and more research and analysis than it ever did before.
How to Verify and Monitor Your Search Engine Listing on Google?
Being listed in search engines and ranked high on searches is the overall goal a webmaster is trying to achieve when dealing with search engines. Search engine optimization is probably one of the most commonly used words among webmasters. In the Internet market becoming much more critical to business success this is almost natural.
Why SEO (as we know it) is Doomed to Failure and How You Can Avoid the Trap
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become one of the biggest internet buzz-words recently. Everyone is talking about it. These days it seems there's an "expert" around every corner promising all kinds of wonderful things to online business owners. Beware! If you are interested in building a long term successful online business, there are few things you should know when it comes to search engine optimization.
Google Tests Expanded Search To Include Printed Works
Google Labs is currently testing Google Print, which returns results from within scanned printed books along with Google's standard web search results. The searcher doesn't have to do anything special - the printed work results are already included in the Google database. Searchers have the option of narrowing their search by including, for example, the word "book" in their search terms. For example, a search on "home repair" might return a variety of web sites, online merchants, etc., while changing the search to "home repair book" will help filter the results to include more material scanned directly from books.
Search Engines The Masters Of The Internet Universe ? Part 3
This is part three of the article series and deals with the paid inclusion and organic search results from search engines.
Search Engine Essentials
What are Search Engines?
Ten Critical Website and Search Engine Promotion Mistakes
When it comes to promoting your website, you might think that anything you can do to get people to your website is worthwhile. However, you should think again because some shady practices will actually hurt you. Also, other SEO tactics could reduce the amount of potential visitors simply because you do not have a clear understanding of how the Internet and search engines work. Read the following tips on what not to do when promoting your website and if you are doing some of these things stop immediately and learn how to effectively promote your site.
Increase Your Page Rank Through SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must be considered a process and over time you can build your ranking and traffic.
Search Engine Traffic Myths, Time Wasters, and Pitfalls
Everyone wants to increase their rankings with the search engines and because of this there is a ton of information available on how to go about it. Unfortunately, while some of this information is real, there is just as much or more information that is outdated, wrong, and a complete waste of time, money and energy on your part. So, you can read the following and learn about a few of the myths and pitfalls people believe about search engines and in the future you can continue to educate yourself from reputable sites that provide accurate and truthful information.
Increase Your Link Popularity for Free
Among the many things you need to worry about for high search engine rankings,link popularity is among the most important. Link popularity refers the how many other websites on the internet link back to your website. The more websites link back to yours, the more popular your website will be with search engines. Let's explore a great free method of increasing your link popularity.
7 Simple Steps to Spy on Your Online Competition and Acheive a High Page Rank
My Grandfather ran a small Grocery Store and when you would ask him a Question about his Business he would laugh and reply does Macy's Tell Gimbel's. (At the Time Gimbel's was a major Competitor of Macy's in the New York Department Store Market.) Well if Macy's were on the Internet back then they could be telling Gimbel's a lot. If Gimbel's knew which tool's to use and what steps to take to 'spy' on Macy's.
Search Engines - The Dominant Factor
Let's face facts - Search engines are starting to rule and dominate the way people advertise their products and services.
Link Exchange Tips, No Tricks
Use text links, avoid image links. Anyhow, if you have used image links, then always make sure to put your keywords in the alt tags. Put your prime keywords in text links and always insure to put a short descriptions of your website/page in minimum of 20-30 words or more if allowed. In text links if you are not allowed to add descriptions then always try to put a short descriptions in title tag. E.g.: title =" Link Exchange Tips, No Tricks ">Link Exchange Avoid repetition of keywords, repetition will lead to low rankings. Always try to exchange links from related websites (e.g. if you have a football league website, then a link from other sports websites will be known as related website links) Never, exchange links with unrelated websites/pages. Always ensure that the website that you are exchanging links with, is well optimized and has a good content. Never try to exchange links in quick sessions. Since search engines ignores or does not index those sites who gets bundles of links in quick time. Give your link exchange works few hours every day, to ensure that you get limited but quality links. Mainly for new websites, avoid exchanging bundles of links in quick sessions. Avoid creating a link/links.html file, since search-engines do not index link/links.html files, often. Always make a 'resources' (any appropriate name) folder and create an index.html file for that named folder and create appropriate html files for appropriate links going into them. (a sort of web-directory) Never, never exchange links with pages bearing more than 50 back-links. Generally 25 is appropriate and should not be more than two clicks away from the index/main page. Always ensure yourself that the page/website you are exchanging link is being indexed by the search engines or not. Also ensure on your own that the page/website you are exchanging link with, is not being blocked by any scripts, or disallowed by robots.txt, or disallowed by using noindex, nofollow on html page. Avoid linking to those tricky and false websites, and if possible inform already linked websites about the matter and ask them for link-exchange, if related to your websites. Links from the main/index page of the related website is the most quality link that a website can get. But, never try to place more than 20 back-links in index/main page. Exchanging links with your competitor's back linking website/pages are also the quality links that a website can get. Never post your website links to FFA, Guestbook, or other unrelated areas. Since search-engines completely ignores such links and may penalize your website. Site bearing good Google page rank are appropriate for link-exchange. Generally 4+ Google page rank is great for link-exchange. Exchanging links with old website is excellent. Link exchanging with new websites, with decent Google ranking at first, but bears quality contents and is well optimized, is also an excellent option for exchanging-links, since new websites bears less outgoing links than the old websites. While exchanging links for homepage of your website, also try to exchange links for sub-pages of it, for better ranking for that particular sub-page. Personal verification of the linking partner's website is recommended. Check for total incoming and outgoing links for whole website or for particular sub-pages of your linking partner's website and off course of your own before getting link exchanged.
Help Your Visitors Zero in with Site-Flavored Google search
As Google has gained in their search reputation the past few years, many webmasters have added a Google search box to their pages. This is meant to provide a quick path for visitors to continue their search, should they not find what they're looking for on the original site. To help these webmasters provide even more service to their visitors, Google is currently beta-testing a new feature called Site-Flavored Google Search.
Now More Than Ever...You Need To Optimize Your Site for Search Engines
As the economy begins to recover in certain parts of the world, more and more online marketers are looking for affordable ways to drive qualified traffic to their sites. That's why, now more than ever, you need to optimize your site for the search engines.
Yahoo!/Overture Site Match: A License To Steal
Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere, I'm sure you've heard by now, Overture now offers the Yahoo! Search Inclusion under its own branded name--Site Match.