Archive for January, 2009
Is Your Website Impeding Your SEO?
Friday, January 30th, 2009
As the Web has evolved, websites have become very diverse, particularly in how they are constructed. There is such a variety of programming languages and design techniques used to build a website. Some of these coding and design techniques are detrimental to search engine positioning. If your website uses any of the below, it’s probably time to build a new website, or at least rebuild it in a format that is better suited for search engine positioning.
These can all be problematic:
- Websites coded in a database format
- Websites built with “dirty” code
- Websites that are built almost exclusively in images or Flash
Websites Coded in a Database Format
There are a several programming languages that make heavy use of databases in the construction of web pages: .PHP, .ASP, .JSP, and .CFM (ColdFusion). There are others, but these are the most popular, especially for those built with content management systems (CMS). Another popular one for CMS is Joomla.
Just because your website is built with one of these programming languages doesn’t automatically mean it is doomed in terms of search engine positioning. It just depends on whether or not the programmer that built the website knew how to code it with SEO in mind.
The biggest problem with database driven websites is that many times they are constructed in a way that inhibits search engine optimization of individual pages of the website. Instead of having one page for each procedure or practice area, the website will have only one page or file that dynamically updates to fill in the content appropriate for every subject. For example, rather than having one fill for breast augmentation and one file for tummy tuck:
http://www.scottgreenbergmd.com/breast_aug.htm
http://www.scottgreenbergmd.com/tummy.htm
the website will have:
http://www.plasticsurgdoctorwebsite.com/index.php?=breast
http://www.plasticsurgdoctorwebsite.com/index.php?=tummy
Note that the file for both breast augmentation and tummy tuck is “index.php”. It simply has a variable that indicates which content the web page should pull from the database. This means that the search engine optimization specialist has only one page to optimize for all of the procedures, which means that the search engines won’t see a page that is focused on one set of keyword phrases.
Websites built with “dirty” code
In the early days of the Internet, websites were extremely simple. They were built almost exclusively in text. Occasionally, there would be a need for a table to display some data. Then websites grew to be more complex, and the table code was repurposed to built more intricate designs. This made the code very complicated and bulky. The problem only got worse with time, and the addition of interactive elements such as roll-over buttons and drop-down navigation menus necessitated the addition of lengthy, advanced programming such as Javascript. This made for very bulky web pages, and it made the search engines’ job more difficult because their indexing program would have to weed through the extraneous code to get to the actual text of the website.
Since then, a new way of building websites has emerged. The style of coding is called CSS. With CSS, the amount of code needed to build a website is greatly reduced, at least when done properly. In the Web marketing world, we call this “clean” code. Clean code makes it easier on the search engines to spider the pages of the website, and makes it easier for designers to make updates.
Websites that are built almost exclusively in images of Flash
The search engines don’t have eyes. Most of them are not human-edited. The search engines can only count the keywords on a page. But if the website doesn’t have actual text because it is built primarily in images or Flash, the search engines can’t see the keywords. Look at this website: http://www.drfeng.com/. The home page is built entirely in Flash, which is a web animation program (See this blog entry for an explanation of why this is problematic.). Google recently improved its ability to read Flash files, but they still cannot be optimized effectively. Note on this example that even the address is an image. You can’t highlight it with your mouse cursor. In this example: http://massiha.com/, the home page is built in HTML, but there isn’t much keyword-rich text for the search engines to see. Your website’s home page is the most important page of the site. It’s where your site makes its first impression with the search engines. Therefore, it’s important to present the site with informative text that both the search engines and people can use.
If your website suffers from any of these problems, it’s time to make a change. It may be costly, but the cost of not showing up on the search engines is far greater in the long run.
Jonathan Fashbaugh is an Internet Marketing consultant for Page 1 Solutions. His company specializes in Internet marketing for plastic surgeons, dentists, ophthalmologists, and law firms. Contact Page 1 Solutions (www.page1solutions.com) to talk about a website makeover.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »