SEO: Do you need a links page?

One of the more troubling things I see folks do with their sites is get involved in "link exchanges." I'm sure you've seen this - a business owner becomes part of a network of other business owners, and in the interest of building SEO for the group, they create a page on their site that has a link to every other business owner's site on it - regardless of whether that business is in any way related to their own. Great idea, right?

The fact is, those pages don't really do that much for anyone's search rankings - in fact, it could hurt you more than it helps. Search engines look for quality incoming links, which means links from reputable sites that are related to the subject matter at hand. If you have a page full of random links that exist on the page for no other reason than they belong to the same organization as you, they just don't count as quality links.

In addition, think of what you're doing here. By putting these links on your site, you're essentially recommending this other person's business, regardless of whether you have any direct experience with them. So let's say that someone finds another company's website through yours, deals with them and has a horrible experience. They decided to work with them, essentially, on your recommendation. What does that say about you?

The best way to get quality incoming links is by becoming active online - forums, blogs, e-mail lists and social networking sites are all ways to create quality links to your website just by wasting a bit of time on the Internet. There are new social networks created every day - find a few that are relevant to your business, create a profile with a link to your site and a blurb about What You Do, and see if you can start a conversation with a couple of the members. It's a bit time-consuming, yes, but it's easy, and it's much more effective than throwing a bunch of random links pages up.

SEO: Some more basics

Lately, I've been getting a lot of questions about SEO - what it is, how to do it, do I do it, can I help them? To be honest, I don’t do what some people call SEO – I don’t submit sites to search engines, or buy adwords, or any of those other things that people who publicize their SEO services. But what I do - well, do - is build well-put-together websites that Google seems to like very much (for example, my website is currently #4 for Somerville MA Graphic Designer) using clean code and web standards with appropriate keywords, descriptions and indexing calls so that search engines can find it. I also consult on content to make sure that the appropriate keywords are actually in the body of the website – this convinces search engines that you legitimately fit with that keyword. Just to give you an idea, I’ve seen sites where “photographer Boston MA” is a keyword, for example, but nowhere on the site did it actually say that he was in Boston MA. Result? No Google.

That said, SEO is an ongoing process – you can buy adwords to get to the top of Google, for example, but if you want to get there for free, there’s a lot of sweat equity that goes into it – most of that is getting your URL in as many other websites as possible. Blogs and forums actually make that pretty easy, but it does require reading blogs/forums that are relevant to what you do or what your audience needs and leaving insightful comments on the posts. The software gives you a free, easy and completely legit way to insert a link to your website, and you’d be surprised how much traffic I get from that method. Also, getting in as many appropriate (and legit!) directories as possible is always a good thing. I’m listed on quite a few directories, and gotten work from all of them.

Some things that I’ve learned along the way in terms of SEO:

• Search engines like well-built sites, especially sites that are built using standards. Since standards naturally separate content from presentation, it’s easier for them to figure out what a page is. This means higher rankings.


• They also love pages that are updated frequently (note, this DOESN’T mean dynamic. Search engines often actually have problems with dynamically-driven pages). This is one of the reasons that blogs are so popular – they’re always well-built, have tons of content to search through, and they’re updated frequently.


• Search engines HATE FLASH. They can’t read it, they can’t use it to figure out what the page is or what’s on the page, and unless your average user is a teenager with way too much time on their hands who wants to sit there playing web games, users don’t really like it either. The average user wants to get in, find the information they’re looking for, and find out how to get in touch with you. This is one of the problems I tend to have with a lot of designer websites – it’s all Flash with no substance.

The best way to draw people to your website, ultimately, is by advertising it everywhere – in your e-mail signature, in your signature on posts in blogs and forums, and on all your marketing materials. E-mail newsletters are also good ways to keep your site top-of-mind. The biggest myth people seem to buy into regarding their website is that a) people are just going to “find it” once it’s built and you don’t have to put any effort into promoting it, b) metatags and keywords are all you really need to promote your site, and c) once they find it, they’ll stay on it and pore over every page. They just aren’t. You need to make the content interesting, and you need to spend the time promoting the site through giving people the URL and talking about the site.

SEO Made Simple(ish)

Today, while catching up on the Marketing Mix Blog (because every once in a while, I do have time to do such things), I was pointed to a great post on Search Engine Optimization by Joan Damico of Integrated Marketing Minute (a new subscription is in order, methinks). In the post, she goes over some of the basics of writing copy with search engine users in mind, and discusses some great ways to set up blog posts, websites, etc. for maximum Google juice.

A quick excerpt from the post:

it's not just about sprinkling keywords throughout, it's a strategy for placing them effectively in the right places. Search engines crawl a page hierarchy from meta data to header tags to body copy identify keyword matches.

You can read the full post here.

All of this is great advice, but I have a few things to add, from my experience as a web designer. Search engines like Google give a lot of precedence to sites that are built well. Back in 2004, when I switched from old-school table-based layouts to using web standards, I saw the Google ratings for my sites fly up within a week. Part of that is because standards-based layout forces you to separate presentation from content, which means that content flows smoothly for search crawlers without being forced into odd places to satisfy the designer's whim. When you look at the page, you see a beautiful layout, with everything where you want it to be. When you look at the code, you see all the content arranged in a logical order, which makes more sense to the search engines - hence, it looks like a good page and moves up a bit in the rankings.

Another thing I've noticed is that <alt> tags on your images and <title> tags in links make a huge difference; when I changed the tzk site to include appropriate alt and title tags (which mentioned the fact that the work was done by the zen kitchen in Somerville, MA), I noticed an instant jump in my Google ratings.

Adding these tags is easy. If you're creating a link in a post, for example, you'd type the code:
<a href="http://tzk-design.com" target="new"> link text </a>

To add a title to it, you'd just type: <a href="http://tzk-design.com" title="the zen kitchen, Somerville MA: Graphic and Web Design with a Touch of Green" target="new"> link text </a>

and it would look like this:
link text

The same is true with images. For example, if I wanted to put a picture of my cat, Persephone (because why not?) in a post as the tzk mascot, I'd type the code:

<img src="http://tzk-design.com/f/pers.jpg" alt="Persephone, the zen kitchen's mascot" />

and that would look like this:


It looks just the same as if you didn't include it, BUT adding the title or alt text adds an extra hit of keywords for the search engine to notice. One quick caveat, however; whatever the title or alt text you insert, it's important that it be relevant to what the link or image actually is. You need to make sure that it represents what you're actually referring to; otherwise, search engines get irritated and knock you down a few pegs.