Re:Optimizing pages for search results

Quick search question.
We have a splash page.
Our home page is all images - no live text except for a few words.
About page is the first page w/ live text which is being picked up by the search engines.

When googling folger and burt www.folgerandburt.com
– the #2 result (or subset) is our about page. If we don’t want this particular lead line what can we do ?
I’m about to go into the php files to add search titles to the pages and meta tags – although I realize Google doesn’t use those much these days.
What is the best approach ?
Title pages - Met tags... others recommendations ?

I think we’d rather have some other line there than what was picked up.


thanks
L

Hi L,

First off, I'm glad you asked because I predicted you would have some problems with search engines when I was helping you with the site last week.

If you want the search engines to pay more attention, you're going to have to make some changes. First of all, you should get rid of the splash page. Splash pages can look cool, but the index page is the main page you have to deliver your message... actually both to the search engines, but even as a marketing tool for your potential customers. If you can display your wares (and deliver the message) right there on page 1, people are much more likely to be drawn in.

Next, on any pages like www.folgerandburt.com/home.php, you're going to want to convert the text in the images to HTML text. This is all potentially rich keyword material.

Another problem that may just be a necessary evil, is that a lot of pages are in Flash or are category pages with only images and no text. At least for the latter, you should implement image replacement (tongue twister). See blog.yourwebsiteprofit.info/2008/01/css-...acement-and-seo.html

Search engines rely on text, more than anything else... so that's the bottom line. That said, your page titles are also very important, so definitely take some time to name them something uniquely relevant to each page. Meta descriptions are valuable because that is what displays in the search engine results (SERPs). Meta keywords are SOMETIMES used in other search engines besides Google, so they have at least some value.

There's more to this obviously and like anything else, the more energy put in, the more put out. You might want to read my blog posting Search Engine Secrets for more tips.

Right now you guys have a page rank of 1 (out of 10). Since the site is new and because of what I mentioned that's not a surprise. As far as the "subset" page, there's no way to control it other than make Google think it's important. I noticed that right now, it's already changed to library.php from about...

Wheew. I hope that helps!

thanks
i'll read those links

We plan on keeping the splash page up for awhile. It's the business owners request.
The home page could not be designed aesthetically enough w/ html to tie into the splash page - at least we were not able to achieve that result that's why there are the image files.

I'll look into 'image replacement" as a tool.

Thanks.
Gotta roll w/ the punches here.

We're not going to be changing the site that dramatically since we just launched it so we'll see how it all plays out !

thanks again !
L

WONDERING - can i use image replacement for the home page as well ? ( if i'm understanding it correctly)

Yes, you can... but it will be of limited value. Image replacement works by swapping some text (such as the name of a gallery category) for an image. The text is set using css to not display to the user, but is still in the code.

But while this helps a little bit, the problem isn't solved by just trying to get in a keyword or two. You need enough copy to tell the search engines (and human customers) about your web site. Search engines lean HEAVILY on the index page. That's why splash pages are such a bad idea, if you are at all interested in your ranking. Don't take comfort in the fact that there are a lot of splash pages out there... only the ones with a lot of high value incoming links are ranking well.

There are excellent ways of compromising looks and information. I highly recommend www.designmeltdown.com for ideas and www.smashingmagazine.com for great articles and examples on this subject and many others. You can also check out my home page

I'm afraid without making these kinds of changes it's not going to be easy to get good search engine rankings. Another avenue you should try is to get other sites, the higher the page ranking the better (don't bother with spammy link exchanges), to link to you. That helps as much as anything else you can do.

As a final suggestion... for the first page someone goes after they click "enter" on the splash page... make it more information rich. This is an especially good place for the latest news, text links for the different product lines, an "about us" type blurb, etc.

That is, if you're going to keep the splash page. Because the above should really be the first page...