Now that You’ve Built It, Will They Come?
March 2005, Vol. 1.2
Click here to for the Project Spotlight
Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines:
Now that You’ve Built it, Will They Come?
SEO—Search Engine Optimization—has become the marketing buzzword of the past several years. It’s not enough anymore to have a well-designed website with all the
bells and whistles. What is important is getting visitors to spend time there and keep them coming back for more. Search engine optimization is a very important first step in marketing
your business to the online community.
 How does a search engine actually find your website? Search engines have invisible software “robots” called spiders, crawlers, or bots that locate your site by following
a link from one webpage to another. They then save each page in a database and continue to follow the hyperlinks. Having a link on another website to yours will cause the search engines
to naturally find you. The statistics on the most commonly used search engines bear mentioning. Not surprisingly, Google ranks number 1 at nearly 60% usage, with Yahoo trailing at a
little over 20%.
So, how DO you guarantee your searchability? While still more of an art than a science, there are some basic precepts for achieving improved search engine ranking. You can pay a one-time
or annual fee and register with each search engine to guarantee timely inclusion. When you go about registering with search engines, don’t waste your time and money on one of those
companies that promises to list your site on 100 search engines for a low fee. This wastes your money and sends a red flag to the search engines, and, in fact, can hurt your ranking.
Spend the time to register individually with each of the top ten search engines.
If you’re about to revamp your current website, are creating a new site from scratch, or simply want to spruce up your searchability, make sure your design group or advertising agency considers the
following:
- Create Unique content:
To achieve more favorable ranking in the search engine, it’s critical to create content that has an interesting spin or twist to it. Sites that read
just like your competitors will probably not get noticed by search engines and will end up at the bottom of the list. It’s always a good rule of thumb to include informational
content on your site anyway. Most people go to the Internet to find information. If they like what they see, they’ll come back for more.
- Title tags:
These are the web page titles that show up in the upper part of your browser window. It’s virtually useless to just have your company name in the title tag. Be sure you include
some powerful key words as well.
- Embedded tags:
These are keyword tags embedded in your code. They are invisible to the site visitor, but highly visible to search engine crawlers. In your code, make sure that you have a strong, keyword-driven
meta-description, a well-researched list of metatags or keywords related to your business, and alt tags with keywords for your images (the short descriptors that should pop up if you roll over an image).
Make sure you include possible typos that people may make when keying in your business name or related words.
- Keywords and content:
Design is certainly an important aspect of web development, but in the land of search engine optimization, content is king. Make sure your content uses the
keywords you have researched. If you’re not a writer, hire a professional wordsmith with marketing experience to touch up your content…and make sure you have some content
on your home page, since that’s where search engines sniff out keywords first.
- Links:
One of the best ways to move up in the ranks is by having your URL posted on as many relevant sites as possible. Try to get your link on industry sites or professional organizations. High-visibility sites
with lots of traffic are your best bet. Placing your link on a neighbor’s family website will probably not get you very far!
Here are some great sites that will get you up to speed on the mysteries of search engine optimization:
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Project Spotlight: CSC Labs
URL: www.csclabs.com
In business for nearly 40 years, CSC has established itself as one of the nation’s top-ranking independent wholesale optical laboratories. CSC provides a complete array of
prescription fulfillment services for opticians, ophthalmologists and other optical professional all under one roof.
 In 2004, CSC Labs had undergone a major expansion, relocating
to an impressive new facility in Watsonville, California near the San Francisco Bay Area. The new facility consolidated the frame distribution division, prescription fulfillment, and
anti-reflective coating lab into a single location. Included in their business “makeover” plan for this year
was a new website, just launched last month. The new site, developed by Macdonald Design, Inc., includes a more contemporary look and feel complete with an attention-getting Flash
introduction and professionally written content created by Gig Productions, Inc. In addition to providing a complete overview of
CSC Labs’ services, the site also serves as a gateway to the
company’s Virtual Lab—a convenient online ordering system for prescription lenses and stock frames along with order tracking. Another feature of the site that makes shopping
easy for the optical professional is the online catalogue—a database driven application developed by Macdonald Design, Inc. that allows the user to search their entire frame
inventory by section or by frame brand. With its dazzling new image and functionality, the CSC Labs website brilliantly captures the company’s innovative, technologically advanced
approach to the optical market.
"We are very happy with the look and functionality of our website. Macdonald Design did an excellent, professional job. And, they had many other services available,
like copywriting and commercial photography, which were crucial to get the job done in a professional manner."
Robert Kim
CSC Group
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