Web Site Optimization
From Zero to a Hero in 10 Days-Case Study
by Nicolette Beard
The initial business goal of my client's Web site was to attract more
traffic which would, in turn, generate more leads. But the initial problem
was misidentified: The biggest problem was that the site couldn't begin to
attract visitors when the search engines couldn't find it. Because of a Flash intro, their site was not being properly crawled and indexed. Plus it
hadn't been updated in two years!
When redesigning a Web site, I
cannot guarantee results in less than 3-6 months because their are too many
variables to consider. Much to my delight, a recent redesign resulted in
Page One rankings for their two primary services:
commercial air
conditioning contractors and industrial refrigeration in Houston and the
much coveted #1 ranking on Google just 10 days since the re-launch.
How did this Web site go from being invisible to achieving high rankings in
such a short time?
First, we identified the glaring SEO no-no's:
- The opening page was in Flash.
- The navigation links were images.
- Page titles were identical and used only the company name.
- No page descriptions identified unique content or featured a
benefit statement.
- None of the pages took advantage of <h1> tags.
- The Home Page had scant copy.
We revamped the site significantly in order to improve all of the
above. We optimized the site navigation to be both search-engine and
user-friendly. We wrote keyword rich page titles, precise
descriptions, headlines containing primary keywords, modified the
file names, and, most importantly, we wrote 300+ words of original
Home Page content sprinkling our main keywords and keyword phrases
throughout.
One advantage this Web site enjoyed was a number of incoming links
and a lengthy domain history.
Applying technical SEO to Web site optimization will only take a
Web site so far. Getting top rankings and staying there is the
challenge. The life-long goal of a Webmaster should be to develop
a process to attract links with your keywords in the anchor text.
Highlighted text like this,
chillers Houston,
is an example of anchor text. It's also a clever way for me to help
out my client ;-).
How this is done is only limited by your curiosity in ferreting out
compatible Web sites and your commitment to providing quality,
relevant content over time.
While the mechanics of Web site optimization are fairly
straightforward, most sites still do not employ basic tactics;
tactics that prove to work.
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