Failure to use the correct wording on web pages

The wording of the textual parts of your web site are crucial to its success in getting ranked highly in all the major search engines. Many people simply think that putting a list of keywords in meta-tags on a homepage is enough, but they are dead wrong. Google and Yahoo, currently the two most popular search engines in the world don't even use meta-tagged keyword lists at all to rank web sites so its no use whatsoever relying on that to help your site get listed on the front page of a key word search.

What IS important, is using those keywords in the headline and body text of each of your web pages (not just the home page). First thing to do is to decide exactly what keywords or keyword phrases your customers actually use when they are trying to find the product or service you are advertising on your web site. One example would be a company selling beer on-line. You may liberally sprinkle your home page with all the key names of your products, like Budweiser, Coors, Fosters and so on, but the most used word by people searching to buy alcohol on-line is simply 'beer'! So, do not fall into the trap of using keywords that make sense to you, find out what your customers are likely to type into a search engine and use those words instead. Its is not a matter of what you want the site to say. You are not doing this to please yourself or your marketing department, you are doing it to sell.

Also, avoid using what is referred to as marketing speak on your web pages, it won't help get your pages ranked at all. "We carry the widest selection of high quality sportswear and sporting goods available in the UK" should be ditched in favour of, "We stock, trainers, tennis shoes, running shoes and football boots by Nike, Puma (etc) along with soccer strips, tracksuits, shorts, T-shirts ... (well you know the rest). Talk to your customers, your family, friends, the kids and find out what they would type into the search bar of Google to find what you sell, then use those keywords or key phrases as often as possible in your text.

Take a look at www.easternbox.co.uk, the website of one of our clients, and see how many times the words 'corrugated', 'packaging', 'boxes', 'cases' and the phrase 'point of sale' are repeated. The wording may seem a little repetitive, but in five months from launching the site, they have seen it climb onto the first two pages of Google, Yahoo, Lycos and Ask Jeeves when they keyword phrases "Corrugated boxes", "Corrugated cases", "Corrugated packaging" and "Corrugated Point of Sale packaging" are entered. They generally rank between 1st and 50th for these phrases, from a list in the UK alone of more than 170,000 sites. These phrases are the most used keyword searches input by people in the UK looking for cardboard boxes. They have not paid for a single listing to get this site ranked as highly as it currently is. Keywords can be used singly, or better still in groups of two words.

The trend today is get company names, concise advertising logo's, even addresses and such produced as images and put onto web pages. They will not help you get a web site ranked highly. Again, where possible, substitute all this with typed text. True it may not look so sexy, but in reality, what use is a really cool web site that no one can find in a search engine?

This use of images of 'Flash' which are moving images or logo's all look cool but are no use whatever in getting your website onto the first 2 pages of any search engine. This is because search engines only use text to rank sites and there is not useable text in images or moving logo's.

For more information, see our page on using Macromedia Flash on websites.