Written by Fernando Maciá
Índice
The pressure to get first positions in search engines sometimes makes us forget the real objective of a website: to obtain qualified traffic. Getting first positions in search engines is not an end in itself, but a means to obtain traffic likely to become customers of our website. Therefore, when it comes to optimizing our website for search engines, it is important to know which limits should not be crossed.
First positions in search engines, is what our customers demand from us every day. In an environment as competitive as the Internet, fighting for the top spots is like a Formula 1 race: you have to push the limits, but never cross them. One extra boost in the engine, and it may increase reliability, but it won’t cross the finish line first. Less aerodynamic support in the chassis and the car may outperform its rivals in top speed, but it will become unmanageable in the corners. Any decision always involves a trade-off between several factors. Also in search engine optimization. So it is important to know what these factors are and what is the limit that we should not transgress.
The rules of the indexing game
One of the first tasks when positioning a website is to analyze the degree of web indexability of the same. Does each page have a different title? Is this title related to the content of the page? Can all pages of the site be reached by clicking on links or are there pages that can only be accessed by querying an internal search engine? Do the images have ALT text (the text that appears in a yellow box when hovering over the image or what you would see if browsing with image loading inactive)? These and other aspects are crucial for search engines to discover what the content of a page is about, so that they can list it as a result in related searches. We could say that, at this level, we would be ensuring that the website meets minimum indexability requirements, i.e., as we know that the algorithms in charge of search engine indexing work, the page is likely to be found, crawled and classified appropriately. If the page is indexable, we already have a car that starts, rolls and is able to reach the finish line. At the moment, we do not know in which position.
Search engines, therefore, are the first to impose certain limits when it comes to admitting each website to their database. Some of these limits are also of a technical nature: we know that pages using Flash, Javascript links, dynamic webs or framesets pose more difficulties for search engines to index them correctly than a simpler type of programming. Which brings us back to the adoption of a compromise: do we want a Formula 1 or a rally car? With both we can win races but only if we confront each one on their own turf.
Look ahead… but keep an eye on your rearview mirror.
This brings us to another of the natural limits in the positioning of our website: our competition. How many and who are my competitors? What specialty am I really competing in? Because with only one car I can’t win every race. So, although the Internet audience is made up of hundreds of millions of people and aspires to be a global audience, you must start by studying your own profile as a company, that of your products or services and, of course, the profile of the potential customer of your website. Focus your efforts on that niche market and refine your search engine strategy to find more specialized search categories that result in less crowded results pages. I assure you that you will participate in fewer races but you will have a better chance of winning some… enough to keep your budget out of the red.
Look ahead: study which websites appear in search engines ahead of yours for relevant keywords and analyze why. It will help you to overtake them at the next turn… I mean, at the next update of the search engine indexes. And don’t forget to keep an eye on the rear-view mirror: Be sure that your competitors are also studying you: update your content, generate inbound links that increase your popularity and keep an eye on the evolution of the search engines. It will help you maintain your advantage.
When to use the turbo
Once the indexability of a website has been ensured, it is up to the professional to decide which aspects can be improved and further refined. We enter the realm of what we call “web optimization“. It is a matter of making the most of all language and programming resources to ensure that our page appears among the first results in searches related to its content. This optimization is based on a thorough study of the origin of the visits to our website in our traffic registration system and the typology of our market niche:how and where do our potential customers search for the services offered by a website like ours?
Once we have discovered these key concepts, the optimization of our website consists of introducing them in those areas of our page in which the indexing program of the search engines is set to assign one classification or another. We might be tempted to repeat these terms as many times as possible in order to make the search engine believe that our site is more relevant to certain types of queries than it really is. Even hiding this content from the end user. This is what we call “over-optimization”.
As in almost everything, virtue usually lies in the middle ground and, in this case, this middle ground is delimited, for example, in the recommendations offered by the search engines themselves at Bing Site Owner Help or in the Information about Google for WebmastersThe following table shows clearly which techniques are and are not admissible. Cross these boundaries and we will gain an advantage over our competitors in terms of positioning. But make no mistake, this is a temporary advantage and, sooner or later, the algorithms used by the search engines will detect the trickery. The result? Disqualified from the race for using an unauthorized fuel… I mean, banned website or, what is the same, non-existent for the search engine for a good season. So we are once again faced with decisions that always involve a trade-off between efficiency and safety.
But what … is this website talking about?
“A holiday home for your vacations in Spain on your website about vacation homes for your vacations in Spain”. In case you haven’t heard yet, this text is about selling houses for vacation rentals in Spain and, this is the worst part, it is not fictitious, but extracted from one of the many websites that try to market this service on the Internet. As you can see, the argumentative subtlety, the commercial seduction of this text is null. For whom, then, is it written? Indeed, for search engines. But unless MSN Search, Yahoo or Google have incarnated and become men, the target users of this site – people like you and me – are, at the very least, strangely surprised by such a message and not at all seduced by it.
At the recent Search Engine Strategy Conference in Chicago, business copywriting specialist Bob Bly addressed this topic in one of his presentations, arguing that “you need to have a target audience in mind and focus on making the case and selling to that audience’s profile”. From his perspective, SEO optimization of texts could be done, but not at the price of ruining their commercial persuasiveness. Once again, the commitment: to write texts that attract your customers and seduce search engines.
Keep in mind this maxim: if search engine optimization is what drives potential customers from search engines to your home page, aspects such as usability, persuasive language and an attractive and clear design is what leads them to the order page of your website (or to the contact page, or to the FAQ section…). In short, it is what turns visitors into customers. Both processes are necessary if you want your website to meet its objectives.
So… where do we stand?
Does this mean that we should not worry about optimizing our website for search engine optimization? None of the above. What we mean is that as search engine indexing algorithms evolve, as the number of competitors for the same market niche increases and as the application of minimum indexability criteria in the design of new websites becomes more widespread, SEO becomes an increasingly professionalized and specialized field. A shifting and changing terrain where pushing the limits of optimization without compromising search engine standards, usability criteria and the website’s own business vocation requires constant updating of the indexing criteria used by search engines (they are the ones who set the rules of the game), an analysis of our competitors’ strategies (let’s copy what works and be the first to implement innovations) and a continuous and consistent study of our performance through the web traffic statistics (remember, SEO is not an end, it is a means to get traffic that can make your cash register ring).
