Often, one of the easiest and least expensive ways for most online businesses to attract targeted customers is through search engine traffic. Unfortunately, web site optimisation, the process of preparing a site for search engines is often an afterthought and only brought up well after the site has been designed.

Studies show that search engine traffic can account for as much as 50% or more of a site's traffic. The main problem is that many sites are not designed to account for this traffic and usually draw in much less than 20%. In fact, most web sites are lucky if they acquire 10-15% of their visitors via search engines. And in many cases, the ones that do are often pulling in traffic based on keywords or phrases that are not relevant to the company's products or services.

Here in Australia, site optimisation is seen as the ugly duckling of online marketing. It's valued by a few insiders who truly see how it fits into the big picture, but misunderstood or even ignored by the masses. As an online marketing tool, it is one of the most cost-effective ways to drive targeted traffic to your site. And besides attracting new visitors and providing a bigger bang for the client's buck, the process also improves the site for the visitors once they get there.

The truth is that people and search engines both want the same thing. Information! The easier you make it for them to get to the information, the more success you'll have. While, I'm not arguing that we should all revert back to the days of plain HTML text (although this has certainly shown to garnish very good results), you do need to have a good balance in your design. This means, it's important to limit the use of tools such as Flash, frames, splash pages, JavaScript, and other web technologies that we all like to use to make our sites look cool. While they may help us win awards, they often stop search engines and visitors in their tracks.

If you're just starting off for the first time, you have the opportunity to do it right from the beginning. For those who already have a site, a little tweaking can do a lot to improve search engine results and deliver targeted traffic month after month.

No splashing about

A favorite of many web designers (especially those making the cross over from print design) is the splash page, a graphic or animation that displays when the visitor first reaches the web site. The common belief among these designers is that this technique builds or reinforces the brand of a site. While the jury is still out on the potential branding affect, splash pages have shown to limit search engines from crawling the site and reaching the good content. The end result is that you end up with fewer results in the search engines.

Go easy on the image

According to a long running commercial for Sprite ginger ale, "Image is everything." However, when it comes to web sites, it's not necessary to design the entire web site in graphics to get the right image. Rather, your web site design should contain a good balance of text, graphics, and white space. Not only will this help ensure that the search engines are able to find some searchable content but it will also make it easier for visitors to get to the important information without waiting for the complete page to load.

Minimize the use of technology

One common technology still found on many web sites is Flash (this technology allows animation on the web). If used wisely, Flash can help build a good web site. However, overuse it and you'll prevent search engines from reaching the content. In other words, if you use Flash throughout your site, there's very little chance that you will receive the search engine traffic you desire.

Note: Google can now search Flash based web sites. However, don't expect stellar results.

Avoid using frames

The use of frames has historically caused poor search rankings as search engines often have difficulty navigating the various pages within the frame. Often, if a page happens to gets indexed, it usually ends up causing poor listings with missing titles and descriptions and navigation problems once the visitor reaches the site (as they likely won't see the other pages within the frame that contain the navigation). In most cases, with a little extra effort and planning, you can still achieve the same design without using frames and benefit in the long run from the improved search engine results.

Contact Amplify to learn the benefits of web site optimisation.