i think it’s important to step back at this point and let you know that your website’s structure and layout can and will effect your organic rankings on search engines (especially google).

so many business owners come to me after their website is built and want to know how they can get ranked on google and yahoo now that they have a website.  i take a big breath, pull up their website and sometimes have to deliver some very bad news…

if your website was built by a developer (as opposed to a designer) who is not current in their coding capabilities, then you might be in trouble.

here’s an example, we just recently landed a client who came to us and said “our new website was built 6 months ago and we cannot get indexed and ranked highly by google for any of our keyword phrases”.  first thing we look at is the website code, it was built in very outdated (HTML 4.0) standards, with tables being used, very sloppy, hundreds of lines of code, and validated with over 300 errors per page.  the problem here is that google and others don’t like to crawl this mess.  it is just one of many issues evaluated by google, but if you want to compete in a competitive landscape you have to look at all the angles, just like google does.

if you are thinking, “oh tricia, that is just a petty reason to recode a website, that alone isn’t going to keep them from being ranked on google’s network”, i might agree, however, all things being equal and this alone the difference, it certainly will play a role.  here is what google has to say about it if you don’t buy my bull…

so let’s take the flip approach, you had a website built by a “designer” (all-be-it, a good one) with some coding skillz…

like my girlfriend, you probably have a great looking website that is one big picture, so guess what google see’s…

that’s right, one big image, no navigation, no text because google can’t see past the details of an image, it is only a computer after all…

here’s my favorite, your website is built in all flash, this just doesn’t work for seo, unless you have an xHTML site built with text based navigation so that google and others can see more than flash files…  but that takes more money than most small business owners are willing or able to spend.

so how your site is built can and will effect your rankings.  what you want is a custom built website using xHTML/CSS coding standards that is validated error free by these guys.

one approach i always evaluate when starting to look at a marketing plan, or the keyword phrases i want to target for a website, is the “they don’t even know” factor.  here’s what i mean.  let’s say you have an e commerce website that sells dog clothes and accessories.  pretty active audience here and tons of people looking for doggy high fashion (33,100 a month searched for dog jewelry on google’s network…), thanks paris hilton…

one approach the business might look at is targeting the audience that loves dogs but never imagined dressing them up, until they found your website that is.

how might they find your website without even knowing they wanted dog wear?

let’s say you had a page about “dog care” (165,000 searches are conducted monthly on Google for this very topic).  by simply having a page about dog care and linking to other great websites and blogs about proper “dog care”; you might just float to the top of the google organic rankings for this search and boom, there’s 165,000 searchers a month who now know not only about the dog care they were looking for, but ooow, look at this cute outfit i can put on Bandit…

the idea is not only to target the ones who know they need what you have, but to teach those who don’t realize they need you that you actually exist.

this not only allows you to sell what you make, but drives a lot of traffic to your website, which google LOVES by the way.

you will notice i don’t use caps, ever, so when i say LOVE, i mean it.  it is what will ultimately matter to google in the end…

seo, or search engine optimization, is, in my humble opinion, about creating a marketing plan for your website.  just as with any effort a business makes to reach their target audience, the first step is knowing your target audience.  in the world of organic seo, this means knowing how your audience searches for you.  it cannot be said enough times or enough ways, it all starts here.  even before you begin designing the layout and look of your website.

the phrases your audience uses should dictate the navigation and content direction your website takes.  many of my clients, i would guess to say, 90% of them, end up totally reorganizing their website to accommodate this requirement.  this involves spending good money after bad, simply because if you build your site up without this consideration, you must tear it down and rebuild.

here are some great examples if common mistakes web designers, developers and business owners make simply because they just don’t understand this core concept:

• navigation links are pictures to get your favorite font, big mistake
• navigation is cute instead of practical, big mistake
• content is missing or lacking keyword phrases, big mistake

these are just a few of the common mistakes, there are many more; let’s get back to the target audience…

here is a great, free, google tool to investigate how your audience is searching for your services.  just type in a word or two and google will tell you how searchers use those words to look for your services.  once you understand how people look for what you do, then you can build a website that meets those demands.

the old adage, “if you build it, they will come” does not work on the internet; i would say it goes more like, “if you listen to your audience and build for them, then and only then, will they come”…