Hot Topic: Web Positioning

In the course of Cambashi's consultancy work, we have advised clients on the need for their websites to reflect clearly brand values and image. We have recently taken some of our own medicine - the new look Cambashi website was released in April 2001, and is being continuously improved.

As we have been informed countless times by all the web-related news articles and ezines, there is no point in having an all-singing, all-dancing website if no-one knows it's there. This article assumes you already appreciate the benefits of increasing search engine rankings, leading to increased traffic, etc, etc.

Instead, we explain how Cambashi has increased its web traffic over the last four months. Increase in total hits from October 2001 is around 40%; for daily unique visitors, the rise is nearer 70% (we are using www.hitslink.com to measure hits).

There are hundreds of possible ways to increase web hits, but we have concentrated on just a few. We are not suggesting that this is necessarily the best approach, but we have discovered some pitfalls, which are often only in the very small print of the various software offerings.

After a 30 day free trial, we purchased WebPositionGold as a good value tool to start us off. We only utilise a small part of what they offer: mainly their hints on improving ranking and the search engine keyword reporter. You can find all the details on their website at www.webposition.com.

The various major search engines work on very different bases. We researched several, and decided to focus on one in particular - Google. It is the most significant public search engine for us - also one of the most popular, with a sensible ranking methodology. Their results are primarily based on content and links from other domains (for more details see www.google.com/webmasters/4.html). Of course, this may all be different next month; one of the keys to success is to be aware of moving goalposts.

Firstly, hints that Cambashi has taken note of (in order of importance):

1. Content: the more web pages and words you have, the more there is for search engines to index. However, people tend to skim read web pages, so keep the content concise - edit for the web, not for paper.
2. External links: Google, in particular, uses a complicated ranking system based not only on how many other domains link to a page, but how highly those other pages rank themselves. Increasing the number of external links to your web page is time consuming, but will have a significant effect on traffic. Find reasons why adding a link to your site will be a good thing for other sites to do.
3. Internal links: increasing internal links means that search engines can index the site more easily.
4. Keywords (as meta data): it is difficult to tell how much difference these make, but apparently search engines do find them. Beware - some search engines penalise you if you enter too many per page, or repeat the same word(s) several times, i.e. spam.
5. Page titles: this is an easy task, but absolutely essential. Just think about when you use a search engine and get 5,000 results - a page name which accurately describes the page content is a life saver.
6. H1: some search engines recognise style sheet formats such as H1, H2 as being headings, and subsequently rate the words more highly.

And here are some of the hints we decided were risky:

1. Automated page submission: "over-submitting" your site can count against you. Problem: where do the engine designers draw the line? Cambashi has manually submitted our home page to those major search engines which do not charge a fee.
2. Doorway pages: sometimes recommended by the so-called "experts", these are designed purely to attract the search engines into your domain - just keywords and links. Some search engines are 'aware' of this and call it cheating - if discovered, your site could be blacklisted.
3. Netiquette: as above, some search engines will penalise methods they consider dubious, e.g. making text or links the same colour as the background, or including competitors' names in the meta data.

Remember, keep your website relevant and content-rich, and as long as search engines maintain their quest for quality, you will succeed.

Melanie Bradley
melanie.bradley@cambashi.com

Also in this issue:

Feature Article: CRM - Customise and conquer
Mike Evans gives his latest thoughts and recommendations on how to customise and conquer CRM in the current climate of tight budgets and struggling sales.

Conference Review :Teknik and Data, Odense
As a change from our normal book review we have substituted a conference review. Teknik and Data took place in Odense in February and was attended by Bob Brown and Jens Kudsk Jensen.

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