by Jonathan Marshall

This morning I read an interesting blog byRebecca Appleton from Search Marketing Standard that discusses search engine optimization’s role in Web Design. Factors such as timing, amount of flash and session ID’s can all have an impact on your SEO campaign. Regardless of how competitive or unique your keyword list may be- there will always be competing websites, and they will always be making a push toward their top position in ranking. SEO Campaigns are designed to make a formerly invisible site appear in the results of the search engines, but even a well-executed campaign won’t compensate for a poorly designed website. Appleton goes on to talk about some of these design factors that can make or break your SEO strategies in her blog below.

Although traditional search engine optimization methods are paramount to increased web visibility and better site structure, design and usability factors also play an essential role – not just for site improvements but also as part of the overall user experience. This is a critical metric as a positive experience will drive stronger conversion rates.

Poor design will seriously inhibit search engine rankings with an unsuitable URL structure, too much flash animation and a lack of original content and keyword focus making it difficult for the search engines to make sense of what the page is about. If they can’t get an accurate picture of page theme, it’s difficult to justify inclusion in relevant search results.

Lack of Design and SEO Synergy

The easiest design-related mistake to make is to bring in a search engine optimization team after the designer has finished his work. If the SEO consultant only arrives after navigation, titles, headings and internal links have been finalized, important keywords are likely to have been missed out of the site’s cornerstone navigation architecture. Without these signposts, the end user may also find it difficult to seek out the desired information.

Too Much Flash

Too much flash animation is a second design error that can cause problems when it comes to optimization of the site. While a flash move is aesthetically appearing and will add a visually interesting element to the home page or product pages, too much flash will shroud the site in a veil of secrecy. While search engines are getting closer to being able to build an accurate picture of a page from flash coding, it’s unrealistic to expect a site that is heavily flash focused will rank well for dozens of keywords and synonyms. There is no need to steer away from Flash entirely when designing a site but, the visual benefits must be played off against meaningful HTML and text based content.

Splash Pages

Like flash, a splash page may be introduced in to the site design because of its visual impact. We’ll often see a splash page being used as a sales tool to flag up special offers or sale dates. A splash page may well use a flash movie with a link to skip the animation or, may simply be a large graphic with a link to click through to enter the main site. The problem with these pages is the lack of keyword focused content and cross-links needed for effective on page optimization.

Session IDs

A session ID is a unique identifier for each visitor, allowing site owners to chart the user’s journey from start to finish. Session IDs are common for e-commerce sites as they can be used to see what is added and removed from a cart during the user’s time on site. However, since a session ID is tacked on to the end of each URL, each session ID effectively creates a new duplicate page. The URL up to the session ID is the same, the content on page is the same, but the ID is unique to each visit so will be different. This creates a massive duplicate content issue – a problem which search engine’s penalize heavily and one that has caused many an SEO expert hours of lost sleep searching for a viable resolution. Even for small sites this is a big problem as each search engine visit will generate a whole new set of duplicate pages. When the search engines realize this, pages will be dropped and positions will fall. Restoring this broken trust is a massive task that may take months if not years of ethical search engine optimization.

Poor URL Structures

URL structure is very easy to get wrong at the design stage, particularly if a list of keywords and important phrases hasn’t yet been drawn up. As pages are named and navigation structures set up, the use of badly designed URLs can very quickly permeate throughout the site. Poor URL structures include the use of session IDs as mentioned above, the use of characters such as &%*, using only keywords, too many parameters, and using numbers instead of words.

For more information, visit Appleton’s blog and check out Search Marketing Standard for the latest tools, trends, industry news and more.

by Les Kollegian

Recently I’ve been hearing the same question come up in many conversations with clients: “When will I see results from our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plan”? My response is the same to every client, regardless of the situation. “It depends. It could take a couple weeks or a couple of months. You have to be patient.” Jacob Tyler’s SEO process is very intricate and time consuming. That being said- it works. Below is an explanation of why SEO campaigns take some time to get off the ground, and why our SEO is more ‘process’ than ‘result’.
Receiving Links Back from High Page-rank Sites is the First Step.

First things first, securing inbound links is never a speedy process. One aspect of a typical search marketing campaign will involve writing to other web directories and websites, inviting them to link to your own, which takes time. However, without this crucial step, links from other websites take MUCH longer to develop. I usually tell my clients to think of an SEO campaign as a process that speeds up what would occur naturally.

Webmaster response can also take a considerable amount of time. Even if you or your SEO consultant completed 150 requests in a day, the webmasters of those 150 other sites may not get back to you immediately. In extreme cases, it has been 10 – 12 months before I have heard back from some webmasters. So you’ll get some links quickly, and other links will take much longer.

The importance of receiving these links is that search engines count inbound links as a “vote”. Sites that have more “votes” are perceived as being stronger, in addition to having higher rankings.

Getting your Inbound Links to be Indexed

So let’s say that a few weeks have passed and you’ve secured 50 valuable inbound links from 50 great websites. Even though you’ve requested 150, you will never get every link you ask for, it just doesn’t happen. Some webmasters will never answer your request, and some simply will not link back.
So you have some links pointing to your site, now what?

Now the long and detailed process moves on to Google and Yahoo and they don’t get around to indexing those 50 pages for days or weeks. Google will generally index most sites within 3 – 4 weeks, whereas Yahoo takes longer and MSN takes much longer. As second-tier search engines like MSN improve their technology, you can expect the indexing speed to catch up. Additionally, until the search engines update their indexes of the pages that link to your site, it’s as if the link doesn’t exist.

Search engines are picky and they don’t index pages just because webmasters index them. So, if Google comes upon a web page with a link to your site, it may index that page immediately, or it may return a few times before the page is indexed. In that case, some links may take months to be indexed.

The Sites that Link to You have to wait for their Links as well

You also can’t forget that the sites that link to you are “living” websites too. The strength of their web presence is based on the links they receive – and that landscape is constantly changing. When your site is new, the sites that are willing to link to you are going to usually be new as well. As such, the inbound linking power of the sites that link to you will tend to be weaker than websites that have been around for a longer period of time. However, those sites will grow into stronger sites as they age, and then the inbound links that you have from other sites will grow as well.

The Sandbox Effect

And then, on top of everything else, there is the Sandbox Effect. The Sandbox Effect refers to the phenomenon of a temporary ranking penalty applied to newer websites that undergo rapid expansion in either inbound links or size. The Sandbox Effect is heavily debated and never conclusively proven either way.

Google spokesperson, Matt Cutts, has publicly stated, “There are some things in the algorithm that may be perceived as a sandbox that doesn’t apply to all industries.” Mr. Cutts’ statements are very well prepared, extremely rare and he is widely regarded as a knowledgeable, reliable source.
And so, the Sandbox Effect may serve to temporarily slow down the effects of any promotional campaign you undertake.

All of these factors combine to form the long and often frustrating process of a typical SEO campaign. Depending on your website, it can be a quick and pain-free experience, or it can be a slow and testing process. It depends. You have to be patient.