Frequently asked Questions Search Engine Optimization (828) 713-0535 helpdesk@leelehman.com PO Box 19185, Asheville NC 28815 Q:  What is website optimization? Q:  How do I improve my ranking in sites like Google and Yahoo? Q:  What is all this talk about click-through and pay-per-click advertising? Q:  Does Google Adwords (or something like it) really pay to do? Q:  I got my site optimized so that it was appearing near the top on Google - but that was last month. Why isn’t it still there? Q:  What is website optimization? A:  There are actually two common usages of this term. The first is to speed up the loading of a site, or to speed up the execution of a site. There are a number of factors which contribute to speed of a site. These include the size of graphics files (this is why many sites feature thumbnail graphics that are clickable), ad the density of code. Oftentimes, general programs like word processors used to create web pages as merely one of their many functions produce more extraneous code than programs such as Dreamweaver?, which are designed to produce faster html. The second kind of optimization is more correctly called Search engine optimization (SEO). This is a series of techniques to make it easier for your web site to be seen by search engines, and to drive your listing in the search engines higher to the top.   Q:  How do I improve my ranking in sites like Google and Yahoo? A:  First: there's no one magic bullet: because if there were, there would instantly be a million sites all optimized that one particular way, and then Google and Yahoo would have to start from scratch - again. Actually, Google and the other search engines closely hide their exact logic that they use for listing sites. Having said that, there are some general ideas. First and foremost: don't try to cheat. A few years ago, the thing to do in site optimization was Meta Tags: this is a label inside the html code which tells a search engine what the page is about. But people starting cramming everything and the kitchen sink into the Meta Tags, and the search engines concluded that these were not as useful a guide as previously thought. Then programmers tried "invisible" words: this was text that really didn't apply to the site that was inserted in the same color as the background - so viewers couldn't see it and get confused - but search bots could. But then, when Google and Yahoo got wise to this, they actually gave negative rankings for this. That's why it doesn't pay to cheat: the search engines get wise to tricks, and then penalize the tricksters. The name of the game is text: Google and Yahoo search on what you say, not the cool graphics you design. So if you want your site to be found, then say something. Lehman Associates can help you optimize your site to make it easier to find. Go to Top Q:  What is all this talk about click-through and pay-per-click advertising? A:  This is perhaps the most common form of web advertising. Services like Google Adwords allow you to "buy" presence on their website, thereby driving traffic to your site. There are three main ways that a site can charge you for an ad: a flat fee, pay-per-view, or pay-per-click. With a flat fee, a site agrees to feature your ad copy either in a permanent location which all site guests can see - like a business directory - or your ad (generally a banner or a sidebar) "floats" through their site. For a banner or sidebar, floating may actually be a good thing: if visitors see the same visual content every time they come back to the site, they may simply stop seeing your ad at all. So floating can be seen as almost like having multiple ad designs - it keeps the page fresh, which keeps the viewer more alert. With pay-per-view, you pay every time that your banner or sidebar text ad is seen. (If you aren't sure what a sidebar is, go to Google - you'll see sidebar text ads on the right hand side when you do a search.) Finally, there's pay-per-click. Here, you only pay if someone actually clicks on the link and visits your site. "Click-through rates" is a measure of the effectiveness of the text or banner you have designed to get people to come to your site. Banner or visual ads typically produce a click-through-rate (CTR) of 1% or less; text sidebars are usually considerably less. Go to Top   Q:  Does Google Adwords (or something like it) really pay to do? A:  This kind of advertising can be useful - but it's no panacea either. The fact is, I've looked at web statistics for sites before and after a Google Adwords campaign and seen little if any difference in the traffic on the site. In other cases, the difference is obvious - but perhaps not so much in the traffic volume as in sales. One thing is certainly true: the design of the ad, whether visual or text, is critical to the effectiveness of the campaign as measured by CTR. Design can easily affect the CTR by a factor of ten - and mostly, it's a negative effect! A bad ad can kill CTR. But then the rest is up to you and your site: you are paying for someone to arrive at your site: the question then is whether you're getting conversion: does the person buy your product? Search engine optimization brings them to the tent, but your site (and your product) has to close the deal. Go to Top Q:  I got my site optimized so that it was appearing near the top on Google - but that was last month. Why isn’t it still there? A:  Everybody in the business will tell you that optimizing requires continuing attention. If you stop paying attention - then somebody else may. Also, Google and the other search engines periodically change their search criteria. This can affect how well your site is seen. And what other people do can also affect your site’s visibility, because links into your site are one important search consideration: and that’s something you cannot generally control. Go to Top All the images here are clickable links to websites that Lee has either designed, or administered.