News and Guides - My Green Corner » 2007 » December

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques are facing big challenges thrown upon by the globally operating business websites. There are large global organizations and companies addressing specifically targeted audiences and customers. Websites of such organizations and companies are normally accessible worldwide. Such a typical and complex mix-up of the requirements make the SEO tasks even more complex and intricate.SEO experts need to address the global and local requirements at the same time and their success depends totally on the success of the positioning of the website.

Global launching of the business operations for a company may be overwhelming news for everyone but for SEO experts developing a global as well as country specific strategy is no joke. When the companies are going global and making their presence felt internationally, it is high time that the SEO experts must start thinking and acting globally. In fact, the working on such a website project should have been based upon carefully designed strategy to address the international and local search engine requirements from the day one itself.

Optimization depends on the nature of the website and its outreach. A global website therefore needs a global optimization. Website management and technological inputs must ensure the global concepts in order to meet any challenge regarding global strategy formulations. It is also vital to imbibe processes of constant changes.

Language: Global and Local Perspectives

Search is search after all and relevancy is the key factor in search. Therefore, at the same time, relevancy is relevancy in its true sense. These two fundamental equations prevail and hold true across the globe. Conclusively, it becomes clear that the search engine algorithms act in the same manner across the globe. There is hardly any reason for the core algorithms to be dependent on geographic locations and any other place and location specific criterion. But when we try to analyze the perspectives of a user we find that the search performance has to be specifically localized. Language is the one such important factor that needs to match with all other localization criteria.

Many internet marketers adopt the approach to hire a translation service or company in order to extend their brand presence in the global market. These translation companies generally prefer creating additional pages to obtain global popularity. Internet marketers will have to understand that this approach is not sufficient enough in itself. Such translation of website content has various limitations.

Content localization is necessary in order to introduce more effectiveness. There are several measures and approaches for doing this .Replacing an alternate spelling for a word, local vernacular that the locals use generally, and even using the local slangs that is very common in a particular geographic location or area are some of these popular measures. While translating the content or replacing selected portions these approaches are of immense help.

Globally operating businesses face a big challenge with the adjustment of the contents with local language on their websites. An element of carelessness would increase the risk of loosing either local or outside customers. There has to be a balance in the content of the website facilitating both the locals and the outsiders equally because such a global website would be searched upon by numerous people around the globe. Settling on one particular language may lead to several complexities. Addressing a particular group of audiences and viewers from a particular region would limit the versatility of the website. On the other hand, having multiple variations of languages for the same product or services could raise serious concerns about duplicity of the content and some other related issues. In such a situation work of an expert in Search Engine Optimization becomes much more complex. Should the same website be optimized for two stages? Or should the website be optimized by two different experts? These questions have no simple and straight answers.

At the same time an element of constant change is also worth considering. Global requirements keep on changing and so do the county specific requirements and local requirements. The SEO expert would be required to keep pace with this constantly changing environment. Language is never static. It is a dynamic concept that changes according to the changed circumstances.

There are some options that anyone may consider though. Having a website with an international approach addressing to the requirements of multi-origin audiences is obviously a good option.SEO experts would be required to work real hard on such concepts.

Domains: Multiple Versions and Country Extensions

Organizations and companies having an international brand image and global business prefer skinning this cat in several innovative ways. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have created sub-folders for distinguishing between several versions of their websites that are language specific. One of the most recent trends is adopting country specific domains. Companies including Sony, Nokia, Google, and Mercedes-Benz are now using country specific domain extensions. Many companies use a coordinated blending of both these techniques. Yahoo and MSN have a mixed structure for their websites and are using country specific domain extensions or unique sub-domains.

Each of these approaches has their own advantages. Global companies, website Designers and the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Experts need to consider many factors while making decisions. Some of these decisive factors include technical constraints, content management system, and local requirements. Several other factors that are outside the purview of marketing concepts also need equal attention.

Development of a SEO strategy that is global is tough enough and not a matter of just one hit. It is in the best interest of the ever growing internet market and businesses to present an opportunity before the SEO experts to think and start acting globally.

Influencing and manipulating the positioning of websites in majority of the search engines is a practice that has affected the search engine preferences adversely. A technique came in to practice years ago, concurrently with the evolution and development of several searches engine optimization techniques. Many SEO experts adopted these techniques of creating Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages. SEO experts used to calculate the search engine optimization algorithms. This calculation and its results helped them creating and building specific pages that would obtain a high ranking in particularly targeted search engines.

The internet market is full of different types of software and programs for creating such specific Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages with just a few clicks. These software and programs are specifically designed to facilitate the marketers and consumers both. An expert first has to sort out the relevant specific information that would be entered in to pre-defined form fields related to the page that needs an optimization. SEO expert also decides about the targeted search engine and prepares the keyword sets. Thereafter, the program generates automatically a page fully optimized and suitable for a particular search engine.

Evolution and development of this innovative technique helped SEO experts and businesses both, in many ways. As it generally happens with every potentially beneficial technology, this technique also met with gross miss-utilization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) experts, consultants, and the consumers, all started abusing this technique in order to derive instantaneous benefits.

It is not an uncommon observation that a website has three, four or five pages with rich and relevant core-content and hundreds of Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages. These specifically designed Doorway Pages only target the specific keyword set associated with the optimization of that particular website. The search engines provide a high rank to only a few of these pages leaving all remaining pages completely ineffective. Thus search engines are compelled to index billions of pages unnecessarily.

Gross miss-utilization and continuous abusing of this search engine optimization technique forced majority of the search engines and the directories respond with a scowl. As a result, billions of the pages of websites indexed have a clear indication for being Doorway, Gateway or Bridge Pages. Search engines spiders and robots have gone smarter than ever today. They drop all such machine generated Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge pages very intelligently from the search engine indexes on a regular basis. Alternatively, these search engine spiders and robots also opt for burying such pages deep down the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) in such a way that there is hardly any possibility for anyone to track them down. Search Engines now have another system of penalizing the entire website domain for such acts. Entire domain having such mischievous Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages may get a penalty ranking or even a complete ban from the search engine indexes. The genuine SEO-experts therefore, will never advice generating these types of pages just to obtain a higher search engine page ranking.

What makes the search engines so proficient and enable them to identify these malicious Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages? It may be interesting for everyone to know that the search engines have a capacity to overview thousands of website pages within moments. Every web page has a typical structure, architecture, and footprint. Machine generated pages normally remain untouched for a long time. Most of these Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages are actually orphan-pages. These pages have virtually no links pointing towards them. On the other hand, these pages have links that are normally pointing towards either the homepage or some specific page of the website having a targeted keyword set. Based on these factors, search engine spiders and robots can detect such type of pages in a moment.

Majority of the search engines have introduced several remedial measures to deal with such abusive page creators but there are few search engines that still allow such Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages for indexing. All popular search engines and directories now have published guidelines stating clearly that the Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages are completely unwanted and would never be indexed and are more likely to attract ranking penalties. These guidelines also advice that such pages dilute the quality of the results and it causes a heavy toll on valuable resources.

Considering all these pertinent aspects about the page configuration, it would always be advantageous to take consultancy of a website SEO-company or an expert Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Professional. For a website that uses Flash Technology as .swf-movie file or heavy graphics, it might be a good reason to introduce further necessary SEO related changes. Similarly, a website having an imbalanced text to graphics ratio would also require substantial changes. An expert SEO or SEM consultant would be the best judge and advisor in such matters related to the best practices in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM).In spite of all possible repercussions, application of unethical technique of creating Doorway, Gateway, or Bridge Pages would be disadvantageous in terms of website’s success.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) concept involves several methodologies, approaches, techniques, and tools. Each method and every tool has its own advantages. One must understand that a lone method or a single tool in itself will never be enough to accomplish the herculean task of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is a beautiful blending of several methods and many of the tools applied altogether that makes an optimized popular website.

Search engines are now using more than 100 algorithms to index any website. It is a multiple and complex situation. It becomes extremely difficult for any SEO- expert to determine which techniques and kind of tools would be the most appropriate ones. The SEO-experts across the world have many opinions about the suitability and applicability of techniques and tools in particular or in a combination of these methodologies.

Every website has its own structure and architecture. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies include extremely important approaches of re-structuring the website in order to attain more popularity and attract higher search engine rankings. Typical website-restructuring process involves restructuring of some basic elements of the website.

Script Restructuring

Script restructuring in normal sense is almost rebuilding of a website completely. A typical website has its own architecture. Rebuilding a website would automatically change the basic architecture also. In its simplest sense, it is optimization of coding. Therefore, this process involves stripping away the deprecated HTML and XHTML tags. This stripping away of unnecessary codes behind the scene helps indexing the core concept of a website. A typical CSS Declaration has inbuilt presentation attributes. Applications of CSS and Absolute Positioning have a vital role in the achievement of top positions with the spider based search engines. Alternatively, there may also be an external .css file.

Script restructuring may also require placing all the JavaScript functions in to the external files in order to minimize the total amount of codes behind the pages of a website. There could be a necessity to address the file naming conventions at the same time. Changing the images, files, and directory names may also be a mandatory requirement. Script restructuring thus becomes a complete research, analysis, and implementation project in itself. It is obvious that only an expert with considerable experience can handle such specialized tasks.

Content Restructuring

Optimization of the website content is one of the key aspects of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A website may have different types of contents existing and aiming for specific purposes. In order to make it search engine friendly, there may be a requirement to re-write the content. Several copywriting strategies are available and expert copywriters know the exact application of a particular strategy. Writing for websites is a lot different from writing in general or writing for other media including the print media. Therefore, it is obvious that the traditional copywriters have certain limitations when it comes to the web-copywriting.

Similar is the case with the source of the content. Quite often, print media becomes the source for the website content. This may be a brochure, magazine, product specification sheet, line card, or a simple newspaper article. Writing for the print media has its own perspectives and orientations that are completely different what web-copywriting is all about. Print media writing would never serve the same purpose for web media in equal or relative terms.

A website optimized with rich content needs proper designing and conceptualization. The content-experts and SEO-Copywriters may prefer making necessary changes or even restructure the complete content of the website. Poorly conceptualized business websites are generally prone to such problems and thus need content-restructuring.

It is always better to have a group of content-rich-pages describing each product or service in more lucid way instead of having just one long page containing information about all the products and services. All these pages would be strategically linked with each other with user-friendly logical navigational structuring. Keyword optimization for these type of products and services specific content-rich-pages would add an overall relevancy and improved theme structure of the website.

Search engines require optimized website content for their indexing purposes. An expert web-copywriter therefore is the best person to convert the text and content in to the optimized content.

Traffic Management

Attracting and driving traffic towards the website is equally important. For a website, having specific purpose specifically targeted traffic is a necessary requirement. An intelligent webmaster would opt for some well-thought and well-calculated steps and strategies to ensure attracting the targeted traffic towards its website. There are certain pertinent factors that need to take care of including the budgetary aspects. Satisfactory or profitable Return on Investment (ROI) may be an important basis for arriving at any decision.

Depending upon the resource base, certain specific long term as well as short term strategies have to be evolved and implemented. There are some excellent website management programs available to ensure this. Popular Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bid Management Programs are of the same kind and prove to be of immense help for website optimization.

Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies normally have a nice blend of professionals including expert SEO-Copywriters. Website management linked with specifically focused Internet Marketing Campaigns is extremely advantageous for high-ranking search engine listings. A company with considerable flexibility in developing a campaign for the website would be a decisive factor in the determination of the level of success in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).