Advice to a friend redesigning a company Web site

by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, http://www.samizdat.com/

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This article was heard on the radio program "The Computer Report," which is broadcast live on WCAP in Lowell, Mass., and is syndicated on WBNW in Boston and WPLM in Plymouth,

Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. For details, see www.samizdat.com/consult.html.

A friend who just got a new job wrote to me saying, "My first project is to create order out of the mess they are using as an Internet. Could you kindly share your experience with me? What's your advice regarding Web usability and navigation?"

First keep in mind that you have two separate and not always compatible goals:

If you are perchance battling corporate branding rules that legislate design techniques that get in the way of search engines finding your content (e.g., frames, dynamic content, content generated by Java script, etc.), you may want to consider creating two separate sets of pages: The text of the search engine pages should be the same as that on the main site, but should be plain static HTML, with the most important information appearing in the HTML title and the first couple lines of text.

Forget about Meta Tags -- they are worthless. Focusing on Meta Tags would probably lead to your missing the most important factor: the actual text content of your pages.

Each of your mirror/search engine pages should have links to the home page of your main site, recommending that users go that way to get the optimal experience. There's no need for links from there back to the search engine pages.

Every page of yours should have some text that makes the context clear (what is this site? what's its purpose?) and links for easy navigation within the site (including Help and the site map). Presume that each and every page is a potential entry point for visitors and make sure they won't be confused when they arrive.

Create a "site map" page that in plain static HTML has a hyperlinked list of all pages at your site, and include a link to that site map on every one of your pages. That is the page that you should point search engines to. That makes it easy for crawlers to find all your pages.

Keep your Web addresses simple -- the fewer the levels of directories the better. Search engines like AltaVista presume that the higher a page is in the directory hierarchy, the more important it is; and some will simply halt at about the third or fourth directory level.

Also keep in mind that search engines are inclined to give more value to large pages as opposed to small ones. So don't divide long articles into a series of linked short pages each of which is no bigger than a screen or two. The longer the better (up to about 64K of text). If corporate design rules or someone's notion of the ideal user experience forces you to design that way, then create mirror pages where the full content is all together. That's not only good for search engines, it also makes it far easier for visitors to print your content.

Avoid search engine optimization and submission services. Submit yourself to AltaVista, Excite, Hotbot, Lycos, Google, Fastsearch, and others you know of and like -- using your site map page, not your home page. Also, be sure to submit to the Open Directory and Yahoo. Submit to the LookSmart directory, too, if you are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars.

For optimum results and fast indexing service at AltaVista, you should submit each and every page individually, whenever you create a new page and whenever you make a significant change to a page. You pages should then appear in the AltaVista index within a few days, or a week or two at worst, while some of the other search engines will take a month or two, or even three months.

Do not change the URL of existing pages. Some companies automatically move aged content to an archive area where it has a new URL. Don't . That screws up both search engines and also bookmarks and links that friends may have created to your pages.

Also, never delete a Web page that contains significant content. If the information is old or the product is discontinued, add text at the beginning that explains the situation and links visitors to the latest and greatest related information and newer products.

For details on related matters, please check the latest version of my search engine tutorial, starting at www.samizdat.com/script/title.htm Also look at the articles at: www.samizdat.com/belongs.html, /report.html,/general.html,/soc5.html, /soc6.html, /soc7.html, and /fly.html

If these concepts are foreign to the marketing and corporate folks who set the rules for what you do and how you must do it, and they need someone to wake them up, then maybe your company would be a good prospect for my consulting :-) For details on what I do and what I charge, check www.samizdat.com/consult.html

Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details. or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com

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