Search Engine Marketing Spot

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Not everyone has the ability to design a great site, they just know how to effectively market it.  So a designer is hired to make there site for them and of course hopefully take the burden away as well.  How your site is designed is a very important factor when launching your SEM campaign.  I understand that some designers have no idea about optimizing a website with proper marketing strategies in mind.  To some, they simply made a site and expect the owner to advertise with PPC or simple word of mouth.  They do not grasp the concept of proper optimization techniques that go into marketing a website online.  There is more then just simply optimizing your website for the search engines.  You need to optimize your layout for the viewer, optimize your content for both the viewer (more important) and the search engines, optimize your pictures, how they are used.  I will have a guest post on Monday over at PoorSEM in regards to optimizing your images for your marketing campaign.

Yesterday my daughter came home sick from school, so she was in my office most of the day with me and wanted to help me work.  She wanted to make her own website, have her favorite Hannah Montana song playing, she wanted the buttons to bounce around and wanted to make her own video to put on her site.  I love it when she tries to help me, it not only makes her think creatively, it also makes me think as well.  This time though it got me thinking of some of the worst things you can do that will crush your marketing efforts and my 7 year old just listed 3 of them for me.

Using Frames – If you use frames to design your website around then you have just killed any real chances at having a successful SEM campaign.  This technique was popular 10 years ago, so please leave this technique in the past and move on to a more up to date design method.

Resizing the Browser – It is very annoying when visit a site then all of a sudden your browser gets resized.  You are running a campaign for your new landing page to generate leads for whatever.  When the viewer clicks on a link to your site, there browser is resized on the fly.  Yea I just closed my browser to…People do not like drastic changes like that, they did not ask to have there browser resized to fit your poorly designed layout.

Flash Intro’s - Using a flash 20%….. introduction that 40%…..makes the user wait 60%……to view your……80%……website and 90% then they have 95% to wait again to watch it.  100% Why have a flash intro that makes the user have to wait that long to load?  Remember you only have about 15 seconds before most people will move on to another site.  Also keep in mind that the search engines really have no content so spider on that flash intro.  You might want to think about adding links that point to internal pages on your website so the bots have something to start with besides just the flash.

100% Flash Sites – Some company’s think that the interactive site that uses flash is best for the visitor because the site talks, moves, and has all the bells and whistles.  Well try and rank that flash site a top the organic search listings without having to make some major changes.  I won’t drag this out, everyone knows that trying to optimize a site made entirely of flash is a train wreck.

Music or Speech – You arrive at a site and all of a sudden music starts to play and you cannot find your volume button fast enough.  How about the site that has a speech going about how great there product is or why there services are top of the line.  Majority of the visitors will get annoyed having to listen to something while they are trying to read what you wrote.  Also, who is to say the viewer even wanted to listen to your speech in the first place?  Instead you should have given them the option to listen to it.  Have a small heading at the top that has a link to it or make a graphic that stands out so they can see the option to listen to it.

Interactive Flash Navigation (That Does Not Work) – Most navigation menus are on the top, left or right side.  The navigation flows together and is in unison with the design and layout.  Then comes along a 3D spinning box made in flash.  When you put your mouse over the side, the box spins around, the top opens and you see the page name to click on.  Try click on that page name and the box top closes and spins back around.  How about site navigation that is done in flash and when you go to click on the button nothing happens.  Instead you have to put your mouse exactly on the word in the box because whoever made the button made it for the text only and not the entire box itself.  This is a great way to frustrate your visitor who has probably just left the site and moved on. If you insist on using a flash navigation that actually works property, please make sure to have a footer on your site that has the same links so the engines are able to spider the rest of your site.

Cross Browser Compatibility – Try paying a bill online just to find out there site doesn’t recognize firefox and forces me to use IE.  How about going to check out and then get hit with “your browser is incompatible with our checkout system”.  Well what the heck, I had no problems finding the items and adding them to your cart.  Now your payment process wants an IE only user to be able to checkout and pay.  Yea you just shot yourself in the foot if your website does not work with all major browsers.

Quick Loading Time – Having a site that loads fast is crucial. We know the average time you have to capture a visitor’s attention and keep them is about 15 seconds.  Well if they have to wait 15 seconds for your page to load then chances are you have lost there attention already.  I will be writing an article on techniques you can use to have a faster loading page tomorrow.

Showing Video - Use an embedded player in flash to show your videos.  Do not ask the user which speed they would like to view and which player (real player, QuickTime, windows media player).  There are people out there that would get confused with all the choices that they have.  Then when they click on QuickTime and realize nothing happens and they are then taken to download and install the software you just lost a visitor.  Chances are they will be there for an hour trying to figure out how to install QuickTime and realize they forgot why they were installing it in the first place.  Once it gets installed, they then have to reboot there computer.  Ok the user just got up to go watch some TV now because there computer takes 10 minutes to boot up.

Right Click – When I am browsing sites, I have made a habit to right click on a link and open it in a tab to browse that page.  Well when I go to a site and it tells me “sorry, right click is disabled” I want to scream.

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.