Keyword density Vs Userfriendly

[Lundorff]

Many (if not all) of you seasoned SEOs say to concentrate on making content rich userfriendly websites with "real" content. Now my problem is that my entrypage (the one I primary wants to be found in SERPs) only has <40 words...

Should I compromise and just add more semi-usefull "welcome to my homepage entry text" or leave it be?

Rgs
Lundorff



[Moved from the Google forum to the copywriting forum. - Jill]

[french dread]

The best option would be to make your page richer in text and key phrases with links to the key pages of your website.
But if it is really impossible to change this page there are means to add unvisible content, using a <noscript> or <noframe> tag, or a hidden layer.

[Lundorff]

Originally posted by french dread
But if it is really impossible to change this page there are means to add unvisible content, using a <noscript> or <noframe> tag, or a hidden layer.

Im sorry but then I would rather settle with my current page then resolve to "hidden" tactics.

[french dread]

Good choice :) but hidden tactics are not that bad if used properly, and if there is no regular means that can be used

[ihelpyou]

Just talk about what your site is about. I know when I go to a front page and they don't say what the site is about or talk about what can the site do for me, I leave. By talking about what the site can do, you naturally use your most important keyphrases.

[steelcityinternet]

You have to be careful - I would avoid adding unnecessary text to any page, as it still has to have the right impact for the visitor. I would only add this text if you feel it wont compromise the existing (and I assume) good, well balanced design.

SEO is only one part of any web site - I still think design is the most important factor. There are many other ways to get people to your site, such as Adword campaigns, internet advertising, real world advetising, word of mouth, etc.

Making design compromises for SEO may well get more visitors from Google, but if they are unimpressed by your site design when they get there, your efforts will be in vain. I'm not saying you cant have both of course - and perhaps it is time to reconsider a design that allows more natural incorporation of SEO text.

[french dread]

it is time to reconsider a design that allows more natural incorporation of SEO text

True. Personnaly am bored by lot of websites designed mainly for SEO. As when badly done, it doesnt sound real human copy. To much redundancy, ie "Our online widget store sell nice, cheap, good quality widgets. Specialists of blue, black and pink widgets, we design widgets since 1850. Oh we realized that widgets is sometimes spelled "widgettes" or "weedgets"...no the true spelling is WIDGET. Widget.com your widget wizard" :D

[Advisor]

If you're serious about getting your main page to rank high, you will probably want to have a good 200 - 250 words of copy on it. There's absolutely no reason why this has to sound stupid or stuffed full of keywords. Any professional copywriter worth their salt should be able to write you something that sounds great to your visitors and the search engines. It's not at all hard, but is a bit of a specialized skill.

Your visitors want to know what your site is all about on the main page. Guess what? So do the search engines!

The key is in hiring a professional copywriter. SEOs need to get away from trying to write copy for their clients unless they actually are a professional copywriter. All SEOs these days should be working with professional copywriters, as it's the one true key to high rankings. Don't ever underestimate the value of your copy for your visitor. That's what's gonna get them into the rest of your site. Not your pretty pictures and "click here." Not your Flash movie and "click here." You've got to sell them on what you offer, and the only way to do that is through your copy.

And never, ever, ever simply put your copy in the <noscript> tag. That's not what it's designed for.

Jill

[steelcityinternet]

I agree Jill, but you have to accept that there are many ways of presenting a home page - and not all page designs need to be based on text in order to get across the message/aim/purpose of the site. In the interests of graphic design, it may be decided that a graphic (containing anti-aliased text arranged in a visually appealing way) may represent the company and it's image far better than 300 words of well written copy, and that a stunningly visual homepage could indeed entice the visitor further into the site, espcially if the site itself is selling graphic or visual services.

Take for example, www.gettyimages.com . An SEO would probably want to remove all graphical text and add 300 words of copy. But the visual impact of the site would be lost, and this would be detrimental to their business. It has a simple, effective design that in my opinion, does not send the visitor screaming for the back button, but instead encourages you to investigate further.

I'm not saying that an SEO could not make an equally stunning design work and incorporate the necessary copy, but I do feel there are many examples of site design where applying the accepted SEO techniques may actually be detrimental to the overall picture.

[french dread]

About noscript, noframe etc..I dont condone their systematic use. Just that they are solutions when regular copy cannot be used for some reason. Writing some title and paragraph with links was not the initial use of these tags, but it works. Just dont do keyword stuffing but regular copywriting.
Even some SEs (www.voila.fr) say to use <noembed> tag to add some indexable text to full flash website.

[Advisor]

Take for example, www.gettyimages.com . An SEO would probably want to remove all graphical text and add 300 words of copy. But the visual impact of the site would be lost, and this would be detrimental to their business. It has a simple, effective design that in my opinion, does not send the visitor screaming for the back button, but instead encourages you to investigate further. I disagree. I believe that any site can find a way to add copy that is visually appealing. It doesn't need to necessarily be 300 words. Even 100 words can make a huge difference. It's learning how to be creative with it. 100 words is nothing. 150 words is still nothing and easy to add to any page. Even 250 words can be added in a way that is visually appealing. Unfortunately, graphic artists don't want to experiment with ways of doing this. About noscript, noframe etc..I dont condone their systematic use. Just that they are solutions when regular copy cannot be used for some reason. Writing some title and paragraph with links was not the initial use of these tags, but it works. Just dont do keyword stuffing but regular copywriting. There's nothing wrong with using the noscript tag to place the SAME information that the search engine can't read otherwise. However, if you are placing information that isn't actually on the page into that tag, simply so the search engines can read it, I believe most engines would consider it to be against their rules.

The noscript and noembed tag are a way to get info that IS already on the page to users who have their scripts disabled, or don't use Flash. (For instance an older browser.) The information is supposed to be the same, just presented in a form they can read.

Jill

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by steelcityinternet
I agree Jill, but you have to accept that there are many ways of presenting a home page - and not all page designs need to be based on text in order to get across the message/aim/purpose of the site.The thing you have to accept is that search engines find text. This is what they exist to do.

Have you heard the analogy of the Web as a big encyclopaedia, where directories are the contents page and search engines are the index?

When you use an index, you look up a word and find a page or set of pages which are relevant to the word. When you visit those pages, your expectation is that the words you searched for are on those pages.

Sometimes there are specialised indexes. e.g. a word in italics in an encyclopaedia index may denote a picture on the destination page. This would be directly analagous to an image search engine, i.e. an image index. An image search engine is what searchers should be using to find Getty images.

You will eventually run into problems if you can't accept the fact that a crawler-based text retrieval search engine, e.g. Google, is designed to and wants to index text, and that the only way a crawler-based text retrieval search engine is going to be happy is if you provide text for its searchers to read.

[steelcityinternet]

Yes, but my original point was that SEO is not the be all and end all of web site promotion, and if a design had already been made that was visually appealing and would perhaps suffer from the addition of more text, then perhaps it would be wiser to investigate the alternative methods to promote your site.

Of course, I'm probably fighting a losing battle as this is an SEO forum :D

I think I may have better luck convincing Jacob Neilson to start incorportating Flash on his Useit site.... ;)

[Alan Perkins]

Originally posted by steelcityinternet
Of course, I'm probably fighting a losing battle as this is an SEO forum Not at all, I think you have it exactly right. You either accept SEO isn't appropriate, or you make the site appropriate for search engines to index.

The "third way" is to spam - i.e. deceive the search engine that there's some text there worth indexing, when you have no intention of showing that text to searchers. Not acceptable, IMO.

[french dread]

There's nothing wrong with using the noscript tag to place the SAME information that the search engine can't read otherwise

Do u mean very same information, or same non-deceiving content, just tweaked a little for SEO purpose?

[Advisor]

Yes, but my original point was that SEO is not the be all and end all of web site promotion, and if a design had already been made that was visually appealing and would perhaps suffer from the addition of more text, then perhaps it would be wiser to investigate the alternative methods to promote your site. Absolutely! Just don't expect to get high rankings then! I would never tell any site owner that they need to be optimized for high rankings. If they are not interested in being found through the regular results of the search engines, that is of course their right!

But if they DO want to be found in the engines (aside from PPC ads) then they can do what it takes, or not be found! It's certainly their choice to make. Just that when they make that choice, they will have to live with it and not wonder why they can't be found in the engines.
Do u mean very same information, or same non-deceiving content, just tweaked a little for SEO purpose? Yes, I mean the same information. Like if you have a dhtml menu of links that can't be read by the search engines, you can put them into your noscript tag because the search engines can read and follow the links that way.

I have to disagree with you that one could/should put content into the noscript tag, where no content exists on the page.

For the getty images site above, it has good text, it's just not readable by the search engines. In that case, I would put the exact copy from the image into the alt tag (which is what it's for). And that way the search engines could read the info, and so could the human visitors. I would NOT put different information into the alt tag or the noscript tag. Certainly not substantially different copy. A few words here or there probably wouldn't make a difference, but it's supposed to be essentially the same.

Jill

[Kal]

Originally posted by steelcityinternet
Take for example, www.gettyimages.com . An SEO would probably want to remove all graphical text and add 300 words of copy. But the visual impact of the site would be lost, and this would be detrimental to their business. More detrimental than sacrificing the ability to be found by thousands more people? If you are so precious about the look of a web site that you are willing to close the door on free traffic via the search engines, that is much more detrimental to your bottom line, IMO.

Sure 200 visitors a day might be impressed with your fancy home page as it is, but if you knew that making the page more search engine compatible would bring in 2000 visitors a day, surely you wouldn't sacrifice those 1800 extra visitors for the sake of eye candy? :eek:

[steelcityinternet]

Again, it does depend on the type of web site and who the web site is appealing to. These things are not black and white - I am currently designing a site for a graphic designer/sculptor and the look of their site is everything to her, and is far more important than textual content (and for a portfolio site, this is rightly so, IMO). For her visitors to be confronted with an SEOs 'anti-eye-candy' dream would indeed be detrimental to her business. She has absolutely no desire to have a homepage filled with keyword rich text as she feels the homepage is the chance for the all important visual first impression - and I agree - better to try optimising an internal page for the chosen keyphrases.

She would personally prefer the 200 visitors impressed by the eye candy over the 2000 who arrived there unimpressed by a page of SEO copy. It would be the 200 who are more likely to give her a ring.

So yes, this does mean sacrificing at least some of the SEO on the homepage in favour of the better looks provided by graphics, and placing more effort into alternative forms of promotion.

[ihelpyou]

Then her and you have a very limited view of how a web site should be built. I know MANY graphic artists out there who have readable quality content on their front pages and it's looks very, very good.

More power to her if she feels she does not have to promote her site, and other people will somehow miraculously find her. What makes the difference how good the site looks if it cannot be found by the very people she is marketing to?

Of course, she can simply pay for advertising ads on Overture and constantly make more deposits when the money runs out. That's a limited view on the whole picture, IMO.


And before you start comparing my other site to things, I'll have you know I have not touched that site in two years now. It must work since I get quite a few inquires from that site and remain extremely busy. It IS ranked highly from a slew of terms and it Does work. It cuts to the chase and is very direct and very honest with No bs. You would be surprised how being visible and not being hidden can make a world of difference to people. I know that site s u c k s in quality design, Heck, I built it. I know NOthing about building a web site. LOL

[Advisor]

You really can make a site visually appealing PLUS have copy. I'm working with a designer right now on a site for an artist. He sells how to paint and draw classes online. Now, one would think it would need to be all sorts of graphics and stuff. However, we're optimizing it for all kinds of great keyword phrases, and each page has over 250 words of copy. Yet, it's extremely visually appealing in my opinion. (I would show you, but it's still on the test server...I think I'd rather wait until it was on the actual server.)

I was very, very impressed by what the designer did with this site. She was given the copy (which was written in advance by my copywriter) and she figured out how to make it work. Oh alright, I really like how it came out, so I'll give you the link to the test site, just copy and paste it: http://pages.prodigy.net/mountevans/art/index.html

I think it truly works, and I'm looking forward to finishing up the optimization and seeing the rankings pour in!

Jill

[ihelpyou]

You can tell by "reading" the good content what the site is about. That is the type of site I would surely click into to 'read more'. The other site mentioned in here I would quickly use the back button to get out of as it did not tell me what the heck it did on the front page.

Nice site!

[steelcityinternet]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Then her and you have a very limited view of how a web site should be built.


I have to disagree. I design sites to suit each particular client and their specific needs. This particular client meets a lot of people face-to-face and refers them to her web site so they can view her work online. Unlike Jill's example, she is not selling interactive Online art lessons, she is merely using her site as an online business card, and accepts that fact that using Google to gain work is a real stab in the dark, as realistically, the type of client she wants will normally be found by word of mouth and personal recommendation, and not by typing 'sculptor, sheffield' into a search box.
A referred visitor will not require 300 word explanations and marketing hype about what the site can offer them - they know why they are there - they want to see the online portfolio of that artist they met at the wine bar the previous night.

I made several designs for her in the same vein as Jill's, using SEO copy, but my client decided this was not the look she wanted or needed for her site, so we have decided to go for a more heavily graphic look.

I do not see this as having a limited view on how a web site should be built. This is all about having an OPEN view on how a web site should be built to fit in with the realistic needs of an individual client. My last client was the opposite of this one - he requires 90% of his traffic to come from search engines, so I designed a site with SEO copy in mind, and his site sits happily at No. 3 in Google for its most competitive term.

[ihelpyou]

Well then, that's just fine for your client. We are basing all our replies in this thread on this comment:
You have to be careful - I would avoid adding unnecessary text to any page, as it still has to have the right impact for the visitor. I would only add this text if you feel it wont compromise the existing (and I assume) good, well balanced design.

SEO is only one part of any web site - I still think design is the most important factor. There are many other ways to get people to your site, such as Adword campaigns, internet advertising, real world advetising, word of mouth, etc.
That is quite different than what you just posted. :)

[steelcityinternet]

I cannot see how my original comment holds a different view to my later comments. Both say that SEO is not the be all and end all of web site design, there are definitely other ways that people get visitors to their site other than search boxes on Google and that sometimes it may be necessary to forgoe text for visual impact.

Anyway, I cant see how you were replying to that original comment, you were surely replying to this one, hence your mentioning of graphic artist sites in your reply :confused:

...Again, it does depend on the type of web site and who the web site is appealing to. These things are not black and white - I am currently designing a site for a graphic designer/sculptor and the look of their site is everything to her, and is far more important than textual content (and for a portfolio site, this is rightly so, IMO)...

[ihelpyou]

Well, now that I am lost.... :)

"we" being we who in this thread think that SEO IS important and have replied as such.

"you" being that you said in your first post how seo is less important than web design and then saying your client has an offline store and does not need any online promotion.

I stand by the very fact that you need both seo and design. As far as what is most important? If you have an interent site, then obviously your online promotion IS important and you should have a well optimized site. It solves many things. It allows visitors to know what you are about. It allows ALL visitors with disabilities to 'read' your site. It allows you a chance of getting good ranks on your targeted keyphrases.

The idea that you want online visitors to find you but you do not wish to be found in the search engines is simply not a good idea. If you have a client who wants to be found online, then you tell your client.... make sure your client understands that they hired you to do a job, and by gosh, let you do your job, or by gosh, tell that client to buzz off. :)

The other idea that 'hiding' your text in noscript tags that is Not on the page to begin with, is also very bad. That script has only one purpose, and that is to allow visitors that cannot read javascript or dhtml or whatever, the ability to read it. You don't go stuffing in a bunch of text into that noscript tag just because you can and because it helps with se ranks. It has a distinctive purpose.

[Kal]

Originally posted by steelcityinternet
Again, it does depend on the type of web site and who the web site is appealing to. These things are not black and white Agreed. I admit, the getty site is very visually appealing. But to me it is the quality of the photograph and the subject matter that appeals, not the fact that the page uses graphical text. I don't think using actual body text in lieu of the graphical text would negatively impact the site at all. And that is really the only visible part of the page that would require alteration to make it SE compatible. :)

[Advisor]

If your client (the sculptor person) is only interested in using her web site as an electronic billboard, there's nothing at all wrong with that! No need to put lots of text, as people who get to the site, already know what they're getting as they specifically requested her site (through her other means or promotion).

That's absolutely fine if she's happy with that. Just don't wonder why at some later date the site can't be found in the search engines. I think that's all we're trying to say!

Jill

[french dread]

And before you start comparing my other site to things, I'll have you know I have not touched that site in two years now. It must work since I get quite a few inquires from that site and remain extremely busy. It IS ranked highly from a slew of terms and it Does work. It cuts to the chase and is very direct and very honest with No bs. You would be surprised how being visible and not being hidden can make a world of difference to people. I know that site s u c k s in quality design, Heck, I built it. I know NOthing about building a web site. LOL

Hey doug what I said was not an attack but a joke, please accept my apologies if u take it as a bad thing.
What I wanted to express is that sometimes for financial, technical, marketing or other reasons, we have to find some work-arounds because SEs are technically yet limited to index and ranks text. The use of hidden text (whithout deceiving intention) is only a work around because of SEs unperfection and unpossibility to change website content (for any reason).

I wont enter in a new debate about text only websites, :)

[fdwilk1]

A question to steelcityinternet regarding this issue:

I opened the site you mentioned and it does look very nice. Can you tell me are there are any keyword searches on Google that will find this page in the top 20?

I tried a few, and was unable to "find" this site.

[steelcityinternet]

No.8 for 'images'
no.2 for 'stock photography (it re-directs to Getty)
no.5 for 'images search'
No3 for 'royalty free photos' (another re-direct)

Not bad for a site that basically has no obvious SEO. They do have over 4000 backlinks for their sub domain creative.gettyimages, and 1200 for gettyimages.

Not sure what you guys & gals make of that - what we have here is a site that relies heavily on graphical images with very little search engine friendly text, even the ALT tags contain no keywords. Yet they have a pretty commanding search engine presence - perhaps due to their reputation and word of mouth (hence the large amount of the back links). It would appear that their policy of 'visuals over SEO' has done them no harm as far as Google is concerned (well, maybe they would be no.1 for all the above terms with an SEO pro at the helm ;) )

I find Gettyimages a very striking, professional looking site - and it's these sleek looks that inspire people with the confidence to shop there. I mean, take a look at royaltyfreephotos.com (at no.1)- obviously written with SEO in mind, with a serious overdose of keyword-ridden text and bad design. I know where I would (and did) shop for my images.

[Kal]

Well with that kind of link popularity, no wonder they are doing so well! That's an excellent example of how valuable link popularity is in the eyes of the search engines. Just imagine what type of results they could achieve if they had indexable text! But they obviously don't *need* SEO to do well and that is certainly their perogative. :cheers:

[martekbiz]

Perhaps that also rank as well as they do is because of how long they have been around?

I have been using gettyimages/fpg.com for a loong loong time (3+ years at least).

Their sites has evolved over many different but like-minded designs during that time.

Just my thoughts.

Aaron

[demihe]

Google index my site with http://mysite.com which without a prefix of "www.", but I spent all my time to build backlinks to http://www.mysite.com. How can I correct this problem?

[excell]

gettyimages is an example of a well established site enjoying good link popularity, but for the new comer that wants to establish a stunningly beautiful entrance to their site I think we are missing something... yes text on the homepage is good, easy to incorporate and to be desired by both users and search engines... however websites do not read like books and there are plenty of opportunities to optimise the internal pages of the site for high rankings.

If someone is so obsessed with their looks over information, findability and usability they are probably the type that are going to want to *force* the user to the *entry* if they dare to click on an inner page out of vanity anyway... so let em go and let em pay, they don't deserve high rankings in the freebie section where some of us work very hard to acheive good positioning.. :rolleyes:

Start to cheat or trick and then how does the lovely site look to the world, not beautiful at all, but scummy. It's a choice.

[excell]

demihe - find out who is linking to the site using the no www and ask them to change the URL

[demihe]

Thanks to excell, but when I make a search with "http://mysite.com" in google, there is NO result appear at all.