Along Came a Spider – Search Engine Optimization

Little Miss Muffet sat at her laptop
Building a cool new website,
Along came a net spider
Who passed right by her…
Mocking her along the way.

So you’ve spent major cash on a cool new website for your company. One built in Flash and featuring all the latest bells and whistles. You show it off to clients. You talk about it with friends. You even dream about it at night. This site, you tell yourself, this virtual Mecca, means you, well, you have arrived. You are a 21st century entrepreneur.

Alas. Your joy soon dies. Because it isn’t long before you realize this Zen of all sites receives an average of one hit daily – yours. The problem – no one knows where you are. Your fancy new site lacks an essential programming ingredient – Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What is SEO? It’s making sure the right copy, not the right graphics pack your site. Don’t panic – good web designers can still make your site look cool too, but when it comes to programming – you’ve got to consider the spiders.

Warning – our discussion requires I now launch into web-speak.

Most Search Engines have little pieces of code called spiders that crawl around internet content, indexing site content based on how easy it is to read and follow. Spiders don’t see the web as you and I do. They don’t pause and look at the pretty pictures. They don’t gasp in excitement at the fancy Flash presentation. And, unfortunately, they don’t boogey down to your homepage music. The spider is only interested in the code. And if in programming you didn’t consider the code, if your site lacks certain keywords, you won’t be found. Search engines like Google and Yahoo will pass right over you when they list relevant matches to keyword inquiries.

Remember your website is only as effective as the response you receive from it. Make friends with the spiders, and they will make friends with your site.

John Rockweiler, Interactive Director
The Russo Group