Optimizing Your Web Site vs. Optimizing Your Search Rank

There's a difference, you know, which Rich Page points out in his latest post: 7 (Great) Reasons Why Website Optimization should NOT be Confused with Search Engine Optimization (whew!)

Web site optimization focuses on visitor effectiveness:  making sure that your visitors leave with their goal for visting having been met, and pleasant thoughts about the experience.  Ideally, you've also "converted" them (e.g made a sale, captured an e-mail address, etc.).

Search engine optimization focuses on making sure your site can be found when people go searching for whatever it is that you're selling.

There's not much point in being found unless you're going to delight visitors once they find you.  That's why Web site optimization should come first when you spend time and effort on your Web presence.

What are you doing to optimize your winery Web site?   Leave a comment!

Comments

[rick]

A search optimized site and a customer optimized site are closely related. There's a tendency to see SEO as gaming the search engines and you can certainly try that (good luck) but SEO at heart is a long term investment in making your site great for the people who are looking for what you offer. Not just at attracting them, but at serving them.

Remember, search ranking is heavily influenced by inbound links, esp from authoritative domains - they're basically votes for your site. It's also influenced by clean site structure with menus and page titles that reflect your topics and by copy that contains keywords. There's refinement behind all of this (you can't just stuff keywords on pages anymore - they've gotten hip to that) but that's a large portion of ranking well.

Now, think about it... a clean site structure with menus and page titles... copy that's about the topic of the page and well written... isn't that what you want for your customers??

Search engines succeed by getting people to use them (and thus see the ads on them). People use search engines that give results that are what they looked for. So a search engine WANTS to show the best, most relevant site first for any given term. What they don't want to do is show sites that are spammy, stuffed with keywords but not what the searcher was looking for.

Well done sites will think about the problem like this: When people come to my site they do so with something in mind. How can I 1) discern what that is and 2) help them find it?

Let's say someone searches for "wineryname winemaker" - they probably want to know about the winemaker for your winery right? So what page do you want to rank for that? right... the winemaker's bio. Don't have that? Create it. Put a photo and some copy and make sure the copy notes them as the winemaker not just the owner etc. Make sure that page has the winery name on it. You may never rank highly for "winemaker" but you will rank highly for 'wineryname winemaker' after a bit. And! that page gives people who are writing articles about you a place to link to when writing sentences like "John Smith, the winemaker at Wineryname..."

[rick]

aaanndd... a good link on this with actionable points:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=99289

That's more focused at corporate/enterprise issues during a redesign vs a launch, but it's good info.

[SEO]

Thanks for this guide. Now I have a nice-search engines-friendly blog

[seo consultant]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural"search results. Typically, the higher a site's "page rank", the more visitors it will receive from the search engine..

[Steve]

Website optimization is the process of specifically designing your webpages to rank high in the Search Engines. If you're serious about your business, optimizing your webpages is a must.

When designing your webpage, you must specifically design it to rank high in the Search Engines. This involves much more than just including META tags. Your Keywords, Title, Image Alt text, Text and overall design, all play an important role in determining how your website will rank.

[Mike]

The most effective and long-lasting way to improve your ranking in a search engine is to increase the number of "inbound" links to your site from other websites. Inbound links represent an endorsement of your site. If these other site owners find your site useful, the logic goes, then Internet searchers are likely to find your site useful too.

[SEO Australia]

Optimization is the process of specific web page design is to rank high in search engines. If you are serious about your business, optimizing your website is a must. When designing a web page, you must specifically design of a high rank in search engines. This requires much more than meta tags. Keywords, title, image alt text in the text and layout, all play an important role in determining how your site is on the list. The most effective and long-term to improve your ranking on search engines is to increase the number of incoming links to other sites. Inbound links are the approval of the site. If these other site owners will find your site useful, the logic goes, then Internet, researchers are more likely to find the site useful.