21 replies to this topic

[billthemountain]

I've started doing the SEO for an ecommerce company, who never had anybody doing this before. I'm trying to take everything I know (plus everything from this site) and run with it...

Here's my question:
The site I'm asked to work on really has no room for keyword rich copy (or any copy in general). Nor do they want it there. They're very much in favor of the current desing which is mostly products. They like the way it looks. The copy - in their opinion, and to some degree mine too - would look odd, even though everyone now understands the value of this copy on the front page.

So a redesign is in the works, but is some time away...

So until we are able to redesign the page and allow logical placement of copy on the front page, will this work?...

what if I altered another page - like their 'about us' page - and used every keyword I could (so it would still be readable of course). Could this have the same value even though it isn't on our front page? Probably not. I suppose a search engine would just bring a visitor to this page, and we would have to HOPE they click a link to go to the front page (or the rest of the site). Any suggestions for a redirect method that wouldn't anger the visitor or anger the search engines?

Or is there a better solution for someone in my situation?

Thanks a million, as always.

[Michael Martinez]

The site I'm asked to work on really has no room for keyword rich copy (or any copy in general).  Nor do they want it there.  They're very much in favor of the current desing which is mostly products. They like the way it looks.  The copy - in their opinion, and to some degree mine too - would look odd, even though everyone now understands the value of this copy on the front page.

Technically speaking, while it's more difficult to do things with a site that doesn't take copy, they may not have to change a thing.

what if I altered another page - like their 'about us' page - and used every keyword I could (so it would still be readable of course).  Could this have the same value even though it isn't on our front page?  Probably not.  I suppose a search engine would just bring a visitor to this page, and we would have to HOPE they click a link to go to the front page (or the rest of the site).  Any suggestions for a redirect method that wouldn't anger the visitor or anger the search engines?

It sounds like you want to keyword-stuff the About page. That is unadvisable for many reasons, not the least being that it doesn't address the issue of establishing relevance and visibility for the various product pages.

Or is there a better solution for someone in my situation?

The most preferable solution (in my opinion) is to allow people to post product reviews.

If the site doesn't provide for product reviews, then what I would do is start adding content pages to the site that discuss the products. Call them Featured Product Articles that link to the product pages. The Featured Product Articles need to be included in the navigation system. All you're doing is adding more pages to the site, pages with user-readable (and hopefully compelling) an search engine-indexable copy.

My point is that you need to write the copy. The fastest, easiest, most painfree way of getting that copy onto the site is to simply add it through user comments or additional content pages.

[Jill]

what if I altered another page - like their 'about us' page - and used every keyword I could (so it would still be readable of course). Could this have the same value even though it isn't on our front page?

Yes, you want to optimize your about us page and every page. But not for "all the keywords" just for 3 or 4 phrases per each page.

You definitely don't have to do it with the home page. Optimize each page for their respective keyword phrases and that will be good.

This assumes your site architecture has also been optimized for the search engines, and that the site is crawlable of course.

[rolf]

You should also gain some benefit from creating 'alt text' for the product images, describing what each image is. This would also make the site more readable for text only browsers. (I'm assuming the products are shown as individual gif or jpeg images - if the site is in Flash this won't work)

[billthemountain]

You definitely don't have to do it with the home page.  Optimize each page for their respective keyword phrases and that will be good.

This assumes your site architecture has also been optimized for the search engines, and that the site is crawlable of course.

Each product page isn't getting spidered, unfortunately. I have control over the description of the items (not the alt tags), and I could write keyword rich copy there, but I can't seem to figure out how to get search engines to spider it. There's 8000 of them. So at this point, writing keyword rich copy is a wasted effort.

We DO however have unique ASP pages that list each of these products (ie., hats, shoes). They get indexed easily, but there's no description on those pages. Just pictures. That's how our ecommerce provider does it, and it's not something I can control.

At this point, I'm wondering if I have a problem with the site being fully spider-able.

[Jill]

We DO however have unique ASP pages that list each of these products (ie., hats, shoes). They get indexed easily, but there's no description on those pages. Just pictures.

Then those are the pages you want to optimize until you can figure out your spiderability problem and/or redesign the site.

[seadog]

Each product page isn't getting spidered, unfortunately.  I have control over the description of the items (not the alt tags), and I could write keyword rich copy there, but I can't seem to figure out how to get search engines to spider it.  There's 8000 of them.  So at this point, writing keyword rich copy is a wasted effort. 

We DO however have unique ASP pages that list each of these products (ie., hats, shoes).  They get indexed easily, but there's no description on those pages.  Just pictures.  That's how our ecommerce provider does it, and it's not something I can control.   

At this point, I'm wondering if I have a problem with the site being fully spider-able.

Sounds like you got your work cut out for you I would recommend a redesign so that each product/category page can have content, be optimized and be indexed. Other than that you are somewhat limited in only being able to optimize content that can be indexed.

[DonL]

I know this response won’t be popular – but – you could create some copy which would be in a CSS with ‘media=print’. The copy would not be viewable thru the browser but would print if the page were printed. This copy currently IS indexed by at G & Y. Some will likely consider this ‘black hat’ and spam, however sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Send me a personal email if you’d like an example of this.

[Birmingham]

permanent 302 redirect is best for search engines - they then count the 2 pages as the same page.

hope that helps a bit

[jehochman]

You could create some copy which would be in a CSS with ‘media=print’.  Some will likely consider this ‘black hat’ and spam, however sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

This is probably hidden text. If you have any success, your competitors may complain, and then you could be banned. Do not do this. If the copy is so useful, why not show it to the visitors? If your system can't do text, then you need to upgrade.

permanent 302 redirect

NO! Code 302 is a temporary redirect, not permanent, and that can cause problems.

[suuzen]

I haven't tried it, but I think you could just code your page to put the text you want at the top of the source code, but visually, have it appear at the bottom of the home page, well below the fold, where it would not distract most viewers. (Making sure your layout graphics also made the bottom text the least enticing material on the page, but not badly laid out as to irritate the few visitors who would actually want to read it.)

To put text on the bottom visually: you'd put a division wrapper on the existing site. Everything dynamic that now exists on the top of the site would become a single division that floats to the visual top. The text box would be in a fixed position-division at the visual bottom.

The bottom division would go above the top division in the source code, because a fixed-position css division always has to come before a floated division in source code, not the other way around. So it would accomplish the objective of getting
text at the top of the source code where the search engines would see it, but at the bottom of the page where it would be out of the way of the visitors.

This means, though, that page height for that home page would always have to be consistent, because the floating top would always be above the fixed bottom visually. There's a lot of info on fixed and floating divisions and layouts in the big css blogs like alistapart.com.

I expect there may also some far better coders than I in this forum who can point out any flaws with this idea, and possibly come up with an even easier coding approach to do the same thing.

[Randy]

Not saying it would --because the engines are all that sophisticated so it would take someone reporting the site or a search engine employee stumbling across it for a look-- but that type of hidden content could get a site penalized or an outright ban suuzen

[torka]

Well, as long as it was simply "below the fold" and not otherwise obscured, teensy, same-color-as-the-background, etc. it wouldn't really be hidden, would it? Just plain old basic normal, non keyword stuffed, non spammy text, only located at the bottom of the page.

I don't know that it's necessary to go through all the CSS positioning stuff to put the copy near the top of the code but display near the bottom of the page. That only matters if you think code near the top gets more weight (which I don't).

Of course, the problem is, if you've really written good strong copy, leaving it cowering down there at the bottom of the page, where only those brave nonconformists who know how to use vertical scroll will find it seems to be a bit of a waste.

Part of the problem as I see it seems to be that the original question is all about optimizing the site's home page. If the company's going to be recalcitrant about that and not let anybody make any changes to their lovely home page design, well, then how about optimizing all the other pages in the site instead?

I mean, surely there are product/service detail pages, any of which would likely be ideal candidates for a bit of keyword-appropriate copy. I don't know of any sales or lead generation oriented web site that can effectively get away with no copy at all, anywhere. (Or at least, that wouldn't benefit in better conversion rates from having some copy somewhere.)

If the home page doesn't reasonably accommodate a big block of copy in its current incarnation, then just work in whatever copy you can (if any) using the current design and work on all the other pages of the site instead. Not all home pages need huge blocks of text to start with. Depends on the competition and the market. In any case, the home page isn't the only page you can optimize, and you certainly shouldn't be putting all your keywords/phrases on that one page to start with.

My

--Torka

[suuzen]

No, I don't mean to make the text invisible or do anything else spammy. Just put the text below the fold visually, don't bold any words, don't use title text that is bigger than the paragraph text, don't insert graphics, don't do anything else to make the text pop visually.

The only reason for this is to persuade the client, whom the questioner says doesn't want any text because, I assume, the client believes it will distract visitors and hurt conversion, to let the designer put text on the page anyway. The argument to be made to the client is that putting blandly formatted text on very bottom of the page will help search engine position but will not distract visitors from the material that's important to the client.

The reason I suggest using a fixed division to float the text to the top of the source code is that on some sites, particularly e-commerce sites, there is so much code already that I'm not sure search engines would make it down to source code line 2500 to get to the text.

[Jill]

The only reason for this is to persuade the client, whom the questioner says doesn't want any text because, I assume, the client believes it will distract visitors and hurt conversion, to let the designer put text on the page anyway.

The client needs to be educated, not placated.