Optimizing A Site That Was Created Using Jpg's Options

[gknighton]

Hello,

I have a question regarding SEO work on a website that was created with only pages in the form of a .jpg image. When the site was built, it was built by a graphic designer who cut corners by using pages already created for our catalog. The website is split up into two frames, one is the navigation frame and the other would be the images used as the webpages. The URL and business's website have been online since 1996, and rank poorly on all search engines due to NO content what so ever. My question is how would you go about optimizing a site such as this? Here are my four ideas, if anyone could maybe comment on them, and/or possibly suggest others that would be great.

1. Add alt img tags that describe everything in the image, since all the content in the image cannot be read by the spiders.

2. Create Meta Description tags that would have all of the content from the page that is included in the image.

3. Add content to the page, just below everything on the page...most people wouldn't even scroll down past the images used as the page I would assume. It wouldn't look the greatest, but would add content.

4. Add new pages, with well written copy and links pointing to the pages that the new content has been written for?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,

Greg Knighton

[Hyperformance]

Hi Greg - (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Based on what you have offered here... I would choose #4 - in the long run, offers the most control and will have the best results (IMO).

Number One - Does little to nothing in itself.

Number Two - Same answer.

Number Three - You're right, the appearance would suffer somewhat. Also, would probably take the same research and work as # 4.

My only suggestion (which may not matter with your rankings) may be to keep the same page names (?). Will help cut back on old (non-existent) listings in the engines over time.

Good Luck -

FYI - We have actually done # 4 as a solution to similar problems, and have never regretted it. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/goodjob.gif)

[torka]

1. Probably won't work; the SEs are inconsistent as to whether they index alt attribute content for images that aren't part of a link.

2. Won't work. The META description is sometimes used as the display snippet in the SERPs, but carries little weight in the rankings.

3. Might (or might not) work for the SEs, but, as you say, it may not look great. If the SEs index the content, what will happen to the visitors who arrive at just that frame without the overall frameset? You can use JavaScript to "bump" them into the frameset so they still have the site navigation, but then what do you do for the visitors who don't have JavaScript enabled? Basically, it's a lot of extra effort to work around the inherent problems with the site, and no real guarantee that it will be effective in generating any additional business. (Better rankings don't necessarily equal better business if the site itself isn't human friendly to start with.)

4. Also might work, but also doesn't solve the underlying problem. Also, what about visitors who can't view images, who reach your site through one of these pages? When they click through for more information, they'll get nothing.

How about instead:

5. Inform the client that their web site as it exists today cannot be effectively optimized due to framed layout and lack of accessible content.

(According to an article I read a few months ago in Internet Retailer magazine, many retailers nowadays are budgeting for a site update every 12 to 18 months just to keep the look-and-feel "fresh." Any site that's existed unchanged since 1996 is in serious need of updating, to bring the code and design up to current standards if for no other reason. There are apparently significant additional reasons to update this one.)

If the client didn't agree, I would respectfully decline to do business with them.

My (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/penny.gif)

--Torka (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[Jill]

Welcome gknighton! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

IMO, the only solution is a complete site redesign.

[gknighton]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the quick response, I didn't expect a response so fast!!! Anyways, I guess I should have clarified that this website was just rebuilt, and was built completely wrong. The company is owned by my father, and he had just spent thousands on having it built with no knowledge of what was needed for good serps. I have just recently (8 months ago) got into the SEO game, and was hoping to help him out with getting some better results in the search engines. He has great backlinks, from dealers, all of the Yahoo Directories, DMOZ, Business.com, and many others. Like I said it has been online since the beginning basically. Most of his links, if not all of them are one-way, with maybe 3 or 4 being reciprocal links. You would think just adding some good content would raise his serps.

Anyways, I figured the first three wouldn't help too much, atleast when it comes to google. I think I am going to try adding some content pages, with links into the pages that have been created as images. I'll have to try to keep it as clean and similar to the current pages as possible. I wish we could just start over, but I guess we'll have to try and make due for a while with what we currently have. Considering the amount of cash already spent on getting it revamped in the first place (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif)

Thanks again,

Greg

[laura]

Completely agree with Jill. Especially if you have *any* competition at all. Otherwise read Andrew Goodman's 21 Ways to Maximize Google AdWords Campaigns & start yourself some paid search campaigns.

To convince the client to redesign the site, try something like this:

1. Go to inventory.overture.com and look up the search counts on the top 1-3 search terms for the home page and maybe a couple other pages. We want to see how many searches there are per day (rough numbers). Lets say for this example the top search term for the home page is skateboards. The number of searches for skateboards is 149119 for February. So about 4971 searches per day for skateboards. Since that (loosely) represents Yahoo/Overture network searches, lets double that to include Google searhes, plus add about 15% for MSN searches. That gives us about 447,357 searches per day.

2. Now lets figure out the value of placing in the top 3 is. In fact, lets be somewhat realistic and say you're a spectacular SEO (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) and could acheive the number 3 ranking (across Y,G & M on average). According to recent MarketingSherpa studies, the number 3 spot in organic search brings 12.8% clicks. So if you rank #3 for skateboards, you might bring in 57,261 (12.8% of 447357) potential customers per day. As opposed to 1 or 2 or none that might be coming in from the search engines per day now. Sounds good already, doesn't it? I might even dumb that down some and say 38,000 (to take into consideration how convincing your listing is, variable rankings, etc).

3. Determine how much money a 3rd place ranking might be worth. Lets say you can aceive a 1% conversion rate, meaning 1% of all visitors to the site buy a skateboard or accessory. Maybe the average cost of the products you sell on the site is $48. 1% of your 38,000 visitors convert, which is 380 visitors. 380x$48 = $18,240 per day. That's $547,200 per month, $6,566,400 per year! Lucrative, eh?

Worth a redesign with some SEO?

[Jill]

anyways, I guess I should have clarified that this website was just rebuilt, and was built completely wrong

Regardless. It needs to be redone correctly now. It's a shame he/you didn't come here before getting ripped off.

Don't try to work around it and put a band aid on it. Fix it. (And/or try to get your money back from the company that ripped you off to begin with.)

[lyn]

It really is tragic that your Dad spent so much money for nothing more than scans for nothing more than scans of catalog pages. At the very least, the scans should be sliced apart into separate images and any text on the pages rendered as real, readable text. There could be a fair argument to go after whoever built the site to return the cash, too, since what they did really doesn't qualify as a website! Anyone who has any legitimate claim to selling web development at all should know know better.

L.

[pgmason]

You should encourage him to look seriously at making a claim against the so-called "designer", who really hasn't earned their money. If they were asked to build a website then they have breached the contract, as they have failed to do so.

How many pages is the site? If it's entirely image based it can't do anything dynamic, so rebuilding it in html should be fairly straightforward.

[JakeG]

It won't be a huge amount of work to fix, just use background images with normal text instead. The frames problem can be worked around using a noframes tag.

It is definately worth a bit of extra develpment time to have the site readable by search engines, especially if you already have decent links (that's the hard part after all).

[sweepthelegnate]

Hi Greg...

a website that is completely images isn't really a website at all...it sounds like you ran into a graphic designer that was looking to make a quick buck....

understanding you are reluctant to pay to have a site re-done when you've just done so once...anything would probably be better than that for an seo perspective.

I'd say biting the bullet and just having it redesigned now would save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Depending on the layout...it might be pretty straight forward to have it sliced up in photoshop into a more workable solution.

you might post your situation on a place like rentacoder and see kind of bids you get on a slice job or quick redesign...

[gknighton]

Hello,

Just wanted to update everyone on what I ended up doing with the website. I ended up taking the entire site out of frames. Added some new link structure with better anchor text. Wrote new content for the home page, around 240 words in total. I added some links from a site I own personally that is on topic with the updated site with keyword anchor text in the links. This got the pages from the updated site respidered really quick. The site updated hadn't changed content recently, since there was no content (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) and wasn't frequented by the googlebot, msnbot or inktomi very often. After adding the links from my site the updated site was spidered that night and ranking the next day for terms it wasn't even in the top 200 for before! It is on the first page for most of the phrases in MSN, with a couple on Yahoo, and pages 2-3 Google. I really only added content to the homepage thus far, and the links sitewide need to be fixed. I am guessing once this is all finished this website will finally find the beach (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It has been floating in the middle of the ocean since '96. Thanks for all of the tips and help guys!

[torka]

Good to hear, gknighton! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/cheers.gif)

--Torka (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)