Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

140

glaze over when they see a column of numbers will be the people you feel should

know about them the most. So today you’re going to boil the stats down into succinct,

readable descriptions.

Indexed Pages

First, write your basic findings: “Our site’s top 10 landing pages are all indexed in

Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.” Or “Our ‘Donate Now’ page is missing from

Google’s and MSN’s indices.”

What you wrote in this section has big implications for the SEO-friendliness of

your site’s design! Use your knowledge about robot-friendly design from Chapter 3 to

explain your findings. Possible analysis would include “Having all pages indexed indi-

cates that our site structure is amenable to robot crawling,” “Our site’s login require-

ment is probably an impediment to indexing,” or “The absence of pages in the indices

may be due to the fact that our site only launched last month.”

We probably don’t have to tell you that if your landing pages are not being

indexed, something must be done about it! If you’ve determined that the “something”

is changing your site’s structure or design, you should say so in this report and make

sure this report is seen by the person on your team who can make the change. This has

two important benefits: One, even if you’re suggesting radical changes, you’re backing

them up with facts. And two, if nobody does anything about the problem and it comes

back to haunt you later, you have documentation proving that you made this recom-

mendation.

Ranks

Keep the long list of website rankings out of this report unless someone on your team

has a penchant for numerical details. Instead, summarize your rankings in a sentence or

two. Here are some possible examples:

• “We are ranking in the top 30 for only two of our top keywords.”

• “We are on the top search results page for most of our top keywords.”

• “Since none of our pages are indexed in the search engines, we have no rankings

in the top 30 spots.”

Ranks can be influenced by many factors, and it may be premature for you to

attempt to explain yours at this stage. But by the time you compile the third monthly

report in Your SEO Plan, you’ll have a much fuller sense of what your ranks mean. So

consider adding something like this: “I will perform monthly rank checks to keep

abreast of the situation.” Now, here’s the sentence that we

don’t

want you to write:

“Site optimization will be sure to bring us into the top 10 for our target keywords.”

Review the sidebar “A Note on Reasonable Expectations” and predict with caution.

c06. 8:07 140