October 6,
2004
In
This Issue:
1. Better Web Site Menus
2. In the News - MSN Search Preview, Yahoo News
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - When will my site get in Google?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Better Web Site Menus
The first step in any new web site project is determining the
structure of the site -- the "information architecture" as
some like to call it. We encourage our clients to work in outline
form since most people are familiar with outlines. On a web outline,
the As and Bs are the main sections of your site -- and these sections
are what you link to in the main navigation menu.
Your main menu is a critical element of the web site. All the
great content in the world is useless if your menu doesn't help
visitors
find it. Your menu, like other aspects of a web site, should
be built with both users and search engines in mind.
How Many Links?
Generally speaking, the fewer links in your main menu, the better.
Too many choices often leads to confusion. We typically recommend
to our clients that the main site menu be limited to no more
than 8-10 links, and less than that is better. However, we
do have clients
who are successfully using menus that have 2x-3x that many
links. These are typically clients with a substantial list
of products
or services in situations where we want users to be able to
get to those pages with one-click from anywhere on the site.
See
www.iweiss.com or www.staveleyndt.com for an example of this.
When done right,
an expanded menu with links directly to deep pages can also
help with search engine rankings.
Menu Location?
As you've used the web, you've surely seen sites that have
a menu across the top and others with a menu on the side
of the
page (typically
the left side). The "size" of your menu often determines
whether it should be placed on the top or the side of a page. If
you only have a few links in your menu, and they can be phrased
relatively briefly, a top menu may work fine. See our home page,
www.owtweb.com, for an example -- we have six links stretched across
the top of the page. If your site has more options, you may have
to use a side-based menu. And some sites require both! There's
not really a "right" or "wrong" here. You have
to consider the pros and cons of each location and choose which
one you prefer.
Buttons or Text?
If it's critical that you rank well in search engines, you'd
give yourself a better chance by using text links in your
main menu
rather than graphical buttons. Text links allow you to
get good "anchor
text" from your own site. Anchor text refers to the words
used in a text link, and they are a very important factor in most
search engine algorithms, especially Google's. Refer again to owtweb.com -- those are all text links across the top of the page.
The downside to using text links is that text is rendered
differently from one browser to the next, and from PCs
to Macs. Text generally
appears about 20% larger on PCs than on Macs, for example.
So if you use text links you really must test your site
on different
computers and browsers to make sure there's no word-wrapping
going
on, or anything else that can break your design. If you
have a limited space for your menu, it's best to use graphical
buttons because you can control the design better. For
an
example,
see www.ppstraining.com -- we had a very small area on
the left to
use for the menu, and those lengthy phrases would never
have fit
as text.
Choose Your Words Carefully
Whether you use text links or graphical buttons for your
menu, choose your words carefully. Keep the button names
as simple
and direct as possible -- creative wording will only
confuse visitors,
and a confused visitor rarely turns into a customer.
For example, rather than calling one of your links "Cool Stuff", call
that link "Articles and Links" -- give the user a specific
idea of what they'll get when they click the links.
This is also important for search engine rankings if
you're using text links. The names of your links should
match
your important
keywords. If you sell red widgets, use "Red Widgets" as
your text link instead of "Products".
One last bit of menu-related advice: It's a good idea
to duplicate your main menu at the bottom of your site
design.
This is especially
important if you have even moderately lengthy pages.
But it's also difficult if you have a menu of more
than 8-10
options.
Duplicating
the menu at the bottom of your design will allow people
to navigate your site conveniently without having to
scroll back up after
reading a page. If you're using graphical buttons for
your main menu, the
bottom menu should be text so you can take advantage
of the
anchor text ideas discussed above.
_________________
In The News
MSN Search Preview 2
Microsoft continues to work on its own crawler-based search engine
to compete with Google, Yahoo, etc. And they've just opened the
2nd version of their "MSN Search Technology Preview." It
appears to be somewhat improved over the first preview this summer
(which we wrote about in Newsletter #19), but still has a long
ways to go in other areas. How do you explain, for example, that
eBay.com doesn't appear in the top 100 results on a search for
the word "auction"?
http://techpreview.search.msn.com/
Yahoo Local and Personal
Couple Yahoo notes.... First, the Yahoo Local service we've written
about a few times is now out of "beta" and has been
launched as part of Yahoo's home page.
Yahoo Local
Second, Yahoo has put a new feature into beta -- My Yahoo Search.
This is Yahoo's first venture into "personal search".
It offers features that are somewhat similar to the A9.com search
engine. It remembers your search history. It lets you save pages
you've found via searching, and you can add "notes" when
you save a site to your "personal web." Here's the link
to see it, and down in "More News Headlines" is a link
to Search Engine Watch's article about it.
My Yahoo Search (beta)
On a related and late-breaking note, Google board member John
Doerr told the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday
that Google
will have announcements very soon about its own plans for "personal
search."
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Yahoo introduces personal search
October 05, 2004 - Search Engine Watch
The new features available to registered Yahoo users are similar
to those recently introduced by a9.com and Ask Jeeves, although
Yahoo plans to differentiate the service in future enhancements.
Political campaigns are missing the boat on paid search
October 01, 2004 - Business 2.0
Study: Top E-tailers neglect SEO
September 30, 2004 - ClickZ.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
We just launched our web site a month ago and I can't find it
anywhere in Google. I searched for my name and the company name.
How long
before people can find us?
Bill
Hi Bill --
If you do a search for your domain name (your URL), you'll see
that the site is in Google's index. Both your name and your
company's name have some pretty common words. It might be unrealistic
to
think that your site, especially brand new, will rank well
on such common terms. Beyond that, there are bigger issues:
It's
a new
site, it's in a competitive industry, and new sites rarely
rank as well as older, more established sites -- especially
in Google.
Though Google has said nothing about it, many webmasters have
coined the term "Google sandbox" to describe what happens to
brand new sites in Google's index. It appears that many new sites
can get into Google's index, but don't rank well for several months.
This is considered to be Google's attempt at putting an end to
the web spammers who launch a new site and immediately have the
other 1,000+ sites they own link to that site -- such great link
popularity often shoots these new, spammy sites to the top of the
SERPs. And that's not good for Google or its users.
In the end, patience is the key with any search engine. Just
as your business took time to be found in the real world,
your web
site requires patience before it can be found online. If
you need immediate exposure, you should consider advertising opportunities
such as Google AdWords and/or Overture.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Still super-busy. And besides, isn't this issue long enough?
:-)
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service offered free to anyone
interested in learning more about web development, search engine
optimization/marketing, and just about anything else related to
running a business web site. You don't need to be an OWT client
to subscribe to our newsletter!
Subscribing and unsubscribing can be done online at OWTweb.com.
You may share this newsletter with others as long as the newsletter
is shared in its entirety.
Private replies to emails will be written if we have time, but
we don't provide web site critiques or consulting services
for free. You can learn more about our web development and search
engine marketing services online at www.owtweb.com.
|
