Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
Looking for a boost

Since we have a number of web designers out there, I thought I would pose another work-related question to you. I am happy with the new website my company launched earlier this year. We are getting decent numbers right now, but a bulk of our visitors find their way to our site specifically looking for employment opportunities. We are a civil engineering and environmental firm, so college students are always looking for internships and jobs right out of school.

I have been using Google Analytics to track users since early May. This has provided some useful data to gauge where users are coming from and what they are looking at on our site. Also, I have been using Google's Webmaster Tools for additional details.

My goal is to ultimately increase our page rank in searches. I have tried to use meta tags and descriptions to produce keywords. Obviously we have links to and from relevant sites. When I distributed news via email, the messages drive recipients to our website. I have noticed a spike in numbers immediately following these mailings. Do you have any suggestions that I might not be thinking of at the moment?
Tags:  Internet, work
5 Comments
moobi
1) This is something I've only had a little bit of time to research at work, but so far my understanding of the critical items in order of importance:

1. Get other related sites to link to yours.
2. Have a descriptive/keyworded <Title> tag in the head.
3. Have important keywords throughout the readable content.

I don't think the description and keyword meta tags play much of a part anymore as they tended to be abused a great deal in the past. Again, I don't have a lot of experience with Search Engine Optimization.
Moobi   Tuesday, July 29, 2008
gotshoo
2) I think Moobi covered all the important points. The only thing that I could see that may help in SEO, would be putting a blurb defining what the company is, does, and on the root of the site.

Content that is on the first page plays a lot into how you're ranked and considered relevant compared to other results. Also, look at your competition in search results to look to see what they're doing different that might give them an edge over you.

Also, those alt tags on images help a lot. Consider putting the company title in with logo.gif.

From what I've read online, meta keywords and descriptions help, but content on the site is what ranking is mostly based on.
shoo   Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Lionheart
3) I don't know a whole lot about the actual stuff you do, but my brother in law Chris has some magic he does behind the scenes on websites. He helped my brother's business (optometry in SoCal) and it's been a godsend for finding new patients. The company is called Trace Media and he's out of New York, his website is: http://www.tracemedia-search-marketing.com/
Tell him you know Krista ;-)
Lionheart   Tuesday, July 29, 2008
moobi
4) shoo made a good point about the home page needing to have good textual content for SEO. This is the site I webmaster where I work: http://www.envisionamerica.com/ . My boss wanted a VERY simple home page from which to navigate to the rest of the site, and we've been complimented on how easy the "keypad" navigation is quite a bit. Naturally, I've been given the duty of increasing our search ranking, and I've explained to him that we're sacrificing a LOT of rank to that home page simplicity.

I think I will take shoo's advice about image alt tags and expand them on our home page. Maybe that will help a bit.
Moobi   Tuesday, July 29, 2008
billpearch
5) I started altering the alt tags. I had very basic listing. I'll have to follow up down the road and see if I noticed any increases.
Bill   Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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