Is Your Association�s Web Site Search Engine Friendly?
When many big and small associations web sites are not search engine friendly, it suggests they don't know they have a problem! This is an abridged version of a Hillwatch column that appeared in the January/February issue of Association & Meeting Director magazine.
A recent study of Fortune 100 web sites revealed most are not search engine friendly. Ninety percent of the sites use technology that search engines find difficult to read. Forty five percent of the sites were missing Meta tags, the basic tool most search engines use to accurately catalogue and retrieve content from sites.
These findings are hardly news! A random selection of any 100 web sites, including a 100 association web sites, would show much the same results. Most are not search engine friendly.
The significance of the Fortune 100 study is that spending lots of money on your site does not guarantee all the bases are covered. Big, deep-pocketed corporations spend hundred of thousands and sometime millions of dollars on their sites. Yet, they still flub the major goal of any web site, which is � to attract the largest possible relevant audience to the site.
The under-performance of corporate web sites is embarrassing but not fatal. Brand name companies have other ways of delivering their message beside the Internet � television, magazine, radio, financial press, etc. If you have a well-known brand, people ultimately find you on the Internet even if your site doesn�t �get� search engines.
When Associations make the same mistake, the consequences are more serious. Most associations have a limited communications budget. They are not well known brand names. They don�t have familiar products and store fronts. Associations do not spend millions on their sites but creating and maintaining those sites still represents a larger share of their overall budgets.
So how big a problem is it?
Surveys, which ask people how they find new web pages or sites on the Internet consistently, show that 80% to 90% list search engines as their first choice. Search engines are both the white pages and yellow pages of the Internet. Search engine sites are always among the top destinations on the Net.
It is simple logic. People use search engines to find new information on the Internet. They generally only check the first 30 results or less. When your site fails to rank high on the major search engines, it is effectively invisible. Search engine users are finding someone else�s information, not yours!
This matters if:
Raising the profile and brand of your organization is important.
Members of your association who haven�t �bookmarked� your site should be able to find it easily.
Attracting new members who may not know your organization well is a priority.
More press coverage of your organization is desirable.
Because of strong competition from other organizations in your �issue space�, you need to promote your positions to as wide an audience as possible.
You want to demonstrate to your members you are promoting your issues as widely as possible.
Having more people to attend your events or buy something is a goal.
The most compelling reason to make your site search engine friendly is that it is the least expensive way to attract traffic to your site.
Search engine optimization is less complicated than it appears. With a little training and direction, most associations can have a reasonable program in place to make their site a lot more search engine friendly. A reasonable expectation is a 20% to 40% increase in web site traffic over a period of several months. More dramatic increases in traffic are possible for some sites. On a cost-per-visitor basis, it is the clear, run-a-way winner over all other site marketing options available.
It is only a problem, if you know it is a problem
When a large number of big and small associations, as well as big and small companies, all have web sites that are not search engine friendly, it suggests they have a problem because they don�t know there is a problem. Here is a few reasons why this may be the case.
The Internet is still young. We are just learning to be smarter buyers of web services. Most sites have been built without a clear path to measuring results or return on investment. If associations don�t ask for site optimization or evaluate services on that basis, it tends not to get done.
We confuse a good-looking site with a good working site. If the site design is professional then we assume everything is done that needs to be done. Search engine optimization or lack of it is largely invisible to an untrained eye.
People assume if their site domain is registered with the major search engines the job is done. With more than 5 billion documents on the Web, it takes more than just registering to rank near the top.
We assume the people we hire to design our sites also know about site marketing. That is not always true. They are web designers first and foremost. They can be remarkably uninformed about how search engines work. The things they are trained to do such as use �flash� graphics actually interfere with search engines.
Day-to-day responsibility for the web site is pushed down the chain of command to the person responsible for putting up new content. If that person is not trained to work with search engines or rewarded for increasing traffic to the web site, who else in your organization is doing it?
Organizations will spend money to design and maintain a site and then allocate practically nothing to marketing the site. It is akin to designing a building but forgetting the doors and windows.
Search Engine Friendly Sites
Search Engine friendly sites bring the following elements together.
Careful key word selection and placement on each page of your site. These are called Meta tags. These key words along with page titles and content descriptions have to be placed in the source code. It looks complicated but it is just a matter of learning which brackets to put the words between.
Carry those same key words into the title and content of the page, particularly the first 100 words of your content.
Search engines read text, not pictures. Ensure your graphics are not impeding the search engines.
Links to high quality sites are increasingly important. More search engines are ranking sites higher when other sites link to them. And, the more sites that link to the site that links to you the higher your rankings.
On-going search engine registration of new pages or sections of the site is part of the routine.
There are more complicated strategies such as having multiple URLs pointing to your site, page content targeted at specific search engines or paid search engine placement. The additional effort and cost make sense if there is a sufficient pay back from that traffic.
Plenty of free information and instruction is also available on the Internet. There are also companies that specialize in search engine optimization. Check under the terms search engine positioning or search engine optimization in any major search engine to find their names. Some are very good. Others are selling snake oil. Shop around.
A manageable strategy for most Associations is to do your own homework or obtain help and direction to put a reasonable program in place. Ensure you have someone in your organization trained to take responsibility. Once your site has been made search engine friendly, it should take a couple of hours each month to keep on top of it.
Your association has all this sunk and fixed costs in creating and maintaining your web site. It should become the main strategic communications vehicle for your organization. Doesn�t a little extra effort to maximize your return on that investment make sense?
