Today’s list of tasks was supposed to include some basic changes to the cuc website to include some SEO improvements. Unfortunately we were unable to obtain FTP access to the site from the current hosts, and as the admin area is simply not designed for creating search engine friendly pages, improvements have not been possible, and no changes to the website have been made.
Completed tasks:
Review of the cuc website: Despite the visual impact of the website, there has been zero thought about SEO from the current web designers. There are far too many problems to state all here, from duplicated page titles to missing header tags, but the best example is the way links between pages use JavaScript, despite the fact Googles webmaster guidelines state: ‘Googlebot is best able to crawl HTML links and is unable to crawl image links or linked embedded in JavaScript.’ – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93994 and ‘If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Macromedia Flash keep you from seeing your entire site in a text browser, then spiders may have trouble crawling it.’ – http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349&cbid=-5×4frztm27n3&src=cb&lev=answer
DM has been coached on the best guidelines for creating search engine friendly web pages, and how best to construct pages and website structures to make the website search engine friendly. Topics covered have included: Tiered web site structures, the importance of keyword rich anchor text links to pass page rank to all pages, long tail keyword product pages, website product categories, third tier product page cross links, keyword rich unique page titles, snippets of meta descriptions as used by search engines in results pages, creating unique text content, how to use a wordpress blog, using wordpress blog posts to pass page ranking power to third tier product pages using keyword rich and contextual anchor text links. We also looked at social media and social bookmarking websites including: using Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, and how to cascade posts to all with one upload, gaining extra hits using bookmarking sites such as stumbleupon, with a realtime demonstration of how it works, including an extra 30 visitors in the 30 mins following the post.
An ongoing policy of SEO and online marketing was discussed and proposals made on how best to use company employees to increase website content. Essentially, anyone in the organisation should be encouraged to add to the website by describing the tasks and events they take part in. this text is vital for providing search engines with their main requirements: unique text, and links to relevant pages.
Possible changes to the website were discussed with both PM and DM. In the end there is little to keep from the current website. The design criteria, utilising tables for positioning elements, JavaScript links and redirects, appended URLs to generate dynamic content etc. is over five years out of date, and follows none of the simple recommendations from Googles Webmaster Guidelines, and is simply not search engine friendly. The only way to make a useful and standards compliant website is to start the code again from scratch. The overall aesthetic design of the site can be kept, so the site will look almost identical to the current website, but the underlying template will be new, compliant, to the latest standards and practices, and will begin to generate traffic.
Proposal:
Building a website of this nature with all of the current features could take several weeks. However, the initial template design phase is estimated to take two full days. Add one more full day to include all of the current pages of content as a static design, and the site will be fully up and running with all of the current pages. This may require some assistance from DM to upload some of the current pages of content.
Once the site is up and running it is then time to discuss the content management system, as this can be customised to do the exact job as required. A CMS system usually takes several days to create, depending on the level of complexity required.
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