What you see is not always what Google gets. Avoid the traps of image-rich websites

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

So you’ve invested hours and hours into building a beautiful site packed full of bright, inviting images but when it comes to website visitors and sales you have crickets. Silence… Zippo… Nada…

So what went wrong?

Putting aside the obvious such as bad products, prices and reputation, you should take a real hard look at your site and find out how much your site’s most important visitor, Google, knows much about you. And it all comes down to content.

In April 2012 91.7% of us searched using Google globally. This was followed by a chirpy 3.5% for Bing and 3.36% for Yahoo!.

For the US alone the numbers were:

  • Google: 79.17%
  • Bing: 9.96%
  • Yahoo!: 9.3%
  • Ask Jeeves: 0.69%

So the old saying if you’re not in Google you don’t exist is not far from the truth. But as far as Google is concerned there is being in Google, then there is ‘being in Google’.

Test 1: Search your company web address in Google

Browse to www.google.com and enter you full website address in Google such as “www.yoursite.com”. Does it appear? Great! Google knows about you. But how much does Google really know about you?

I’m going to run a small test on an Australian embroidery company based in Melbourne whose website from a visual point of view appear to have a good website with nice content that may attract potential buyers. I contacted this company and they gave me permission to use their site but for the privacy of the company I will not disclose their website details and have blurred their company name and contact details.

As you can see the site has some nice content. It lists the products and services they offer (caps, t-shirts, polo’s, etc) plus has important selling points such as no minimums, quick turnaround and discounts for businesses. Why wouldn’t I use them? Well, I would if I could find them.

Doing a Google search for these terms in www.google.com.au (Google’s Australian website) turns up nothing. Try it yourself by searching for “embroidery service t-shirts”. Any of the websites you visit on that first page will not resemble the site above. Try searching for any other words on their site and again they will not appear.

So why?

There is a simple answer and it may surprise you. All the words on this site are not actual words. They are images. Pixles, dots of colors. And from Google’s perspective they mean nothing.

The site owner may still be able to attract users by advertising but that is a very expensive and narrow way to attract visitors. Once their daily limit is reached their website will vanish from view and their competitors will enjoy their absence in the search results.

Now let’s look at a site that has done it right. www.tshirt123.com

This DecoNetwork website has been designed for Google to love it as much as its Australian human visitors. It is visually rich, contains bright images that clearly show what the service offices, but also has rich text that Google will love. Its content and optimization has been designed to attract Australian visitors. Let’s put the site to the test.

Browse to www.google.com.au (Google’s Australian website) and enter “on demand printing hoodies”. Tshirt123 appears (at the time of writing this blog). Now search “custom t shirt printing”. Once again Tshirt123 appears. They appear because these  keywords are actual text written on their page, and not just images.

Test 2: What does Google know about my site?

So you think you’ve done the right thing but you’re not too sure. There is a quick test you can do to test if Google knows anything about your site.

Visit www.google.com and enter your full website address.  i.e. www.tshirt123.com

The website should appear as below:

Next mouse over next to the website title and two grey arrows will appear. Select this to review the preview of the site:

In the preview section you will see a link “Cached” next to the site URL. Select this to open a cached view of your website in Google’s database.

On the top far-right select the link “Text-only version”.

This will display the website in a form that Google understands – text!

Scroll down this page to experience you website as Google does. Any text on your site should appear as text on this on this page. Images will probably be missing. (though there are some tricks you can do to improve this).

Let’s go back to our first test case from Melbourne. I ran that same test on their website and this is what Google saw:

As you can see, not much at all. Only their email address, website address, and copyright statement can be seen as only these elements on their site was actual text.

All those juicing keywords used to describe their products, services and benefits are missing so this website would need to rely 100% on paid advertising to draw Google traffic to their website. Expensive and unnecessary.

Image ALT tags

While heavy use of images can pose the problem above, however you can help improve your sites SEO performance by using an image ALT tag in your HTML. An ALT tag provides alternative information for an image and is typically used when a user cannot, for whatever reason, see the image. Google will also index this alt tag and it can be used to help you sites SEO ranking.

However this said, Google’s Webmaster Tools guide recommends you “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.”

Source: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Work on real content for your site. Make as much of that content text on your site. Through the use of Google Fonts and other font services you can still make that text visual and appealing, but more importantly that text will help drive organic visitors to your website increasing you website traffic and reducing the reliance of paid advertising to draw traffic to your site.

Good luck and have fun! :)

Don’t spill your Google Juice. rel=”canonical”

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

The term ‘Google Juice’ refers to the value (or love) Google gives your website based on a number of factors such as links and good, original content.

Many factors can have a negative effect on you Google juice such as poor content (of course) and duplicate content on multiple websites. A common cause of duplicate content from Google’s perspective is multiple domain names pointing to the one site. i.e.www.mysite.com, www.myothersite.com or even myothersite.com (without the www) all point to the one website and Google will index all URLs. Google see’s the content and knows they are the same. This is a problem for Google, as Google does not like to show duplicate content to its users so in some cases will rank the URLs lower.

As DecoNetwork provides you with your own domain name (i.e. yoursite.deco-apparel.com) you may have two active domain names on your site (yoursite.deco-apparel.com PLUS www.yoursite.com) therefore it is critical for you SEO that you attend to this problem.

The end result is you will have two URLS for your website. i.e.:

http://yoursite.deco-apparel.com/home/create_products/Promo_100_Cotton_Tee?n=81483

AND:

http://www.yoursite.com/home/create_products/Promo_100_Cotton_Tee?n=81483

There is a way around this by telling Google which is your primary and main URL by using the rel=”canonical” tag.

But don’t worry, as a DecoNetwork website owner you don’t need to do any coding! Simply follow these instructions:

  1. Log into your DecoNetwork website
  2. Browse to Manage Store > Store Settings > Add Store Domain Name
  3. Under Existing store domains ensure your main URL (i.e. the www.yoursite.com one) is set as the primary domain name (Primary). If not select “Set as primary” next to the domain name.
  4. Under Domain Settings check “Redirect to Primary Domain”.

This will ensure anyone (or thing such as a Google crawler) who browses to your non-primary domain will automatically be redirected to your main domain and therefore reduce the problem of duplicate content on duplicate websites!

The myth of “keywords” meta tag

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

It’s a cold, dark night and you’ve sat down to write the perfect collection of keywords to use in your website’s <meta name=”keywords”> tag to work your way up that elusive and exclusive club of the first page of Google search results.

Well, I hate to burst your bubble but it would have been more constructive to watch re-runs of Bold and the Beautiful. When it comes to your page rank in Google <meta name=”keywords”> has zero affect!

Now the reason.

In the ‘old days’ a nasty group of websites used to stuff their <meta name=”keywords”> with keywords that were completely irrelevant to their site. You’d enter a search phrase in Google such as “cheap t-shirt printing” and then select a result to view only to be surprised that the website is not about t-shirts or printing, but rather something you’d really rather not see…

So Google decided to ignore this useless and highly misleading tag <meta name=”keywords”>.

Don’t worry, not all is lost! Take the keywords you once used in your <meta name=”keywords”> tag and create real text content on you website that contains these keywords.

Next is <meta name=”description”>. This is not used by Google to rank your website. In other words, if you enter “cheap t-shirt printing” in your <meta name=”description”> and someone types that in Google your website will not appear.

However Google will use the <meta name=”description”> as the website preview text if there is not enough actual text on your site. Unlike <meta name=”keywords”> which his essentially useless, <meta name=”description”> has some relevance but only for display purposes and again plays no part in actually improving you websites Google rank.

To modify your DecoNetwork websites <meta name=”description”> browse to Manage Store > Store Settings > General Settings and select the “Keywords” tab.

Finally, don’t take my word for it. Check out Google’s official announcement in September 2009: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Website title best practices

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

A website title is important. It is typically the first thing a human sees when they see your websites listed in a Google search result. Therefore, you need to think about what makes the perfect title to attract the user’s attention.

There are many conflicting theories on what makes the best website page title but there are some logical rules you can follow.

Keep it short and sweet

A website title is not very long and the title length shown in Google is even shorter, so keep your website title to around 70 characters.

Keywords then brand

Here is where some people can disagree. Some claim it’s better to have your keywords listed in your title first then the brand name. i.e.:

“Custom T-Shirt Printing, Hoodies, Aprons, Sweatshirts – Sydney Australia | ACME Threads Promotional Apparel”

Compared to brand first i.e.:

“ACME Threads Promotional Apparel | Custom T-Shirt Printing, Hoodies, Aprons, Sweatshirts – Sydney Australia”

It may not make much difference for Google (though some argue it does) but it can make a difference for your potential website visitor.

Consider a person looking for custom t-shirt printing. Are they more than likely to type in Google “ACME Threads Promotional Apparel” or are they more likely to type “Custom T-Shirts Printing”? I reckon the second.

Therefore, don’t risk the chance that the keywords they actually type into Google might be at the end of your website title and possibly out of view in the Google search result.

The added advantage of including the keywords at the begging of you title is the chance they will be visible to the user in the Google search results. Any visible words in a website title or short description is highlighted bold therefore capturing the user attention even more.

Search term “Personalised printed t shirts”.

Results:

Notice the highlighted search terms in the Google search results?

Ensure your primary keywords are first (“Custom T-shirt Printing”) and secondary keywords next (“Hoodies, aprons, sweatshirts – Sydney Australia”) followed by your company name. i.e.

“Custom T-Shirt Printing, Hoodies, aprons, sweatshirts – Sydney Australia | ACME Threads Promotional Apparel”.

Your website title is important. Spend some time on it and always thing like a consumer.

Drive traffic to your website by listing your t-shirt business in Google Places for free!

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

This one is a must! If you are a business with a physical address that clients can visit then you MUST list your website in Google places. Google Places is what appears when a ‘local’ Google search is performed.

A local search from Google’s perspective is where someone combines a product or service with a city or town. i.e. “t shirt printing Los Angeles”.

Various map entries appear which show the business name, street address, and telephone number of companies that offer the product of service in the area specified:

It’s how most of us find the business we are looking for!

So how do you list your business in Google Places for free?

Simple! Follow these steps :)

  1. Browse to www.google.com/places
  2. Select “Get started”.
  3. Login with your Google account. If you do not have one select “Sign up now”. Remember, your Gmail account is a Google account so you can use that.
  4. Google Places now asks for your business phone number to try to find some information about your business. Select your country and enter your phone number.
  5. You will now be prompted to enter some basic information about your business. Complete as much of this form as possible. Remember, you must use a real street address. PO Boxes cannot be used.Under “Description” type a lot of detail about your business. Use lots of keywords to describe your business and use words you think people might use to find you. i.e. “embroidery business”, “custom t shirt printing”, “workwear”, etc.

    Under “Category” enter as many categories as you want that are relevant for your business. As you start to type a category such as “embroidery” Google will recommend a category for you. To add a new category select the blue “Add another category” link.

  6. Upload some photos of your work not just your logo. People browsing Google care more about the quality of your work than your logo.
  7. When finished press “Submit” at the bottom of the page. Google will ask you to verify you are real by either an SMS, phone call or postcode. Select SMS or phone call as a postcode can take weeks to arrive.

Remember, you can always update or change your Google Places listing at any time. Keep it up-to-date and packed with lots of juicy content.

While you’re at it, here is a quick video from Google!

Create Custom Designs in DecoNetwork with Digital Art Solutions Interactive Templates webinar recording

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

Missed yesterdays DecoNetwork webinar “Create Custom Designs in DecoNetwork with Digital Art Solutions Interactive Templates” with Craig Mertens of Digital Art Solutions? Don’t worry as we’ve got it recorded for you!

Don’t forget to register for future free webinars at www.deconetwork.com/webinars

Enjoy!

Star Wars Day – May the 4th… be with you! Free t-shirt design

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

In case you haven’t heard or bumped into a nerd like me in the last few days, Star Wars day is here! Or as its affectionately known “May the 4th”… be with you…

Here is a  PDF file I made in CorelDRAW  you might like to play with or make available as t-shirt designs on your DecoNetwork web store.

PDF: MayThe4th_DecoNetwork (Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t support CorelDRAW so can’t upload original .CDR I’m sorry…)

Stitches magazine turns 25

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

Stitches magazine celebrates 25 years of great articles and industry support. To celebrate they’ve released an awesome collection of the magazine covers that have inspired embroiderers and decorators throughout the years.

View the collection of Stitches magazine covers on their online version http://www.stitches-digital.com/publication/?i=108628&p=64 and see how the industry trends (and hair styles!) have changed over the years.

Generic product views catalog

Posted by Brenden Prazner on

You may not be aware that DecoNetwork has over 885 photos of generic products that you can use to build products in DecoNetwork? For example:

We could list all 800+ but I think you get the drift :)

What’s best, is they are full photographs which can be dynamically recolored to the color of your product.

And if we don’t have a template you’re after you can easily make your own as highlighted in our previous post Creating a dynamic product view template in DecoNetwork.

These templates are available when you make a custom product in your DecoNetwork Manage Fulfillment Center section:

  1. Log into your DecoNetwork website
  2. Browse to Manage Fulfillment Center > Products > Manage Products
  3. Select ‘Add Custom Product‘
  4. Select a Product Type and enter a Product Name and Product Code. Press Continue.
  5. Choose the “Select System Product View Template” and the select product view template screen will appear: