Clarify Your Sites Focus Before You Start Search Engine Optimization

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, 12 of April , 2008 at 7:40 am

Websites are not made equal nor do they have equal roles. There are many different types of website ranging from business through to blogs. In the middle sit social sites, forums and a myriad of other different site types. Within the business website genre there are four sub types or orientations. You need to clarify your web sites focus before you can even begin to think about search engine optimization strategies.

You may need to consider if your choice of orientation is right for your business. In simple terms, business websites have an orientation that leans towards brand, product, sales or customers. Each may have different requirements when it comes to search engine optimization strategies.

Brand Orientation: Websites that focus primarily on branding have little in the way of written content. These sites rely on pictures, graphics and testimonial type content. The search engine optimization strategies for this type of site leans more towards keywords particularly in graphic and image tags. This site relies heavily on inbound links and can be one of the hardest to optimize effectively.

Product Orientation: Possibly the easiest to undertake search engine optimization programs as this type of site has loads of content. This content can be product descriptions, how-to’s, product reviews or just about anything you can think of. This type of website is well suited to blogs. Keywords, content and inbound links are important for product orientated sites.

Sales Orientation: This is typically an eCommerce type site and can be hard to optimize. A lot of work needs to go into using ‘no follow’ and ‘no index’ tags so that search engines only follow and index pages that are important. Search engine optimization strategies also need to focus heavily on inbound links.

Customer Orientation: This can be a blog or forum type site. Customer orientated sites rely on an interaction with their customers providing them with channels to leave product reviews and general feedback. This type of site may well develop inbound links quite naturally with out to much effort. Search engine optimization can be built around keywords and user generated content. You would need to decide whether or not to ‘follow’ or ‘no follow’ user generated content.

I am sure you can think of many other different types of business websites. One interesting aspect that occurred to me as I wrote this; many businesses incorporate two or three of these on the one domain. A branded landing page with links to a product orientated blog, an eCommerce checkout and perhaps an interactive forum. Each requires its own search engine optimization strategy to get to the highest rankings possible.

What is the focus of your website and does your search engine optimization program target the best area?

                      Category: SEO                      

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