The SEO Health of Your Wine Website

This monthly column will be dedicated to sharing best practices for Internet Marketing using proven Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques for your winery website. When done properly, SEO techniques will increase the visibility of your website in Google and Yahoo’s organic listings. Organic lists are the 10 “free” listings that normally show on each page of search results. The ultimate goal of SEO is to get your website on Google/Yahoo Page One search results when consumers type in a search phrase that contains your winery name, the names of the wines you produce or the key members of your staff.

Unfortunately the term “SEO” has no definition or standards so it can mean different things to different people. The term has also been overused and tarnished through hundreds of spam email offering to improve website rankings for a small fee. Building a dominant Internet presence for your website is a deliberate effort that takes time and attention to details. There are no quick fixes. If someone offers a quick fix, run away! Search Engine Optimization is an impressive art form when done properly. It is a mandatory discussion to have with your web design team if you want to increase visitors and direct sales to your winery website.

The first task is to complete an initial diagnosis of your website. The goal of the diagnosis is to determine what areas of your website need to change to maximize your rankings in Google and Yahoo. Search Engine Optimization is not about the artistic design of your website although some graphical designs can hurt your rankings. So, put your ego aside, and get truthful answers from your webmaster about key components of your website that can significantly improve traffic, leads and ultimately sales.

Section One - SEO Fundamentals

This section of the diagnostic process contains 10 Yes or No questions. If you answer NO to any question, you need to act immediately to fix the SEO building block. The questions posed are SEO basics by which all other recommendations will be based. Some of these questions will need to be answered by your web designer. Don’t let the technical nature of some questions throw you off. They are very important questions if you are serious about Internet Marketing success.

1. Do you have an XML Sitemap created for your website? (Y/N)

2. Is your sitemap registered with Google and Yahoo? (Y/N)

3. Do you have a ROBOTS.TXT file for your website? (Y/N)
a. If yes, have you added the SITEMAP tag? (Y/N)

4. Do you have unique HTML TITLE tags for each page on your website? (Y/N)

5. Do you have unique META TAGS for each page on your website? (Y/N)

6. Is your website “error free” using the HTML Validator test at http://validator.w3.org? (Y/N)

7. Does your website have more than 15 pages of readable text content? (Y/N)

8. Do you have a dedicated IP address for your website? (Y/N)

9. Have you registered your website with Google maps? (Y/N)

10. Have you registered your website with Yahoo Local? (Y/N)

Section Two - Website Platform

In this section we will focus on the platform that is being used for your website. The term “Flash” website pertains to winery sites that are designed using Adobe Flash programming. These website normally open with a graphically active home page. An example of flash website can be found at http://www.scarecrowwine.com. Flash home pages are hurtful to organic search optimization and are basically telling Yahoo and Google to “go away”.

1. Does your website open with a flash module? If yes, your website internal pages are most likely invisible to Yahoo and Google. Bad. As a result, aside from searches with your exact URL name, your website will be basically rendered invisible for search. Recommendation is to change to HTML wrapper with flash elements.

2. Does your website platform allow you to update TITLE TAGS and META TAGS directly? If No, consider changing to a platform that is SEO friendly.

3. Does your website have easy to read page names or are they dynamically generated and contain strange numbers and letter patterns? (Example: http://www.hallwines.com/our-wines is the page name for the “Our Wines” section of their website and is very SEO friendly) If you answered No, look into ways to convert the cryptic page names into readable page names. Yahoo and Google will index readable page names.

SEO Recommended Features

This section of the test contains simple Yes or No questions. If you answer NO to any question, you should plan to implement these features as soon as possible. The sooner you add these features, the better chances you will have to increase web standings.

1. Have you created an RSS Feed for your website? (Y/N)
a. If yes, have you setup a PING service? (Y/N)

2. Have you implemented a blog? (Y/N)
a. If yes, does each blog page have unique TITLES and META tags? (Y/N)

3. Are you adding new content pages every month? (Y/N)

4. Are you adding your press releases on your website? (Y/N)

5. Have you used social networking sites to bookmark important pages on your site? (Y/N)

So, let me know how you do on these questions. In the following weeks we will discuss the reason why these questions are vital to your search engine marketing strategy. If anyone scored perfectly, send me a note. It will be the first time I found a website that didn’t need help.

Cheers!

Brian Pasch

About the Author: Brian Pasch is the CEO of Pasch Consulting Group, a firm specializing in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. The PCG website is located at www.seonj.com and Brian Pasch can be reached via email at brian@seonj.com. Brian is also an avid wine collector and wine advocate. His wine blog can be found at www.brianpasch.com.

This entry was posted by admin on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under On-Site SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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