My blood is boiling right now. I was asked to have a look at a website that isn’t working for a potential customer yesterday to try to figure out why they don’t show up in Google, even though they are the industry leader, and they recently redesigned their site (2 years ago).

The initial research shows that they are in a very competitive search optimization market. My initial thinking is that it’ll be hard to get them to the top 10 results.

So I started to look at their site. Initially, I noticed it had some of the classic search problems, very little text, lots of images with no alt tags, and of course, all the header text was done as images, without alt tags, so Google doesn’t see it at all.

Then I did a “view source” on the page. Their web designer is a dirtbag. The site is optimized, all right…it’s optimized to help increase page rank for the WEB DESIGNER. In the head of the document, they’ve added several links (the tag commonly used to include a stylesheet) but they are using a deprecated attribute called “Rev” to show that the entire site is a subset of their own site. So they have an inbound link from this site, and they’re saying the site is about web design, not shoelace manufacturing as the case is.

Further, they’ve left out all of the meta data about the page. So there’s more information in the head of the document about the web designers (several links…) than there is about the customer.

I then had a look at the Web Designer’s site. His homepage is loaded with optimization tricks, and the meta data is filled out properly. So they knew what needed to be done, and didn’t do it.

Here’s your homework for today: go to your website and have a look for the Title Tags and the metadata tags. If you don’t have them or they don’t say what you do, you need to have your site fixed up ASAP. They ought to look like this, only with keywords and description that fit your business, and more properly the page they’re on.

<title>Vario Creative - Web Design, Graphic Design and
Marketing in Central Massachusetts</title>

<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="marketing, graphic design,

web design, content management, Sutton, Littleton MA,

logo design, email marketing, viral marketing,

online community development, branding,  brochures,

newsletters, vbulletin, intranets" />

<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Vario Creative is a full service

marketing group offering graphic design, web design, search

engine optimization, HP/Mysql development,

event planning, and viral marketing.  Our team includes

the best designers and developers, with decades of experience.

We will make your design or web project shine! " />