The Internet Advertising Bureau in the US (there’s another IAB in the UK) has just started advertising a promotion for internet advertising. They offer a microsite that is a microcosm of everything you should avoid doing in Search Engine Marketing, as a small business hoping to gain visitors. It’s also pretty much against most recommendations for design for accessibility.
The Main Failings
- All site content is in Flash (largely unusable by search engines)
- Flash can offer accessibility - but this site doesn’t (try resizing the text for example, or a select a high visibility stylesheet)
- Display failures - note the text hidden behind the buttons?
- Non-standard interface controls - embedded text doesn’t respond to page-up/down, etc
Even if a search engine identified the site as relevant, the IAB have abandoned any control over page snippets. And, yes, the IAB offers advice on Search Marketing. This site is a glorious example of why search marketers are often in conflict with graphically oriented agencies.
It really doesn’t matter what your site looks like, if it can’t be found.
With 80% of all web users doing one or more searches in a session, what benefit do you win by hiding your site, in order to make it look cool?
The balance is wrong. Design for visibility in search, then add cool - in a way that conforms with usability and accessibility guidelines.
If you have a way cool site and no one can find it, how does that help your business to thrive and grow? Better to be found with a simple site that ranks, than a fancy site that doesn’t, surely? Or is “style over substance” such a winner that you’d rather have a hyperactive site that no one ever sees?
Search Engine Marketing
As an example, use Google to search for the key promotional message “IAB Media More Engaging” or just “Media more engaging“. Can you see the microsite in the list? I can’t. Don’t feed me blather about sandboxes and delays. The IAB is a significant site, it has frequently updated news, and even without seeing site stats I know that it will be crawled by Google at least once per day. A significant promo like this will have been indexed and if only it had a page title, meta-description, semantic markup of text that was usable by a search engine, it would be likely to show up.
Any good SEO should have been able to offer key in page factors that help to make a site on a low competition search query more visible. “IAB Media More Engaging” is not a high volume search query. There aren’t a lot of advertisers. This page should rank highly in a matter of days rather than months.
Please use Google and search for the “British Mortgage Awards“. The top link is a Flash site for them. Notice how there is no snippet? That’s what this type of Flash site design does. The reason that the British Mortgage Awards winds up at the top of the search is inbound links. Users click links with descriptive text more than they click links without.
In a competitive world, you need to rank highly, with suitable snippets, for the lowest cost.
Manipulating Inbound Links
Search Engines basically use two techniques, which have some overlap. There’s “in-page” and “in-site” factors - absent from Flash sites. And there’s inbound links. Generating inbound links in a way that won’t get you banned is likely to cost you money - could be the opportunity cost of your time or the paid cost to an SEO company.
Developing a site that has in-page and in-site correct design is a one-off cost. For low competition searches, all you need is a well designed site. “Media More Engaging” is not a highly competitive search query. It should be possible to rank, quite quickly, with a well designed site.
We look for strategies that result in other people voluntarily linking, resulting in varied text and a more robust rank in the face of search engine ranking system variations - in other words, generating unique and informative content that stimulates a community of interest. The main search engines now have staff and processes in place that look for suspicious links. So some reciprocal links don’t hurt, but a lot, suddenly, will be a problem. Reciprocal links appear to count for less than purely inbound links, with unique text embedded in a contextually relevant page, and possibly less than outbound links to relevant contextually related sites.
Most small businesses are best off with a properly designed site, and a strategy that will have other sites voluntarily linking, as a free activity. It’ll be cheaper to set up, cheaper to run and achieves better and more stable results than someone who relies on the latest fads for link farming.
How can we be so rude?
We conduct search engine optimization audits for web sites. We have large and small clients who’ll attest to our skills in identifying what works and what doesn’t.
Flash can be used effectively but not when you use it to build the whole site, unless you expect visitors to arrive as a result of other activity - such as offline press and news. Leading SME’s to consider a Flash site as normal will result in their incurring extra fees to correct a problem that was caused at the design stage.
I might try to reproduce the IAB microsite, as a properly designed, usable, accessible site - if I hadn’t got so many clients waiting for various activities, I’d have done it by now. It isn’t hard. Really.
Updates
Minor text tweak for flow, just before a link added to the informative Matt Cutts’ Blog.
IAB’s “SmartBrief” for Dec 6th carried an item about the UN report on accessibility failures on websites. An amusing follow up by the IAB, there.
See recent Precision Marketing article on why marketers need to design for inclusivity. That means not just the words but the site and technologies, too. Learn the lessons of Boo…
