Redesign With Google In Mind
November 21st, 2009
In 2008, Entertainment Weekly magazine began efforts spiff up EW.com. Despite this website’s dated look and ad hoc information architecture, readers loyally consume and comment on the snarky writings of EW’s writers. Google likes EW, too – consistently ranking EW among the first natural results for terms like, “American Idol,” and “Twilight.” The challenge was to fix the problems and keep the Google juice.
Get Google’s attention
Specific details of Google’s ranking algorithm are not public. But most web designers and developers know the basics that Google publishes on in its “Help” documents:
Build your website in a language that allows search spiders to read your page.
Always include a site map page, since Google’s robots will use this as a representation of your
entire website.
Web page code should include keywords in the “title,” and “meta” tags. And these keywords
should reflect the other content on the page.
For example, a page with the title “Usability Strategy by Tobi Jo” should include “usability strategy” in the “h1” tags or within hyperlinks on my web pages. Include “do not crawl” tags on content, such as global navigation, that might water down the relevance for a specific keyword. This is how my own website has climbed to page three for the search term “usability strategy.” And I am number one for the query “Tobi Jo” because that is also my web address: www.tobijo.com.
What if you want to rank highly (or maintain that rank) for a more commonly used term, like “American Idol?” This is where Google becomes a bit of a mystery. We do know Google likes a blend of the old and new. The longer a page is alive with the same page title, meta, and keyword rich page content, the higher it will rank for these terms. At the same time, a page needs to be updated to remain fresh enough to appear in the highest ranks.
Change high-ranking pages (without losing Google juice)
The problem was that once users arrived on EW.com, the got lost. That meant that I needed to change the highest-ranking pages without losing our old school appeal to Google. A couple of ways we did this was to further improve the basic search engine optimization techniques, like the keywords in the header of the page. We also set up a permanent redirect from the old page address to the new one. This shows Google that this new page is the same as the old one, and helps us keep the pull of the older page.
For fifteen years, EW.com has been publishing highly popular reviews for TV shows, books, music and movies. Blogs commonly link to the site, and there are often thousands of user comments on any piece of content. So when EW publishes content on American Idol, Google sees that as being more relevant since it is coming from an established authority.
Google is not keen on people hacking its search-ranking algorithm. So the deeper mysteries of Google remain. No one can guarantee that SEO efforts will bring a website to the first page of results for a common search query. But keeping Google in mind early in a redesign and following best practices (that are public) will definitely contribute to a clients’ success.
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Works Consulted
“Webmasters/Site owners Help.” Google webmaster central. 27 October 2009, 10:57 EST. Google. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/?hl=en
Horrigan, John B. “Home Broadband Adoption 2008.” Pew Research Center Publications. 27 October 2009, 11:02 EST. Pew Research Center. 2 July 2008. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/888/home-broadband-adoption-2008
“Searching for Google’s Success.” CNET News. 27 October 2009, 11:04 EST. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 30 September 2001. http://news.cnet.com/Searching-for-Googles-success/2009-1023_3-273704.html
