Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Hello and welcome to the misunderstood world of SEO.

There are two simple things you need to do:
1. Write quality content that is well organized.
2. Acquire links to your site.

Of course if it were that simple SEO wouldn't be a thriving business.

Your BIG problem is the fact the site is in Flash. Search Engines can't read it, it has no idea what your site is about other than what it can read in your title which states, "HNA computer Services". While not extremely vague, it isn't as specific as it could be.

If you continue to use Flash there isn't much you can do about your lack of organic search results. You need to create a non-Flash site or change it to a HTML site which is what I recommend.

Currently you only have two pages in Google's index https://www.google.com/search?q=site:hnacs.com, which means you only have two pages according to Google. Flash is the culprit. Search engines don't understand you have all that great content embedded in a Flash file.

A lot of poor content or lack of content on a site can be overlooked if you have a lot of links. This is a relative term depending on your competition. Your area is very competitive so you would need thousands of links to your site. It can be done over time, belive it or not. As of today, you have one link according to Yahoo, one link according to MSN and no links according to Google. Which means you have no Internet presence.

Wrap Up
Before Launch of site
Ditch the Flash.
Do keyword research.
Write page titles and content based on the research. Launch site with real html content and a good intra-linking strategy.

After Launch of site
Get Links with your keywords as the link text.
Write & distribute press releases with links to your site.
Write & distribute articles with links to your site.
Submit to real directories (we submit to 20 paid directories).
Create a blog that you maintain (Use Wordpress), link to your site. Market your site to industry blogs.
Research your competitors and ask for links from whoever is linking to them.
Check your ranking results to track progress.

Or hire Big Oak. ;-) We can do it all and more. There are lots of more helpful suggestions on our site if you want to do it yourself.

Submitting your site won't help.

In regards to your review question:

1. The site took almost 30 seconds to load on a fractional T. Some searchbots will skip over a site taking that long to load. Also, most visitors click away from a site within about 5 seconds or less. If they have to wait 30 seconds then you won't get any valuable traffic to speak of. Your metrics software will record the visit but the visitor won't have actually seen anything.

2. A big issue is a lack of backlinks. You have none in Google and only one in each of the other majors. Google won't rank you well unless you build quality backlinks.

3. Your navigation is image-based and should be CSS/Text Links. The images can remain using this technique but you will get the benefit of internal linking which you are not getting at all currently. The links on the body content section should be text links as well.

4. Body copy should be html. The SEs like text but there is no text to read. When I reviewed a few pages in a text browser all I got was the following:

|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|


FAIL (the browser should render some flash content, not this).

setstats 1
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

This is what the SEs will see. Do you want your site to be known for this?

5. I would remove the HNA Computer Services name from the paragraph of text above the "Rates" and "Services" sections and make the paragraph very clearl state what it is you do that will benefit the visitor. You've got 5 seconds or less. If they like what they see they'll stay and read more.

6. Get rid of the flash or place in sections of the site where rankings do not matter. The site design will remain the same but the functionality would not but if you improve traffic dramatically it would be well worth it.

7. For reasons mentioned above and more you only have two pages indexed with Google, one with Yahoo and none in MSN.

8. Page titles and descriptions need revision.

9. Have you thought about doing some PPC? Fix the page load issue before you start this.

10. Content is king. If you put up good content people will want to read it and link to it. If that happens the SEs notice it. The site should have good, interesting content.

11. Keyword research is a critical component of SEO work. Before you choose your keywords you should know 1. how many people are searching for those terms 2. How many sites are competing for those keywords and 3. Do you stand a chance of ranking in those keywords 4. how relevent is the keyoword to your site content. These are not in order.

I can go on and on but the big thing is that you need backlinks and you need on-page optimization. Right now your not visible to the web. I think if you fix the site your traffic will explode.

Nice job on the design.

I hope this helps.

-Greg

Another example of 'If you build it, WILL they come?'

Submitting to search engines is only part of the process. You also have to help promote your web site.

Are you including your web site on ALL marketing materials? Is your web site URL included in your radio commercials, your TV commercials, on your business c ards, on your brochures, signs, flyers, etc? Its a multi-media word baby, you gotta be OUT THERE!

Are you commenting on blogs? Add your URL there. Search engines pick up on that. It builds links back to your site.

Have you any Link Love dear? WTF? Link Love! You know, do folks think your site is worth linking to? It better be! If you have great content, valuable advice, a fantastic opinion worth quoting, folks will link to your web site.

How to get Link Love. To get love you gotta give love. Link your site to other peoples sites. Link to your friends, your enemies, your partners, and to your competitors. I know, it sounds weird, but, the more links you have, the more links you get. Linking to competiton helps build your credibility, and beleive it or not, is doing your potential customer a favor. They may find companies that suck they never knew about. Its a bold statement about your confidence in your services if you link your competition. Oh yeah, search engines love links...links in and links out, count! If you need some great software and advice for a linking strategy, I'd recommend this product to you, its great!

https://www.axandra.com/go.to/hertz2469
(disclosure: I make a small commision fro this product, but I'd recomend it even if I didn't)

Good points on the flash. Yes, SEO ignores flash. Sorry, high end product, impressive, but Google and crew hate it because they can't spider it. Sorry, but it's a fact Jack.

Get the word out on your web site, and traffic will build. Relying on plain old SEO and word of mouth is like smiling in the dark....nobody knows what you are doing because they can't see you.

From looking at your page immediately I can tell the biggest problem lies in your site design. Unless people are directly linking to your site from doing business with you, chances are they will NEVER happen upon it. The flash design is making it invisible to the search engines. I would ditch it altogether. I notice that template, so I assume you are using templates for your design. Go to www.templatemonster.com and find yourself a non-flash based template. I know it may look cool but there's no use in having a golden idea if nobody ever hears about it.

Once you've grabbed a template that is NOT flash based you should definitely look into a lot of link exchanges and affiliate relationships. As a computer service company you should be linking to and getting links from every site that you know of that has anything to do with computer's.

Also I would look into gaining more community involvement. The downloads section on your site is a good start, to offer a free "aid" to some of your potential clients. Take that a step further and start a blog and post articles or even your own self help tips on computer related issues. Don't give away the farm, but tease your consumers, get them conversing with you and they certainly will remember your brand name. You could put things in your blog totally unrelated to fixing a computer, but will still link back to your services.

So maybe one day you put an article from another site about a new virus that just popped up (make sure you cite this site). At the end of the article you may have your own analysis and say to free your computer from this virsu check out my (HOTLINK HERE) "VIRUS CLEANING SERVICES". It's a non-intrusive way to sell that answers a specific need. I know that goes beyond the goal of increased traffic but then again satisfied customers = referrals which = increased traffic!! So it all works.

Hope that helps.

I agree with a general theme here that it sounds like a usability issue. I have found this time and time again with my SEO clients, and with most of them, it's starting to sink in that they should get their usability (online customer experience) sorted first before spending money on PPC etc.

I've become so passionaite about this, that over the next few weeks, my business is going to change to focus more on usability issues with sites.

If you want to talk about usability in mre detail, contact me offline.

Good Luck