Making Your Web Site Work Harder For You

Last fall, I spoke at the Northeast Kitchen Design Expo on behalf of Kitchen & Bath Design News. As I was wrapping up my surely spellbinding presentation, a woman in the audience asked me for the three most important ways to update her Web site.

My mind reeled. I thought about the many different things I needed to list, and wrestled with the question of how I could possible list just three! In desperation, I asked if I could list four. She kindly granted my request…and then I think I listed several more than four.

At the top of my list was not underestimating the power and importance of search engines.

Is your Web site optimized for search engines? If it is, it will bring in new clients and reduce the number of tire-kickers in your showroom.

Search engines have changed a lot over the years, due to the way the Internet has taken shape with technological advances. That said, Web pages built eight years ago (if they’ve been updated) will typically get a higher ranking by search engines than pages of your Web site that use flash technology. (You’ll recognize flash when you get to a page that “shakes, rattles & rolls!”). This should get you off the hook when it comes to doing expensive flash on your site.

Optimize Your Site

If you’ve gone to all the time, trouble and expense of putting together a Web site, it’s critical to make sure it’s found and seen by potential clients.

Below are steps you can implement to optimize your site to attract the most traffic from search engines.

Regularly update your Web site. I can’t stress enough the importance of this – not only in the sense that your company will be seen as credible and up-to-date, but that, in the realm of search engines, this will help keep your site high in search engine rankings. This greatly adds to your site being found on the first page of listings, rather than, say, on Industry Barometers.

Updating can be accomplished by simply getting in the habit. You hire a new employee, you add her to the Web site. You or a staff member wins a design award, make sure it’s added to the site.

At the very, very least, put a note in your tickler file to peruse your site quarterly and make sure there is no outdated information.

Grow your site. The more pages in your Web site – in other words, the larger it is – the more likely it will be found by search engines. The big mistake a lot of kitchen and bath dealers make is that they think they have to revamp their entire site all at once. Normally, the only times you really need to entirely revamp your site is if you have let it go way too long, or you’ve redone your logo or the branding of your business.

Personally, I’d make a goal of growing your site once a year. For example, add an “Accolades” section to your Web site in 2008. Here you’ll list awards won by your company and staff. If one of your designers passes the CKD exam or achieves some other level of professional certification, list it here as well.

Or, how about a section on the selection and care of cabinetry and countertops? At the very least, you could copy the care guides from your manufacturers and add the information to your site.

Your clients have remodeled their kitchen with you. Why not give them a reason to return to your Web site? This provides a win-win for everyone – they get great information and your site is working away, branding your business while you’re busy doing something else.

Be sure your site has Title, Alt & Meta Tags. Web sites need to be built correctly in order to be found by search engines. As a kitchen designer, you can walk into a kitchen and recognize immediately that it’s beautiful but not designed to accommodate two main cooks, one of whom bakes daily.

Similarly, I can look at a site and tell you it’s beautiful, but that it won’t function correctly from a technological standpoint for search engines. This work should be done by your search engine design firm.

Title tags are the words found at the very top strip of your computer screen. Your Web site needs title tags on every page. Keep these tags to between five and eight words, but those should be your most important key words. Examples: kitchens, remodel, your location (city/area and state), design, cabinetry, and whatever else is key to your business and to that page of the site.

Search engines “read” these title tags, and they’re one of the many factors a search engine uses to determine if your site matches the search of the person looking for a new kitchen in your area.

Have you ever moved your computer’s cursor over an image on a Web site…and words popped up? Those are “alt tags.” Try that on your Web site, and if there aren’t any alt tags popping up, get in touch with your Web site design firm.

“Meta tags” are the words not visible to browsers, but visible to search engines. These keywords are in the HTML coding and are another way of indicating to the search engine what is on that particular page.

Quite often, a site that doesn’t perform well simply doesn’t have kitchen- and bath-related keywords in the meta tags. These behind-the-scenes keywords help a search engine decide if your site matches what the consumer is looking for.

Be sure your site contains lots of text. The more text on a site, the higher it will normally rank with search engines. But you must distinguish between “industry lingo” and “consumer lingo.” For example, consumers never say, “I’m going online to search for a kitchen dealer.” Instead, they say, “I’m going online to search for someone to remodel my kitchen.”

My point is that the verbiage on your site should match what a consumer would use. If you think like a consumer and use this verbiage on your site, your site will perform better with regard to search engines. As an added bonus, knowing how consumers speak will make it easier for you to “speak their language” when they come into your showroom.

Adding verbiage to your site is very simple. Begin with photos. There should be text explaining every photo on the Web site.
Even if you think too much text doesn’t look great, add it anyway. You’re a kitchen designer and you’re creative for a living, so get creative with your site.

There are a lot of outdated kitchen and bath Web sites online these days – and, if one of those outdated sites belongs to your competition, thank your lucky stars and make sure they don’t see this column! I promise you, that outdated site is driving business away from them and directly to you.