“Is my website relevant in the industry that I am trying to target?”

Full version of the article published in the upcoming issue of “The Source”, a magazine for retirement industry professionals produced by Villages Publishing.

Simon Jansen, web developer and partner at Cubus Design, talks with our own web editor, Deborah Huff, about the strategy behind the Villages.com.au website and what steps have been taken to optimise it for search engines.

“The ‘old’ Villages site felt quite clunky, and access to actual information was rather laborious”, says Deborah. “To get from the home page to the village listings involved three or four clicks, for example.” The website also did not have any facility to include editorial content, such as interviews with residents and village managers. “We believe that is a really important offering so that people can learn about villages, and what it means to be living in a village.”

Villages’ previous website had been developed using an existing real estate software platform, which was more targeted towards the traditional real-estate market. “This didn’t translate well enough to the specific requirements of our industry”, says Deborah.

“Based on those observations, we started with a very simple concept – to make it obvious what the site was about”, explains Simon. “The primary focus was the search for retirement villages, which we placed in the position where people tend to look first – the upper left third of a website.” The search facility was to be straightforward, he continues, so that website visitors could use their own preferred search terms – a suburb or village name, for instance – and get relevant results. “The search also includes a place name recommendation, because many Australian place names are difficult to spell.”

“The secondary focus was to make use of the existing catalogue of editorial content,” Deborah says, “as buying into a retirement village is a very different process to traditional real estate – we found that including editorial would help educate users of the website about what villages are and what they’re not.” Meeting residents and managers through interviews would build trust and confidence, explaining financial concepts, models and legal considerations would help potential buyers understand what consequences their decision would have. “From a strategic viewpoint, it also helps retain viewers to the site,” conveys Simon, “and having all this content supports Villages Publishing’s image as the premier directory and information provider in the industry.”

“When Chris Baynes approached me to create this website, the best thing for me as a web developer was his commitment to ongoing investment into his staff to work on the website,” Simon says, pointing out that this fact alone would be at least 50 percent as important as the web developer’s work. “This is so important: if you want to have a successful website, you need to invest into keeping it up to date, current and relevant.”

Ongoing effort in terms of strategy will include expanding on the editorial content, says Deborah. “That way, over the years Villages will build a comprehensive library of information that is relevant to the industry.”

Christina from Cubus designed the new interface to typical user behaviour patterns with regard to positioning of navigation, focus points, banner placement and so forth resulting in a clean, simple to use site. “We used more vertical screen real-estate as it has been shown in many studies that people are used to scrolling vertically”, Simon explains, and Deborah adds: “Top information-based websites, including CNN or The Sydney Morning Herald require their users to scroll through long pages.”

Search Engine Optimisation

“The single most important thing about search engine optimisation is to understand that search engines – especially Google – aim to simulate the decision-making process of the human brain to assess the relevance of any website,” Simon explains. He continues: “Humans are amazing, you can throw anything at us and we decide whether it is important depending on so many different factors – visuals, structure of content, headings, positioning on a page, grammar, even things like typography.” Simon explains that for anyone who wanted their website to be search engine optimised, the main question should be: “Is my website relevant in the industry that I am trying to target?”

“So there was the strategy with Villages.com.au”, says Deborah. “We wanted to create a website that is relevant and would grow in relevance over time, in terms of having more editorial content, but also by virtue of the quality of listings and the number of listings.” The aim was to cover the areas that were important to the readers, but also the relevance of search results for village searches. “If someone cannot get what they are looking for out of the site, then it is not relevant to them”, she states.

“In terms of coding the site, there is actually not that much magic involved”, Simon explains. “What we tried to do is create a code which is understood by Google so that they, or any other search engine for that matter, understands the relevance of this website.” One important factor from an editorial point of view was to ensure that the content would be clear to both its readers as well as Google, Simon points out: “You need to realise that when you talk about something, you as the author know what you are talking about. However, a website visitor or Google doesn’t know that – for example, with the Villages site, the publishers know that the site is about retirement villages. But Google doesn’t.” That’s where keywords would come in, he explains, “by using the relevant words and by researching what terms visitors would search for if they want information from your site, you can influence at what position Google displays your site in search results.”

“You have to talk to Google in both human and computer programming terms – because Google looks at the code,” Simon furthers. Google looks at quite a few visual factors, but it is really interested in the hierarchical structure of content so it can understand which sections of a page would be more relevant than others and how they would interrelate with other pages, with their counterparts on the same page but also how they would interlink within the website. “For example, in all of the editorial interviews with manager and residents, we linked to the relevant village“, says Deborah, “However, we only insert links when they are relevant. For instance, we don’t make a link between mentioning architectural services and a specific architect in the expert services section (paid listings).”

Using Multimedia and Images

“The worst case in terms of optimisation is a website with a photograph of say, a car, and a block of text saying it’d cost $10000 and it’d be fast. As humans we look at the photograph and we immediately know that it’s about a car”, conveys Simon. But Google would not be able to tell that the photograph features a car – unless the text would contain that information. “You can’t allow pictures to do the explaining for you – you have to use language for the benefit of the reader and Google.” Simon continues. “The same applies to multimedia content which is quite popular with villages sites – namely Flash content – again, Google does not recognise it. Google can’t watch a movie.”

It’s all a question of strategy, Simon explains, and ensures us, that “I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Flash, but you need to explain the context of the content within the page. Flash can communicate a lifestyle message, but you need to have your factual information in the copy for a human and Google to read.” A website would need both information, and visuals. “By understanding this fact, we are able to realise that Flash-only sites are not working with Google”, Simon explains, “keep in mind, though, some publishers might not want to focus on Google, and that is a valid choice – as long as they are aware of it.”

Simon tell us that he sometimes gets requests to make a website which is not Google-friendly appear in search results – a sometimes near impossible task, or a costly one. “In such an instance I would consider Google adWords, paid listings which appear on top or at the right hand side beside the search results that contain key words that the publisher of a listing has selected.” Google adWords is a self-service advertising tool, Simon explains, “it’s really easy to use and you can start of with budgets of around $20 a day. You control your advertising.”

Biggest Mistakes when Briefing a Web Developer

“People approach their web developer with concrete ideas of what they want.”

Simon suggests preparing an industry overview rather than a concrete website concept – that’s the job of the web developer: “You know your industry. A good developer should advise how to communicate or sell your service or product online.”

“Not enough budget or not realistic budget.”

Many people would not think beyond the initial cost of a website. “The web developers cost should not be the only consideration – do allow budget to maintain your website on an ongoing basis.”

“Not enough involvement or interest.”

Understand why decisions are made and how they may affect your business. “You don’t have to understand how it’s coded”, Simon explains, “but you have to understand the marketing and strategic decisions behind your website.”

“False expectations.”

Simon points out: “If your website is not relevant, it will not be listed in Google. You can’t trick Google.” Consider extending the website to make it more relevant to the target audience, and be critical: “Why should my website be more relevant than my competitors?”

“Not giving anything away”

Do not hide any information behind contact forms, registration forms, telephone numbers, Simon says, “because people will ignore you – full stop.” One of the best things about the Internet in terms of marketing would be the fact that visitors could read about products anonymously, without being talked to by a sales person – “it allows people to look at your project / website without having to commit to anything – yet. This, in turn, allows them to review more options, and to make an informed decision and commit if they want to.”