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Let's face it, to be successful
on the Internet your site must appeal to two important, yet very
different targets: your prospects and search engines robots also
known as spiders. The problem is that it is virtually impossible
to please one group without aggravating the other.
Case in point: the optimization
techniques employed by most web promotion shops are so extreme
that they hinder a web site's chances of converting visitors
into customers. While optimizing a page's META TAGs to achieve
higher rankings makes perfect sense, altering the page content
to increase the occurrence and frequency of a particular keyword
ruins any chance of presenting a powerful and useful message
to your audience. The only thing a visitor sees is a keyword
repeated all over the page -- hardly the type of information
that will help her solve a problem or satisfy a need.
On the other hand, if you don't
optimize your pages for indexing, the chances of receiving traffic
from search engines are low.
Enter gateway pages. These
specially designed pages serve as a new point of entry into a
web site. The difference is that these pages have been designed
around keywords. The gateway page offers a link to the appropriate
site section, and are submitted to search engines for indexing.
The goal is to get the best of both worlds: spiders can properly
and favorably index the gateway page while prospects will with
a click reach content that can be understood by humans.
In designing these pages, make
sure that the links are reciprocal. The gateway links to the
appropriate web page and vice-versa. Otherwise, search engines
might simply ignore the pages.
Click
here to see an example
of gateway page for advancis.com.
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