Tips for Toolers (Is your website helping you?)
This new section is for those in the tool and die, metal stamping and others in the tooling industry to improve marketing strategies and ultimately to increase sales.
Practically everything else in this world has some type of agency or authoritative and governing group. What about the internet? Well, just as almost any other question can be answered, “It depends”. However, one of the most recognizable is the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and they have a free URL site validator which will tell you if your company’s website (not for blogs) is optimized to place well in search engine rankings.
Keep in mind a few things if you choose to copy and paste your full URL to see if your site passes their validation. Remember the following and don’t panic though if you find:
- Your site has a few errors or warnings (That does not mean your website isn’t searchable or about to be banned by major search engines such as Google)
- Since the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo! & Bing (formerly msn.com) consistently change their algorithims for ranking your website, a site that was designed more than a few years ago and not updated will still work….but there’s a very good chance your site is, has, or is becoming practically irrelevant in organic search engine rankings (Organic = the kind of search most of perform on a daily basis typing words, companies, restaurants, etc into search engines)
- If your website was designed using older generation tables or CSS code instead of XHTML compliant css-code editions think of it this way. If your car requires oil-changes every 3,000 miles, you’re on about 20,000 miles without pulling into a Pennzoil station.
- Basically, errors and warnings on your site will likely trip up and confuse the spiders (or “crawlers) that scan & search the web ultimately hurting your website’s relevancy in search engines.
- So, if you don’t know exactly what those spiders are doing & reporting (hint: nobody does since Google’s algorithim is a holy grail of sorts) then I recommend you clean your site up.
In this day and age, every business in every industry absolutely must have a quality presence online and make a good first impression for first-time searchers (prospects) as well as being appealing and user-friendly to existing searchers (current-customers)
Remember, this isn’t the end-all be-all but it does give solid insight into how clean your site is.
Click here to run a very quick and free validation of your website.
I said this before in my previous “Tips for Toolers (SEO = Search Engine Optimization)” post and I’ll say it again, “Never pay a company or person who claims to be SEO experts that will get you the #1 Search ranking. Nobody can guarantee that! SEO isn’t that difficult but it requires focus and ongoing commitment”
It’s not a secret that many companies in the tool and die, injection mold, metal stamping, precision machining and overall tooling industry don’t pay much attention to this part of their business. They have dies to build, parts to ship, design changes to make and more on the shop floor to worry about. However, you’re not doing any favors to your company if you focus some attention on your website. Email me any questions at jbrown@lintrio.com or visit the site of the leader in sales, marketing and public relations for the tool and die industry.
What if the site is already done in flash? Tips for better search engine rankings?
Last name Taylor? If you’re going to have a site done in all (or mostly) flash, i strongly reccommend you also have a HTML version designed as well. Flash sites look nicer but are not really “crawable” by the search engines. Having an html option at least leaves a door open for google, yahoo!, bing, etc to come in.
-Joe