Monday morning, while waiting for a friend in my favorite Coffee House, Stiltskins, I got talking with a gal at the next table over. She was talking about how much fun it was to teach kids. I asked her what she teaches, and she told me she teaches violin, and pointed out the window to a building across the street, where in the window I could see a tiny sign in the window that said “The Whole String Music Studio”.

Regular readers will know that my cat is thinking of running away from home since I took up violin. Well, I will be starting lessons next week. In order to get to that point I had to find a teacher. There were four methods I used for my search– the search engines, the phone book, posting on some fiddle and music related forums specific to my area, and putting the word out verbally at the couple places I go where musicians frequent. And I preferred having a teacher relatively close by, though other things did take precedence over that, biggest being that I wanted a teacher who could teach more than just classical style. I was very pleased to find a teacher right across the river, only a mile away, who is offering what I want.

Well, it turns out this woman in the coffeehouse would have been on my short list, had I found her. But therein lies the problem.

I told this woman that I had recently searched for and found a fiddle teacher, and told her that I never knew she existed, since her website didn’t come up in my web searches (nor did I find her in the phone book, but we didn’t talk about that.)

She was shocked and dismayed, especially since it turned out that I was going to be taking lessons from a main rival of hers. So I asked a few gentle questions about her website. Turns out it was designed and put up by her Son-in-Law, a hobbyist.

Now, after our conversation I came home and took her card out, wondering what crime her son-in-law had perpetrated on this poor woman. It was just as I suspected. The site opens with an old 90’s style Splash Page. There is nothing on the homepage but a flash animation. There is NO TEXT WHATSOEVER on this index page. Buried in the animation is one link to the inner pages, but there is basically nothing there to tell a search engine what this site is about. Nothing.

Google will now follow links inside flash animations, but to my knowledge other search engines haven’t yet gotten there. Google has indexed her pages, but . . . ugh. It gets worse.

The title of the splash page is “Fretless”, which doesn’t tell most people what this site is about, and I doubt that this word often comes up in google searches, and it’s not a word that people would use when searching the web for violin lessons in Easton PA. Even worse, searching link:http://thewholestring.com/ in google told me that this woman’s website doesn’t have A SINGLE INBOUND LINK. NOT ONE. Well, because I feel sorry for her, I’m going to give her a googly good link with link anchor text that should eventually place her in the right searches, though one link will not do a lot. Here it is–

Violin Lessons, Easton PA

That link right there, with proper anchor text explaining what this woman does and where she does it, will do more for her than her website ever did up until this point, especially since it links to a page that at least has SOME text, even though it isn’t optimized in any way shape or form. Yes, this one link will do for her what her son-in-law didn’t accomplish with her whole website. I guarantee it. Especially since my site has google juice. Of course, it would be even more beneficial if my site were about music lessons and instruction instead of about Web Design and Search Engine Optimization.

It gets even worse. Not only does the woman’s site not have inbound links, it is also missing the most important keyphrase for this particular site, which is (drum roll, please . . . ) “Violin lessons, Easton PA”. In fact, in reading through the site, the phrase “violin lesson” is not used once. NOT ONCE. It’s no wonder this site doesn’t come up in any searches! The title of what should be the home page (the page that awful splash thing links to) is “Fretless Studio”. Does that do ANYTHING for this woman? Nope.

These are all beginner mistakes, perpetrated by someone who has no clue. There has been no search engine optimization done on these pages whatsoever. Whoever wrote the copy wasn’t told how search engines work. Having the word “violin” at the bottom of a page and in no way connected to the earlier words “lessons” or “teaching” or “studio” is not going to clue a dumb SE spider in to what the page is about. None of the titles say anything substantive about what this business does.

When contracting to have a site built, any small to medium sized business needs to hook up with a website designer who at least knows the basics of Search Engine Optimization, especially since small businesses can’t usually afford a high priced SEO weenie to do this work for them. When contracting to have a site built, small to medium sized business owners should not have their son-in-law do their webpage for them. Now I doubt that this woman paid any money to said son-in law, but I’m also suggesting that she got what she paid for. Nothing. As far as the Search Engines are concerned this site is a big fat Zero. Which is really sad, since this woman is a very nice woman, and maybe even a helluva violin teacher.

** UPDATE!! ** It’s now later in the same day and I just ran a search for “violin lessons Easton PA” and this post on MY blog came up number four in the organic listings. Though I could wish for The Whole String’s site to be in that position instead of my blog post, this little exercise in SEO should get this woman some traffic, albeit once removed from the organic google listings. And maybe eventually her site will make it into the organic returns. And I have to admit I’m very surprised at that result, though I did know it would do SOMETHING. Link text is a very, very strong tool, when used wisely.

** UPDATE AGAIN! ** As of 12:58AM on Sunday June 24th, 2007, Fretless Studio aka The Whole String is now #1 for the term “violin lessons Easton PA” in Google. Damn.

Technorati Tags: SEO, Inbound Links, SEM, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Flash, Splash page

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 10:15 amunder SEO and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.