Question: We have recently inserted an “encryption code” in our home page at http://www.imagelair.com to keep most from viewing our source code (meta tags/keywords). The code works fine, but we noticed that our stats program reflected that about half of the hits to the default page every hit the “encrypt” page (our home page now).
My question is this. Will the search engines index our encrypted home page and Web site when it must go through the default page first, which has the encryption?
Answer: I understand people’s concern about protecting their marketing strategies, including a site’s keyword list and professional copywriting. You might have spent considerable time and expense coming up with a high quality keyword list. You might have spent thousands of dollars on usability testing and focus groups. And you want to protect that knowledge.
So encrypting content, on the surface, seems like a good way to keep your prized content from your competitors.
As a general guideline, search engines will not direct users to pages whose content is hidden from spiders.
Many Web site owners like to hide their content, via encryption or cloaking, because someone told them that competitors could steal their site’s meta-tag content and figure out their entire search engine marketing campaign. Unfortunately, many search engine marketers rely on people’s ignorance and paranoia for profit.
No one can determine your site’s online marketing plan just by viewing your meta-tag content. No one can determine your site’s most frequently visited pages, clickstreams, pages that generate the highest sales conversions, etc. just by viewing your keyword list. Online marketing is a series of processes, not merely placing keywords inside of meta tags.
Besides, meta-tag content is rarely used to determine a page’s relevancy in the search engines. For a review of meta tags, please read the articles entitled SEO Corner – Meta Keywords and Keyword Repetition in HTML Tags.
Not to make anyone more paranoid, but any professional search engine marketer can look at your site, encrypted or cloaked, and determine a basic keyword strategy without ever reading your site’s meta-tag content. For example, if your site sells leather aviation jackets, people will know that just by viewing your home page. Based on that single keyword phrase (“leather aviation jackets”), search engine marketers can perform a keyword search using both Overtures and Google’s Search Term Suggestion Tools and come up with a variety of targeted keyword phrases.
Therefore, all too often, encrypting and cloaking can be a waste of time and money. Furthermore, cloaking is commonly used to spam the search engines. So by encrypting your page, you are putting that page at risk for receiving a spam penalty.
Search engines and redundant content
Search engine representatives have make it clear that Web pages delivered to search engine spiders and Web pages delivered to site visitors should contain the same content.
Search engines consider spam to be deliberately tricking the search engines into delivering poor quality, redundant, or inappropriate search results. Even though your intent is not to deceive the search engines but rather to protect your content, the search engines have no way of determining your intent. So they will probably not index your encrypted content.
Hits vs. visits
Our reader did not ask this question specifically, but she did inadvertently bring up a good topic. In her email, she stated that her ” stats program reflected that about half of the hits to the default pages.”
One of the marketing strategies unethical search engine marketers like to use is the term “hits” versus the more appropriate term “visits.” Hits and visits might seem like they are interchangeable terms, but in reality, they have quite different meanings.
A hit is a single request made to a Web server for an object on your Web site. The object can be an HTML file (i.e. a Web page), a graphic image, or any other embedded object in your Web pages, such as a sound file.
A visit to your Web site represents one unique viewer (or search engine) who has visited your site.
For example, let’s say your site contains a catalog of products. One person visits your site and views one of your Web pages. Your Web page might have 10 unique graphic images on it (a masthead, bullet points, some product photos, etc.) and a sound file. One person visiting a single page might register in your stats as 15 hits.
What sounds more impressive, 15 hits or one unique visit? That is why you commonly see “hits” used more often than “visits” – because it just sounds more impressive.
So make sure your search engine marketing (or Web analytics) firm emphasizes the number of unique visitors more than the number of hits.
Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.
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