Dan Thies Answers
By Dan
Thies
Contributing Writer
Article Date: 02.20.03
I have a client who would like to design her home page so that it looks
like a postcard. The little bit of text that will be on the home page will be
in a handwriting font, which means, then, that the entire page will be a graphic.
I know text on the home page is important for SE placement. Is there any way around
this?
Thanks,
Diotima Booraem
http://www.virtualhelp.net
Diotima:
Let me get the bad news out of the way first, then offer some suggestions.
Unfortunately, there isn't any neat way to get around the fact that search
engines look for text. People type in words when they search, so you need
words on the page if you want them to find you. Even putting the text from
the postcard into the image's ALT property isn't going to get you the same
results as using good old fashioned text.
You may hear about "tricks" you can use to hide text on the page, for
example on a hidden layer behind the images, but this is a *very* bad idea.
All of the major search engines consider hidden text to be "spam," and your
client certainly doesn't need to take that risk. Not all of the advice you
get on search engines is good for you.
Another solution I would consider, but probably reject, is the use of "dynamic"
fonts. Bitstream has developed a browser plug-in technology to allow for the use
of dynamic fonts, but it has not been widely adopted. If you want to consider
it, you can learn more at http://www.truedoc.com.
I would just caution you that this does require the visitor to install the plug-in
before they can see the fonts. More and more, web users are suspicious of plug-ins,
since so many of them are just backdoors for pop-up advertising, etc.
Exerting a little control over the typeface might be practical, though. You
could use a text layer on top of the "postcard" image. If your client is
willing to use "Comic Sans," that should work for 90-95% of Windows users.
For the others, defaulting to "Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif" should at least
make the page readable. I don't know what the comparable typeface is for
Macintosh and Linux users, if any. You'd want to look for typefaces that are
installed by default with the operating system.
Finally, you could put the "postcard" graphic at the top of the page, and
use the bottom of the page for the textual content. Remember that a big
image on top of the page won't stop the search engines from reading any text
at the bottom. Wherever text first appears on the page, it should be seen as
the first paragraph, and ranked accordingly.
About the Author:
Dan Thies has been
helping his clients (and friends) promote their web sites since 1996, and operates
a successful online publishing business. His latest book, 'Search Engine Optimization
Fast Start,' is available now at http://www.cannedbooks.com
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