Website designing Pillars (part2)

Website designing Pillars (part2)

by: Pavel Lenshin

USABILITY

Usability is what makes your WS pleasant to deal with. While everyone defines personally for her(him)self how to make design nice to look at, memorable (in respect to branding) and serve customer/business needs in the best way possible, the technical side of usability can and should be corrected using the standard requirements.

SOURCE CODE OPTIMIZATION

Firstly about the four problems that come to my mind with กdirtyก HTML source code:

Potential crossbrowser conflicts as some particular useless Tags (a piece of HTML source code) may be neglected by one browser but create some visual errors, when viewed in other browser.

The more useless HTML Tags webpage has, the more drive space it occupies.

As the derivative of the previous problem, the more size of that webpage, the longer it takes to visitor to load and view it.

Search engines like plain and clear textual information for easy search and scan. By having a lot of useless pieces of HTML code, you prevent SE spiders to proper index your webpages. The result is the obvious decreasing of your Search Engine rankings. That is why Meta Tags correcting is not the only thing you should pay attention to.

Statistic shows that more then 85% of all WSs online demands graphics or HTML code optimization. That is actually a common problem, the core of which lies in the use of highly popular กhomeก web editors like FrontPage or other.

The กwinnerก among the worst is wellknown Netscape Composer, due to the extremely กdirtyก HTML code it generates while editing old or creating new webpages. If you have ever used Composer and no one have กcleanedก those webpages afterwards, they definitely contain a lot of HTML กgarbageก.

Based on my own experience every 50Kb Netscape Composerกs webpage can be easily optimized to the 40Kb file size or less, as a simple result of the deleting junk HTML tags. If you implement Cascade Style Sheet and HTML compressor you will get the same, but กclean & shinyก webpage totaling 2530Kb (4050% space savings) with the enhanced visual effects.

The example above shows saving on a single webpage, but if we speak in terms of 5060 pages WS, that occupy (without graphics) 35Mb of hard drive space, the potential savings as a result of HTML optimization may reach 13Mb. So if you are experiencing the lack of hard drive space with your hosting provider, the solution to that problem lies in simple WS optimization. It doesn’t only save a lot of space, but, as we know, eliminates potential crossbrowser mistakes, helps SE spiders to properly index your webpages and make your visitorsก surfing more quick and smooth and therefore pleasant.

GRAPHICS OPTIMIZATION

When we speak about poorly optimized graphics we get two problems: more occupied space and worse load time. Given that the first obstacle may be overcome by acquiring personal server with several Gigabytes of hard drive space, the letter problem will continue to exist as the majority of web visitors have low speed dialup connection.

To make your graphics optimized on the basic level, you should save it in the proper graphic format. Many popular pictures of eBook covers can be easily optimized simply by resaving .JPG format into .GIF or vice versa depending on particular file. That tactic alone can bring 15Kb file to occupy 710Kb in the matter of 2 min.

The basic math shows that 10 optimized pictures (without HTML optimization) on a webpage are capable to decrease the overall size of it from 120Kb to 70Kb with no visual loss in the quality of picture. Are you aware of statistics how many visitors leave your site just because they are tired to wait until all pictures load? It doesn’t mean that you have to simply delete these pictures completely as some people suggest, what it does mean is that they are better to be optimized because in case with eBook covers, they proved to triple selling potential and their absence will be hardly compensated by new visitors.

To choose the right format, follow one simple rule: กIf the target picture is more likely to be a photo, with many colors, unshaped objects and different lights, this file should be saved in .JPG format. If, on the contrary, a picture is more likely to consists of a number of vector objects like circles, triangles, squares, doesn’t have too many colors or similar to some drown comics, then .GIF format is the best to use.ก

If it is hard to determine, then save it in both formats and compare quality/size ratio. Not much work, big effect.

Having semi or fully professional graphic editors will allow you to get even better results by selecting compression rate, smoothness, sharpness of edges – if we speak about .JPG format; or palette, colors, rate of transparency, animation features etc. – if we deal with .GIF format.

Todayกs technological opportunities are vast, so it is you to decide how deeply you want to กdive inก.

CROSSBROWSER & SCREEN RESOLUTION OPTIMIZATION

The numbers are the following:

2% have outdated 14กก with 640*480 pixels in width and height respectively.

49% of websurfers use 15ก monitors with preferable กstandardก screen resolution of 800*600 pixels;

45% surf the web with 17ก monitors with reasonable 1024*768 resolution;

4% of users enjoy 1819ก monitors with 1152*8641280*1024 screen settings.

What should these numbers tell you? The very simple thing – if you created the WS on your 15ก monitor, don’t assume that it will look as good on other monitors as on yours.

Let me draw several notes here about the tendency that monitor market will follow in the nearest future. First is that all 14ก monitors are gradually going to their deserved eternal rest. Even the share of notebooks with 15ก TFT screens growing exponentially. There are even several new versions with 16ก active matrixes. Don’t also forget that notebooksก 14ก TFT screen have almost the same diagonal inches as usual 15ก CRT (Cathoderay tube) monitors. Secondly, the number of 15ก monitors is also decreasing, due to growing number of 17ก monitor owners that is the third point.

One sentence conclusion of the above statistics is that your WS should look fine, at least, under 800*600 and 1024*768 resolutions. This is a market demand to your WS and, as we know, you better not joke with The Market.

Without going deep into theory, there are two ways:

more simple;

more complex.

Both correct, both satisfy the demand above but the letter way, given it is more complex, usually perfectly fits any screen resolution, whether it is 14ก or 21ก and more favorable to WS space usage.

The easier way would be to make the borders of your webpage (tables of your webpage) to be fixed with certain number of pixels.

The most popular settings are something between 650 to 750 pixels just to fit that 800 pixels width screen under the most popular 15ก monitor 800*600 resolution. If you go that way your webpage will have the same look under different sets of resolutions.

If we try to see it at 14ก monitor with 640 pixels in width, the unpleasant horizontal scroller would appear because our fixed setting in 700 pixels is wider then 640 and it just won’t fit in it. If, on the other hand, we look at our imaginable site under 1152*864 or 1280*1024, it will look too narrow, as it will occupy only 60% of the screen width (our 700 in comparison to 1200 screen pixels width). Why does this designing way simpler? You just won’t have any problems building it: no need for resolution or crossbrowser optimization, as fixed pixels are read correctly under almost every browser.

The more complex way is to have width of one or several HTML tables columns on your site to be set in percents like 75% or 100% and, therefore, poses the ability to automatically broaden or narrow according to the specified percents, depending on what screen resolution the site is being viewed under.

If you have 600*800 screen settings (the screen width is 600 pixels) and one of the table width of your site is set to 100%, then this particular table along with all included text and graphic will narrow to 600 pixels, if we set the monitor to 1200*1024 resolution, i.e. having 1200 pixels wide, our siteกs table will stretch to the specified 100%, in that case, 1200 pixels.

Thatกs why it looks more attractive under different resolutions but demands additional optimization, including crossbrowser optimization, as Netscape Navigator browser has some problems with proper interpreting of percent settings in multi column tables. Which way to choose depends on the tasks and your preference.

I wish you endless creativity and no more then 70Kb per page

copyright (c) Pavel Lenshin

About The Author

Pavel Lenshin is an Internet entrepreneur, webdeveloper and marketer, founder of the entrepreneurship portal, where you can find discounted Internet services, marketing solutions, FREE ebooks, FREE reports and finally uncover innovative business strategies through FREE กNET Business Magazineก.

Visit: http://asbone.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 09, 2005

by Pavel Lenshin

The Benefits of Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimiz

The Benefits of Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization): What Organic SEO Entails and WHY It Is Preferred by Some

by: Vishal P. Rao

If you’re going to sell any type of product or service online, you’re eventually going to have to optimize your Web site for the Search Engines, in order to boost traffic and sales.
Many years ago, it was quite easy to draw effective traffic, as a good contentdriven site, with good products, was enough to get a Web site ranked highly in the Search Engines. The competition has increased one thousand times over since then, with billions of Web sites existing online now, making for some very stiff competition in the area of Search Engine placement and rankings.
This increase in competition has given rise to many different styles, and many different methods of Web site optimization. Optimization is simply the method of making a Web site กSearch Engine friendlyก, by using methods of enhancement that will increase rankings and placement by placing the Web site higher in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).
Everything from software to increase rankings and placement, to Search Engine Management and Marketing Firms exist, with many online merchants becoming confused about what or กwhomก to use and how to effectively use the various services to increase rankings and placement.
The real battle seems to exist between those that favor กOrganic SEOก as opposed to those that prefer กNonOrganic SEOก. The term กorganicก itself is defined by Websterกs Dictionary as: instrumental; acting as instruments of nature or of art to a certain destined function or end (Websterกs: 1913: 3).
กOrganic SEOก, also called กNatural SEOก, is the most time consuming, and the most tedious method of optimization for placement and rankings. However, it is prone to longevity of results, as it has a focus on content, metatag enhancement using proper descriptions, keyword enhanced copy within the appropriate specified densities of the Search Engines, and link exchanges. In addition, keyword dense reports, articles, and other content materials are usually added in a routine fashion to a site to maintain the densities necessary and increase rankings and placement.
กOrganic SEOก, if done properly in a stepbystep approach, can literally promote increased traffic and rankings for years. It can also contain overall marketing costs, as the use of PPC (Pay Per Click), is not needed as much with this method. The main drawbacks with this type of SEO, however, are the length of time it takes to properly implement all the steps necessary, and the length of time it takes the Search Engines to thoroughly spider and index a site that has implemented กOrganic SEOก.
กNonOrganic SEOก, also called กArtificial SEOก, can take many forms, and can use some กOrganic SEOก coupled with other techniques. These techniques can include software generated keyword enhanced pages, some methods of redirects, whereby traffic is shunted off from other sites, with their permissions, and software generated doorway pages and metatag descriptions. There are many different techniques that can be employed including rather controversial ones such as hidden text loaded with keywords, and tiny text.
Overall, กNonOrganicก SEO methods are quite popular, as it is a much quicker means to rankings and placement. Links might be purchased from กlink farmsก which are simply services that specialize in the promotion of links to others.
Although กNonOrganic SEOก can speed up rankings and placement initially, care needs to be given when using any of these methods. If keyword dense pages are automatically generated en masse, the Search Engines might view large sites, with large numbers of such pages as กSearch Engine Spammersก and a risk of being banned does exist. In addition, pages may initially place very high, only to drop lower rather quickly, as the Search Engines still place a great emphasis on good content, which is not usually the focus of the กNonOrganicก type of SEO.
All in all, it really depends upon the overall purpose of a site, and the longevity of results desired by a Web master/site owner. It also depends upon how quickly results and sales are needed. For some seasonal sites, such as holidaytheme sites that only remain up for a few weeks or months, then the quicker method of กNonOrganic SEOก can be quite effective. On the other hand, if a Web master/site owner promotes a product or service to which they are committed for years, or perhaps a lifetime, then กOrganic SEOก would definitely be the better choice of optimization method.
No matter which type of SEO methods are chosen or implemented, an ongoing campaign of optimization does need to exist, as the parameters that are used for the rankings and placement by the Search Engines, change frequently, and research into current methods needs to be done routinely.
As the old saying goes, กDifferent strokes for different folksก, really applies to Search Engine Optimization and rankings and placement. The whole Search Engine Optimization process is really more กart than scienceก, and continues to change daily.

About The Author

Vishal P. Rao is the editor of http://www.homebasedbusinessopportunities.com A website dedicated to opportunities, ideas and resources for starting a home based business. He is also the owner of the http://www.workathomeforum.com an online community of folks who work at home.

This article was posted on July 13, 2004

by Vishal P. Rao

When to Hire a Professional SEO Firm?

When to Hire a Professional SEO Firm?

by: Corey Wenger

In efforts to increase sales and profitability, more and more companies are turning to online marketing initiatives – specifically, search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is the art and science of blending technical and marketing skills together into a finely tuned website that is both search enginefriendly, ranks well for specific keywords and phrases, and is tailored to your audience from a buyer and seller perspective.

According to a recent U.S. study, only 20% of all businesses outsource search engine optimization programs to professional SEO firms. The remaining 80% either do not conduct search engine optimization at all or they believe they have the resources and skills to do it inhouse. Of this 80%, it is probable that 90% of these companies can’t be found on the web – they don’t exist. In order to generate any amount of significant web visibility, your website must typically rank within the top30 results.

So, the question comes down to what is in your company’s best interests?

Conduct your SEO program inhouse or outsource it. To answer this question, let’s first take a look at the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to implement and maintain a successful search engine optimization program.

SEO knowledge and skills required

1) Basic understanding of how search engines and directories work.

This may seem overly obvious, but you would be amazed how many people do not understand how they actually work. This knowledge provides the foundation for your SEO program.

2) Website design

Although SEO is not completely a technical marketing process, it does require a fair amount of technical knowledge of what constitutes search enginefriendly web design. Certain web design elements can either help your search engine rankings or hurt them. You simply have to know which is which.

3) SEO experience

This is the most important and most difficult knowledge to obtain. If you have never implemented a SEO program, then you are in for a big surprise. Search engine optimization programs require a lot of research and are extremely time consuming. Most importantly, they require actual SEO experience. This means knowing what SEO strategies and tactics work and which ones don’t.

Inhouse vs. outsourced SEO programs

If your company is considering conducting your search engine optimization program inhouse, here are some questions to consider.

Who will be responsible for analyzing, developing, implementing and measuring the success of your SEO program?

Is this considered the role of your IT department, Marketing department or some other individual(s) within your company?

Do they have the time, knowledge, and resources to successfully implement and maintain your search engine optimization program? And do they really care if it works or not?

IT Department

Typically your IT department handles multiple daily tasks from troubleshooting your company’s LAN or WAN to fixing the sales department’s laptops? Out of a busy IT person’s day, what priority and focus do you think he or she will commit to for your SEO program? And even if your IT department has some skills in web design or development, these skills make up only a small percentage of the knowledge required for a successful search engine optimization program.

Marketing Department

Typically, your marketing department juggles many marketing projects at once and faces strict completion deadlines. From handling new print collateral campaigns to getting ready for new product or service launches, marketing personnel’s time is spread very thin. In addition, how knowledgeable is your marketing department in the technical aspects of web design and search engine optimization? Do they have the time to become wellversed? Do they have sufficient internal resources? Often the answer to both questions is no, they do not.

Other individual(s) within your company

Ok, so the responsibility falls onto someone outside of your Marketing or IT department. Who will that be and why are they responsible for your SEO program? Providing these individuals with a new ขproject of the month,ข will typically result in another check mark off of their monthly todo list and frustration by top management of why their website is not producing any sales results.

Summary

From a business standpoint, it makes sense to try to leverage internal resources to maximize your company’s productivity and profitability – whenever possible. However, there must be a line drawn in the sand between knowing what your organization’s capabilities are and what they are not.

As you can see, there is more to search engine optimization than meets the eye. In order to implement and maintain a SEO program, you must acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and resources. This can be done by hiring a professional search engine optimization firm. Professional SEO firms have dedicated resources and experience to support your company’s web marketing initiatives. By leveraging their experience and knowhow, your company can quickly and more efficiently implement a successful search engine optimization program.

About The Author

Corey Wenger is owner of Key Position Web Marketing and is a professional Search Engine Optimizer and Consultant who has over three years of experience in helping companies increase sales and profitability through strategic web marketing programs. For more information, please visit www.keyposition.com or email him at [email protected].

This article was posted on October 22, 2004

by Corey Wenger

Effective Keyword Optimization and Analysis Techni

Effective Keyword Optimization and Analysis Techniques

by: Thomson Joseph

Keyword optimization involves vital keyword selection and placement strategy depends on successfully identifying your industry related important keywords and then where you can place those keyword for maximum effectiveness.

Effective use of keywords optimization and Phrases on your website

Key to successful web optimization begins with effective use of keywords selection and placement. When researching keywords to use on our website we need to understand how customers really search. As web visitors get more and more internet savvy, they have started searching for two or three words phrases instead of a single word. As study suggest people are using more than a keyword for searching on the net.

By finetuning your keyword selection, you’re targeting traffic that is looking for your particular web page. Youกll stand a much greater chance at getting top rankings under the particular keyword phrase. Once youกve achieved this, move on and look for another competitive keyword phrase. This will get leads for your website.

Ask your customers for advice what they think when surf the net. As a family member, a close friend, or your next door neighbor how he or she might try to find your site on the web. Get different opinions.

Consider keyword phrases that are distantly related to your industry and the competitive are on the web. Web is full of bad spellers, and they’re certainly to use this misspelled keywords, take advantage of that by including these misspelled version as on of your keywords.

If your services are region specific then concentrate on the keywords and phrases that are relevant to that particular region, it may be a country, city, or area of that particular city. People in different area express words differently capitalize on this to get maximum advantage of your keywords and phrases.

Stop using ขStop Wordsข these are the common words that are often totally ignored by the search engines. Don’t use inappropriate keywords. If you have a particular keyword or phrase in your met tag or web page which is not relevant to content of your website, certain search engines could find yourself banned for those engines altogether.

About The Author

This article was written by Thomson Joseph of http://www.websitepromoitonexpert.com

Article source http://www.digitallabz.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 24

by Thomson Joseph

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website Step 3: Si

Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website Step 3: Site Structure

by: Mary Davies

Welcome to part three in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance and considerations that much be made while creating the content that will provide the highest ROI for your optimization efforts. In part three we will discuss the importance of site structure.

While there are numerous factors involved with the search engine algorithms, site structure is certainly of constant importance. Cleaner structure that removes lines of code between your key content and the search engine spiders cna mean the difference detween second page and first page rankings.

Over this series we will cover the ten key aspects to a solid search engine positioning campaign.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

Keyword Selection

Content

Site Structure

Optimization

Internal Linking

Human Testing

Submissions

Link Building

Monitoring

The Extras

Step Three Site Structure

Developing the structure of your website is a very important step in its overall optimization. The site structure will dictate how the spiders read your site, what information they gather, what content holds the most weight, how much useless code they must weed through and more. You must structure your website to appeal to the visitor and the spiders.

When developing your website you want to be sure not to create useless code that can confuse spiders and take away from the content of your site. When developing your site I recommend hand coding as the best option however not everyone has the time or the skill to do this so I would suggest Dreamweaver as a great option. (Though the code will not be as clean as hand coding it does not create an over the top amount of extra code like programs such as Front Page do.) The object here is to keep the code as clean as possible! Remember the more code you have the more the spiders must weed through to get to your content, where you want them to be.

A great way to cut down on extra code as well is to use style sheets. You can use style sheets in ways as simple as defining fonts or as advanced as creating tableless designs. There are many ways to use style sheets and the biggest perk to using them is to cut back on the code on any given individual page.

When you are setting up the initial structure of your site you want to be sure that the table structure is laid out in such a way that the spiders can easily and as quickly as possible get to the most important content. the most important content. A great way to attain this is to create your website using the table structure outlined in my article ขTable Structures For Top Search Engine Positioningข (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/articles/sefriendlydesign/tablestructure.htm). When the spiders visit your site they read through it top to bottom, left to right following the rows and columns. The key to the table structure outlined above is the little empty row. Were this row not there the spiders would read through that first column hitting nothing but images and Alt tags, your navigation, until it would then move onto the next column, your content area. Placing this empty cell in the first row of the main table guides the spiders directly to your content, they hit the empty row and with nothing to read move onto the next column to the right, where you want them. After they have read your content they will then move back to the left in row 2 and read your navigation images and Alt tags, finally they will end the page at your footer, a great place for keyword rich text links. (Internal linking structures will be covered in part 5 of this 10 part series.)

Once you have created the site structure and inserted all of your content you will then begin the basic optimization of your site. In your code you will want to create Meta tags that fit your keyword choice. The two most important Meta tags are the Description tag and the Keyword tag. Your description should highlight your keyword phrase, keeping it focused, to the point and readable. Your keyword tags should also be focused using each keyword a maximum of 3 times in any set. These tags should be customized on each page to fit the specific phrase targeted.

After the Meta tags have been inserted appropriately to fit each page it is important to title each page appropriately. The main targeted phrase should be the focus of the title, keep it simple, focused, to the point, do not bog it down with extra descriptive text, this is not your description, it is your title.

Next move onto Alt tags. Though it is good practice to add Alt tags to all your images the spiders only put weight on those that are contained within links. An example of this: These Alt tags allow you to make your images matter. Most main navigation is image based so be sure to add appropriate Alt tags targeting your keywords to this very prominent area of your site. Another great place to add a link along with its Alt tag is in your header image. Linking this image to your URL adds the ability to make the first thing the spiders hit within your tables to at least hold some content that ขmattersข rather than simply a static image.

H1 tags are also great way to add weight to your content however, use them wisely. You can use any of the H1,2,3,4 tags, the idea being H1 has the most weight, H2 a little less and so on. Do not over use these tags or they will lose their value all together. The correct way to use these is to use them where they actually belong, for example the first line of text on a page, the title. Also, if you are defining your fonts in a style sheet, which you should be, be sure not to abuse these tags. An H1 tag should be defined bigger than an H2, etc.

Utilizing the above tips will create a site structure that is the perfect environment for the spiders, it is clean, focused and easily read. Your site structure is now optimized and ready for the more advanced content optimization elements to come.

Next Week

Next week in part four we will be covering content optimization. This will cover everything from meta tag optimization to the use of heading tags.

About The Author

Mary Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning (http://www.beanstalkinc.com/). Mary works and writes with years of experience in website design and search engine optimization.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 10, 2004

by Mary Davies

What Constitutes a Complete and Effective SEO Camp

What Constitutes a Complete and Effective SEO Campaign?

by: John Metzler

Unfortunately, not many Search Engine Optimization companies know what this involves. You may see a กone size fits allก package, link popularity development in the form of submitting to link farms, or even the dreaded กSubmit Your Site to 1000กs of Search Enginesก scam. While the basic premise of each of these ideas is true, the execution of them is extremely important.

First of all, your web site needs human attention. A real person should thoroughly analyze your site before any work is done. Get them on the phone and ask them questions. There should be a clear process that the Search Engine Optimization company uses and tailors to each client. The SEO company should also have a clear idea of what your goals are for your web site.

The first step in any work that is done should be keyword research. Like any kind of advertising, you need to know where your target market goes and how they find businesses like yours. The keywords chosen should apply to the theme of the web site. High rankings for these keywords should also be obtainable given your budget. If you are a computer repair shop with one or two locations in a city and can not service computers outside your area, then targeting a term such as กcomputer repairก is overkill. The cost for obtaining high rankings for a term such as that will be far greater than what you will make from the exposure, as much of your web site traffic will not be targeted enough.

Once keywords have been chosen for the web site, the content should be updated to reflect them. This may include subtle changes to the meta tags, page titles and text headings; or it could involve adding additional sections to the site, rewriting content and reorganizing the web siteกs structure. It all depends on the specific requirements of the site and market.

Once the onpage content optimization is complete, link popularity development needs to be done. A link development campaign should be done to acquire quality incoming links to the web site. This phase of search engine optimization should take place as soon as possible and can be continued as needed. Reciprocal linking is fine as long as some caution is used. There are many sketchy services out there that use huge networks of gambling and pharmacy sites with no unique content. Always make sure that each incoming link can be interpreted by the search engines as a กvoteก by that site for yours. It is worthless and possibly dangerous if the site links out to link farms and FreeForAll sites (FFAกs). Writing articles with a link to your web site, getting people to post on forums and message boards, and advertising or getting links to drive targeted traffic to your site are great methods to use in improving your link popularity.

For the most part, you get what you pay for with Search Engine Optimization. A quick fix will rarely works, and if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Talk to the search engine optimization company about your concerns and make sure they understand your goals. Read their site and make sure they seem legitimate. Ask for results theyกve obtained for previous clients. Methods that not effective and have a chance to get a site banned include hiding text or links, participating in link farms, keyword stuffing, repeat search engine submissions, and copying web sites to multiple domains.

Proper SEO does not involve tricks. Web sites that have well written and well focused content, have been advertised in one way or another (including link popularity development), and overall are a good informational resource will get traffic from the search engines. Search engines are constantly updating ways to weed out the spamming and illegal SEO methods, so think long term with any search engine optimization campaign.

About The Author

John Metzler is the cocreator of Abalone Designs, Inc. www.abalone.ca, a Search Engine Optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. He has been involved in web design and web marketing since 1999 and has helped turn Abalone Designs into one of the top SEO companies in the world.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 09

by John Metzler

The Art of Website Optimization

The Art of Website Optimization

by: David Bell

They say กdiamonds are a girlกs best friendก. Just like a flawless diamond in the making, a website demands significant attention to detail in order to stand up and deliver and captivate its target audience.

Ever wondered what components clearly define a website as กprofessionallyก done? It should have a polished look! You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on web design, simply make sure it loads quickly and employs a simple navigation system. Your visitors must feel that the time spent at your site was time well spent! Pay extra close attention to your sales copy. If you have all kinds of questions popping in your head as you read your own sales material, so will your customers. There is a simple approach to creating great sales copy and it works like crazy.

Ask yourself a few simple questions, กWhatกs in it for me?, กHow can you fulfill your promise?ก, กWhy should I believe you?ก, กWhat if I don’t like it?ก. Write your sales copy to paint a portrait of กyes, I can!ก by answering each question; giving a risk free assurance by including a money back guarantee along with a good time factor. Strive to incorporate all of your answers in your sales copy and youกll convert your readers into buyers.

One of the hottest topics on the Internet today is search engine optimization, another critical and important component of a professional website. With recent surveys showing over 40% of all search engine traffic coming from Yahoo Directory, it has never been more important to pay close attention to the selection of your title and description. First and foremost, get a head start on the competition by choosing a keyword rich domain name. Itกs a clear advantage you may have overlooked in preparing for search engine submission.

Make sure that your title is 5 words or less and includes your most important keywords. Try to limit your site description to 25 words or less. Remember, Yahoo doesn’t look at your meta tags like a typical search engine, so make your title and description count! If you are submitting to Yahoo for the first time, make sure to submit to Google, Yahooกs search partner, then Yahoo in a few days. Google creates the description of your site by looking for the first bold word so make sure you optimize your site accordingly.

Every webmaster should analyze their siteกs keyword count. Your most important keywords should be 5% 8% of your keyword count. If your percentages are too high, the search engines may consider your site as กspamก. If your percentages are too low, your site will never appear in the Top 100 of any search. Keyword and relevancy optimization can easily move a site from complete obscurity to instant popularity in the search engines overnight. Do it right the first time and Iกll see you at the top!

Itกs a painstaking process but website optimization is a necessary step towards securing market position. In an age of instant gratification, ones and zeros, gigabytes and terabytes, the simple virtues of patience and perseverance are seldom nurtured. In developing your website, take time to reflect on your mission, and if you do only one thing well, share your passion with your target audience. Do it for the sheer love of it. Your audience will appreciate your efforts. Itกs the first step towards creating a website that speaks the language that your visitors want to hear!

With the right attention to detail, just like a long lasting relationship, youกll have no fear in the night that your website might desert you.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

About The Author

David Bell is Manager, Online Marketing, at http://www.wspromotion.com/, a leading Search Engine Optimization services firm and Advertising Agency.

This article was posted on April 21

by David Bell

Basic SEO Article Focusing on Quick Optimization

Basic SEO Article Focusing on Quick Optimization Techniques For The Newbie

by: Brad Callen

Basic OnPage SEO

Onpage optimization is often ignored by the top sites on Google after all, who cares about a few percentage points when you can literally buy your way to the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) with a bucketload of inbound links?

Today I’ll discuss a bit about why, contrary to common practice, why onpage SEO is so important and then tell you how you can quickly optimize your web pages even if you have very little time!

OnPage SEO The Benefits

A lot of webmasters (including some selfproclaimed SEO experts) claim that onpage optimization is obsolete that the only thing that matters is offpage optimization (i.e. link building).

So is that true?

Actually, like most SEO hype, there’s some truth involved. Inbound links have become the overwhelming determining factor in a website’s search engine rankings, but theres more to the story then that.

Why bother with OnPage SEO?

Here are just three reasons off the top of my head:

• With everyone chasing after links, the playing field is leveled somewhat. This means that welloptimized pages will have a better chance of ranking higher if they might not beat the top websites on link count (but come close nevertheless).

• Because of keyword spamming, search engines paid more attention to links. Now, because of linkspamming, search engines are moving back towards paying more attention to other ranking factors, including onpage optimization.

• Over 90% of your competition probably doesn’t know how to optimize their web pages, or are doing it wrong, or are probably committing some sort of search engine spamming, so that you can immediately place yourself within the top 10% of your niche by just spending a few minutes on each page and getting things done right (or hiring someone to do it for you if you have a huge site).

I’ll be honest. No one knows exactly how important onpage optimization is. Of course, you should still be paying a great deal of attention to linkbuilding, but the key is this – linkbuilding is a longterm process, whereas onpage optimization a short, onetime thing. With its obvious ranking benefits, why wouldn’t you be optimizing your web pages?

OnPage SEO – A Quick Tour

Before I go over the techniques, I want you to remember these things:

Search engine optimization is a lot about doing things in moderation – you can’t do too little of it otherwise your pages won’t rank at all, and if you go too far (and start spamming the search engines), you’ll get your website banned and essentially kiss your online business goodbye.

Secondly, before you are optimizing a particular page, make sure you write down a short list of core keywords for that page. This is extremely important – search engines rank pages, not websites, so all your efforts should be directed towards making sure individual pages rank best for their own primary keyword.

Title Tag

The Title tag is where most webmasters make serious mistakes (in case you didn’t know, the Title tag contains the text that you see on the top of your browser window). Now the best way to write a Title tag is to make sure that you get your best keywords for that page in there. Don’t bother with words that are not needed, such as ขandข or ขtheข – stick with your core keywords.

Using the example of a website owned by a professional resume writer looking to start their online business, for the home page you would probably use the following Title tag:

ขProfessional Resume Writer | Guaranteed Resume Writingข

Not only do you have your core keywords in there, you have also managed to combine them in one line without using the needless words like ขandข and ขtheข.

Of course, you can always go too far and stuff the Title tag with as many keywords as possible. If you are thinking about doing that, DON’T! That sort of optimization will land you into trouble with the search engine algorithms, which automatically flag any website that uses spammy optimization techniques – and once you are ขredflaggedข like this, you’ll be going down, not up in the rankings.

The next step is to take care of all your header tags.

Header Tags

Also known as H1 and H2 (and so on) tags, the header tags in your page give the search engine spiders an idea of how your page is structured. Therefore, if you can put in important keywords that are relevant to your page’s content in the header tags, the search engine will then ขknowข that this particular page contains information on topics relating to those keywords – thus helping your page rank better for those keywords.

It’s actually simpler than it sounds. Sticking with the ขResume Writerข website, let’s suppose you have a page that’s titled ขHow to write a Resumeข (bear with me here). Now, you might have two sections on that page – an article on resume writing and general resume writing tips. Now instead of lumping it all together, here’s what you could do:

• H1 tag for the page heading – including a variation of the Title tag

• H2 tags for both sections – ขResume Writingข and ขResume Writing Tipsข in this case.

Textual Tags

When a search engine spider is scanning a page, it’s looking for several factors to determine what is important and what’s not. In particular, it looks for text tags – bold, underline or italics, to help it rank the page. Why?

Quite simply, the search engine spider is programmed to ขthinkข that any text that is put in bold, italics or underlined is considered important information by the user, and therefore it ขmightข be important. This is where bullet points come in handy as well.

I said ขmightข be important because search engine spiders have very sophisticated algorithms that look at hundreds of other factors, including the relevance of the surrounding text.

So if you concentrate on putting bold or italics tags around your core keywords (while maintaining a natural flow of content), you will be directly improving the chances of a search engine spider ranking that page higher for those keywords.

Similarly, if you have an important list of points that you want to emphasize (or perhaps summarize), you could put them in an ordered (numbered) list or just a plain bulleted list on your page – this will set that portion of text apart and alert the search engine spider that this text is more important.

The Image Tag

This is an interesting tag because it’s not that widelyused, and when some webmasters do use it they tend to stuff the tag with keywords in a futile attempt to influence search engines.

The Image tag is supposed to help the search engines ขreadข into what the image that you are displaying is about – thus the need to plug in your relevant keywords into the tag. Note that if your image is, let’s say, a picture of a hiking resort and your website is an adventure tours business, then you might plug in keywords that relate to hiking resorts – remember to focus on the core keywords for that page and not just the website on the whole.

About The Author

Brad Callen SEO Professional, owner of http://www.seoelite.com and Internet Marketing Consultant for http://www.Textlinkbrokers.com . Any reproduction of this article needs to have an html link pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 26

by Brad Callen

Possibly The Biggest Misconception About Ranking W

Possibly The Biggest Misconception About Ranking Well In The Search Engines…

by: Brad Callen

Which is more important? Onpage optimization or Offpage optimization? If you are serious about getting your website to the top of the search engines, you MUST know the answer to this question…

Quick Review

Onpage search engine optimization are things that you can change ON your webpage.

Title tag

Header tags

Bolding, Italicizing, Underlining

Alt image tags

Meta Tags

Etc.

Offpage search engine optimization comes down to basically 1 thing, which websites are linking to your wesbite and how they’re doing it.

Anchor text uses in your link

The title of the page your link is on

The page rank of the page your link is on

The ‘themeก of the website your link is on

Etc.

By now, Iกm hoping you see that itกs the offpage search engine optimization factors that will get your website to the top of the search engines. Again, the onpage factors are things you SHOULD do, but are not nearly as important as the offpage factors.

Ok… Let me show you why.

Letกs analyze a website!

In this example Iกm going to analyze the #1 ranked website on Google for the search term กclick hereก.

First, letกs go to Google and enter กclick hereก.

Youกll notice that the #1 ranked website is www.adobe.com. Thatกs interesting…

Now, why would adobe.com rank #1 for that search term? I would think adobe.com would rank well for terms like:

graphic design programs

create printable documents

web design programs

and other keywords related to what they sell…

A few things that you should notice by looking at the picture above.

The word กclick hereก isn’t in the page title

The word กclick hereก isn’t in the URL of the website.

The word กclick hereก isn’t even in the description listed by Google!

Now, letกs click on the listing in Google and check out the actual webpage.

Now, get this… The words กclick hereก aren’t even on the webpage, anywhere!

If all of those onpage optimization techniques that many SEO companies talk about were true, then don’t you think a different website would rank #1 for this term?

Onpage optimization factors like:

keyword density

keyword prominence

keyword proximity

bolding, italicizing, underlining

etc.

are NOT critical to worry about when trying to rank well for a search term.

Yes, you should spinkle your keyword throughout the webpage and do the other onpage optimization techniques Iกve taught you in previous lessons, but again, I really want to drill this into your head. It is the offpage optimization that will increase your rankings in the search engines; specifically Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Then why exactly does adobe.com rank #1 on Google

for the term กclick hereก?

Letกs do some website analysis on this adobe.com. Iกm going to use a software product called SEO Elite to do this, but you can analyze the website manually if you choose to do so. I prefer SEO Elite because it only takes a few minutes, as opposed to several hours.

First, weกll select radio button 1.

Next, weกll enter the URL from Google into step 2.

(http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html)

Next, weกll select Google from the list of search engines.

Finally, click กokก to run SEO Elite.

When itกs finished running, letกs click on the ‘report viewก tab to view some of the results.

The first thing you should notice is the Google Page Rank of all of the pages linking to adobe.com. If you click the column heading within SEO Elite labeled กGoogle PRก, it will sort the column in descending order.

You can see that the pages linking to adobe.com have an extremely high Page Rank. Any website with a Page Rank of 6 or higher are VERY high page ranks. There are only a handful of PR9 websites on the entire internet and a few are actually linking to adobe.com!

Next, letกs click the กanalysis viewก tab.

If we click the column heading titled กanchor textก, it will sort this column in descending order. We can quickly see that the words กclickก and กhereก are within the top 10 words listed in the left hand column.

Remember, the anchor text column will show you the number of times the word in the กWordก column appears in the actual anchor text of the link pointing to adobe.com

Anchor Text:

Example) Click here to download Adobe Acrobat Reader…

กClick hereก is the anchor text in the example above.

So, by looking at the analysis above, we can see that the word กclickก appeared in 16 of the links pointing to adobe.com and 6.8% of the total links pointing to adobe.com contained the keyword กclickก. The keyword กhereก was found in 34 links pointing to adobe.com and appeared 14.5% of the time.

Reason adobe.com is ranked #1

The main two reasons that adobe.com is ranked #1 for the keyword กclick hereก is because:

The websites linking to adobe.com are very quality (have a high Page Rank)

The websites linking to adobe.com used the keywords กclickก and กhereก many times in the anchor text of the links linking to adobe.com

There are a few other offpage optimization factors that help adobe.com to rank #1, but those are the main two reasons. I hope you can clearly see the power of offpage optimization (linking).

So, the next time someone asks you what the proper keyword density is, the proper keyword prominence, the proper number of times you need to bold, italicize, or underline a keyword on your page… You can tell them that onpage optimization is NOT critical when ranking well for a given search term.

Until next time, happy optimizing!

About The Author

Brad Callen

Professional SEO and creator of the powerful Web Promotion Software, SEO Elite

Get my FREE SEO Blueprint (PDF) by cicking the link below. Itกs 60+ pages of power packed information that will show you exactly how you can easily dominate the search engines, guaranteed…

http://www.seoelite.com/Articles/FreeSEOBlueprint/

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 15

by Brad Callen

Search Engine Optimization: What Is It?

Search Engine Optimization: What Is It?

by: Stephen Warren

Search Engine Optimization is the creation of a web page, purposely designed to rank well with the Search Engines.

If you want traffic to your website then you must Optimize your website for the Search Engines.

Search Engine Optimization is a necessity if you want a huge amount of traffic flowing to your website.

Traffic from the Search Engines is one of the best (And most abundant) forms of traffic. Most people use Search Engines to find what they are looking for. I do and I bet you do too.

You simply cannot afford to pass this up. If you do, then your competitors will be way ahead of you, taking customers which you could have had.

However, if you are going to undertake Search Engine Optimization I STRONGLY recommend that you do some extensive research before you start trying to create the กperfectก page for the Search Engines.

If you don’t do enough research then you will find bits of Optimization information, but will it be correct or will it heavily penalize your website, or even completely ban it? If you end up doing the wrong thing, this is what can happen.

Examples of bad Optimization techniques:

Previously many of these probably worked. However the Search Engines are now actively looking for websites who may be implementing some of these techniques and penalizing them accordingly.

Cloaking:

What I mean is creating a page for a visitor but when a search engine spider goes to the page, they see something completely different. One way to detect if a website is doing this, is if they appear at the top of search results for a keyword that doesn’t even appear on that page. This is a major no no. Sure it probably works incredibly well for a time. But when the Search Engines figure out what your up to, you can bet they will ban you permanently.

Keyword Stuffing:

This is the process of having as many keywords placed into the meta tags or content of the page whether they are relevant or not to the กcontentก of the page. Not only does this not work, it will work against you. Google for example will penalize you if you have a keyword more than once in a row. This is logical, as having 2 keywords in a row probably would not make sense. For example, for the keyword Golf, Google would penalize you if you wrote Golf Golf.

However, if the title of your page was กGolfก, and the sentence beneath it was กgolf is great because…ก you would probably still be penalized.

Colouring keywords the same colour as their background:

This is quite self explanatory. Itกs bad because you’re purposely hiding things from your website visitors, but still want the Search Engines to see it.

About The Author

Stephen Warren is the creator and webmaster of http://www.marketershandbook.com, a completely free business and marketing resource which anyone may use.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 23, 2004

by Stephen Warren

To Optimize Or Not To Optimize

To Optimize Or Not To Optimize

by: Dan J. Fry

Excessive optimization could be considered a sickness depending on context. Look up compulsive disorders in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMV) and over optimization fits the description fairly well. So, should most online home business owners be seen by a psychotherapist? Well, I won’t answer that as of now since it doesn’t bode well for my immediate physical health. But one thing is for sure: web site optimization is tricky business.

The search engines are in an all out war to be the best. Since content is king, they are all striving to develop the all around best algorithm to deliver the most relevant search results. They are thus in a constant state of flux, which in turn wreaks havoc on our nerves as online home business owners.

You see, search engines are one of the best forms of free traffic. And we all know that to run a successful online business, traffic is a must. Most home based web businesses start out on very restrictive budgets. I know mine did, and still is. So, when the toss up is time or money, I, like many others probably do, chose to work with time.

In walks optimization. You must be on your toes to stay ahead of the every changing SEs. You must periodically evaluate your siteกs content to ensure that you aren’t bumped to low indexes. But this can easily get carried away into what I like to call overoptimization, and then you probably should consult the DSM V.

Traffic is important. There is no doubt about it. But there must be a balance. So the ultimate question is not whether you should or shouldn’t optimize, but how much time you should spend on it in terms of other site promotion methodologies.

Try to divide your time. In the beginning I focused heavily on search engine optimization. Slowly, after several months of realizing that the process never ends,(I too consulted the DSMV and had Freud give me a swift kick in the tushy.) my focus began to shift to a host of promotion techniques. Here is a short list of some of the primary traffic generators I work with.

(1) Writing articles, such as this one, to share my experiences with others and of course provide a link to my site at the end. Guess what? If someone picks it up and decides to publish any of my articles on their site, I get bonus points from the search engines. Why? Reciprocal linking of course. The link shows that someone else values my site, and as a result my ranking increases.

(2) EZine advertising, whether it be free classified ads which a host of publishers will offer their subscribers, or full blown paid solo ads, is a great traffic generator. You know that the people who visit your site through an ad were looking for something that you offer. Now thatกs targeted traffic!

(3) Traffic exchanges can also bring in targeted traffic. Many of these have the option of free or paid memberships. As of now I have focused on the free aspect (Remember, I love low, or no cost advertising.). All that is required is for you to do a bit of surfing to have your short ad show up on other sites across the internet. TrafficSwarm and ClickMatrix are two of the best I have come across. They allow you to target your ad to ensure that the people who click are serious about checking out your site. You can sign up for free accounts to both of these at http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?224700 , and http://www.clicksmatrix.com/index.php?ref=ekinetic .

(4) Payperclick can also drive targeted traffic. The thing I don’t care for is that the cost can easily get out of hand, if you don’t continuously evaluate your click through rates on a daily basis. Soon your back to focusing on payperclick and re consulting with the DSMV:).

Ultimately, you want to incorporate a handful of techniques that you find work for your particular home based web business. I nor anyone else can guarantee what works. It takes testing on your behalf. But, and this is important, the testing phase is educational and forces you to stay focused on methods that work. So try the inexpensive traffic builders first. Find out what works for you. Then expand your arsenal. Most of all, be patient and success will come!

About The Author

Dan J. Fry is an independent researcher and owner of eKinetic.com, a site devoted to providing resources for small budget home businesses. He has a PhD in Physics and is married with two daughters and two cats. Subscribe to his free EZine on home business resources at mailto:[email protected] or by visiting his Online Home Based Business Resources site. He can be reached at mailto:[email protected].

This article was posted on April 25, 2004

by Dan J. Fry

The 11 Deadly Sins of Search Engine Optimization

The 11 Deadly Sins of Search Engine Optimization

by: jeff palmer

(Common mistakes and misconceptions about search optimization and marketing)

There is so much misinformation floating through the internet regarding search engine marketing and optimization that it’s important to shed some light on a few common errors and misconceptions. The following list highlights some of the most critical issues involved in determining the success or failure of a web site’s search engine optimization and marketing strategies.

1. Lack of กSearch Friendlyก Content.

Every week I review web sites with no real search engine indexable content. Web pages composed mostly of graphics, flash and other bells and whistle are commonly overlooked by the search engines. Search engines determine what content is of value per web page based on the text used on that page. A truly optimized site should contain at least 200 words of keyworddense text. There is some debate among experts on exactly how many words should be used, but generally 200 words will suffice. As a point of reference this paragraph contains about 200 words. It is equally important for text content to contain keywords that match the page titles. For example, a site selling peanut butter owned by a company called กACME Foodsก might have a title of กAcme Foods, Inc. Wholesale Food Productsก. We have to consider how many people are likely to search for the term กAcme Foods, Inc. Wholesale Food Productsก it is much more likely that people will search for the term กpeanut butterก. Knowing this, we can say with confidence that it would be a wiser choice to title a page, กPeanut Butter, ACME Foodsก and the page content should reflect this same keyword strategy.

2. Insufficient Link Popularity.

Search engines make every attempt to qualify the results which are displayed in search results. One of the ways that they do this is by tracking the number and quality of the incoming links to a web site. A site with a large number of incoming links from quality sites is given a higher ranking in search results. This is an important consideration that is sometimes overlooked by those attempting to market web sites. Services that promise to link your site to thousands of other sites are far from productive; in fact they can sometimes do more harm than good. Most search engines these days consider services like this to be spam, so called กlink farmingก and often give sites with these types of links a low ranking or drop them alltogether from the search results. Incoming links to a site that compliment it and are relevant to the site contents are golden and can greatly boost a siteกs ranking. Googleกs page ranking system is a good example. A site with a page rank of 1 if given a link from a site with a page rank of 8 can see its page rank boost to 4! Link popularity is one of the most time consuming and difficult aspects of search engine optimization. Itกs no wonder that many of the search engines give so much importance to this web site measurement.

3. Lack of Keyword Research And Updates

So, you have a web site. Do you know what pages in your web site are generating the most interest? Do you know what terms people are searching for that result in them finding your site? Probably not. Let’s use the peanut butter analogy again. You own a web site that sells peanut butter. You spend some money on paid search advertising, logically; you assume that the key phrase กpeanut butterก is a prime candidate to target. What happens? usually one of two things, one, the term peanut butter is such a popular search term that thirty million other web sites are competing for the same key phrase. Two, the term peanut butter is so unpopular that it’s unlikely that itกs searched for more than once in this lifetime. Proper keyword research can solve these problems. Let’s say for the sake of argument that keyword research is performed and that it is determined that a significant number of people are searching for กorganic peanut butterก. It just so happens that our peanut butter company manufactures a whole line of organic, all natural peanut butter. We have discovered a niche. The right amount of people searching for the specific product that we want to sell. Itกs the perfect match. So, what must be done to capitalize on our findings? First we optimize our web pages for our target keyword, we change the title, and the content so that they include the term กorganic peanut butterก, then we scrap all of the paid search advertising that wasn’t working and focus on targeting our กorganic peanut butterก market. The point is, successful search engine marketing relies on constant research and updates the internet is fluid and evolving. What works today might not work tomorrow, we have to be able to identify strengths and weaknesses in our internet marketing campaigns and must be prepared to research, update and adapt.

4. Designing First, Optimizing Later

I have seen this mistake repeated hundreds of times. Even experienced web designers fail to consider the results of design decisions on search optimization until it’s too late. What is the point of spending thousands of dollars for a well กdesignedก web site if nobody ever sees it? Consult a search engine specialist early in the design process. Even if your web site marketing strategy relies heavily on paid search advertising a consultation with a professional optimization expert may expose flaws in your siteกs layout. Points in the flow of information that tend to cause users to lose interest or become confused may become apparent, better to address these issues early on.

5. Relying Too Heavily On Paid Search Advertising

This is a mistake made by Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike. The fact is that most businesses, small and large aren’t getting it right.

The rationale is that since search advertising can be purchased it isn’t necessary to focus on search optimization techniques. On the surface this might make some sense, you can buy certain keyword phrases that people are searching for, so why bother optimizing your site for the search engines? For a company with a huge internet advertising budget this means spending huge amounts of money to drive traffic to their sites, when, if their site had been properly optimized from the beginning, these costs might be half as much for the same amount of viewers. For many smaller businesses trying to compete in the internet marketplace simply becomes overwhelming. While paid search advertising is a highly effective means of targeting an audience, organic search optimization greatly increases the chances of success for any web site. Make sure that the site you are advertising is one that people can find easily without the assistance of a paid search campaign.

6. Not Supporting the Conversion Process

A few weeks ago my wife decided that she wanted to buy some Australian made baby clothes that we can’t find here in the states. So being the internet savvy father to be, I decided to have a look on the internet for the particular brand she was interested in. I surf to a search engine and type in the brand name. A few seconds later Iกm greeted with a list of web sites that supposedly have what Iกm looking for. I click on the first site in the list. I find myself at the site of a clothing importer based out of California. There are links to several categories of clothing, none of which seem to have anything to do with babies, eventually after a lot of searching I find a link on the childrenกs clothing page for infant garments. The infant garments page has a few images of clothing but not the brand Iกm looking for. I look to see if there is way to search for clothing by brand name. There isn’t. I look to see if there is a list somewhere on the site of brand names carried by this distributor. There isn’t. I look to see if there is a toll free number to call. There isn’t. The internet optimization part of my brain is boiling by this point, so to add insult to injury I go back to the childrenกs garments section of the site. I click on a link to purchase a bright green jacket. I’m confronted with a page that is requiring me to fill in a bunch of personal details. Ok, so I fill in the details and click submit. Now I find myself back at the bright green jacket page. Apparently now Iกm qualified to purchase something. I click the กcheck outก button. The web page goes blank. I know that this is the result of bad programming. I know whatกs going to happen next. กError 404 page not foundก. Has this type of thing happened to you? If you have ever tried to purchase something on the internet, Iกm sure it has. This is an illustration of a web site that is well ranked in the search engines but has not taken the time to create a site that is designed for its users. I was forced to hunt through the web site to try and find what I was looking for. The flow of information was counterintuitive. There was no online support. Allinall the whole site was a joke. I would be surprised to learn that the site in question made any sales at all, ever. There were several points in this online experience that I felt like giving up. In the industry this is known as ขabandonmentก, This is a critical point in what is known as the กconversion processก, the act of turning web site viewers into online purchasers. This is an issue that should never be underestimated. In fact it is the number one factor that determines a web siteกs success or failure. A web site with a million dollar marketing budget and millions of visitors will not succeed unless it serves to understand its user’s needs and anticipate its viewer’s questions.

7. Graphics Used For Text Links.

Web designers often use graphics to represent a link in a web site. There are many reasons for this choice. Unfortunately for web designers, the major internet browsers display web pages in different ways. Since fonts display differently on individual computers and in different browsers, it is a much simpler proposition for designers to create graphic links than it is to attempt to create crossbrowser text links. The downside to this workaround is that search engines have no idea if a graphic link relates to a specific web page or a link to download the latest Britney Spears MP3. For search engines to understand what a link is truly representing, they need to find words in plain, good old fashioned text. If a web site must use graphics for navigation it is important to include a set of plain text links somewhere on the web page, usually at the bottom of the page.

8. Use of Frames.

Search engines have a hard time indexing sites that are created in frames. Framed sites use several html files to display one page. Search engines are often confused by the frames method of creating web sites, usually only indexing the first html file within the framPages that aren’t indexed will never show up in search engine results. Also, many people that use the internet regularly for research and purchases, so called กpower usersก, tend to avoid sites built with frames, especially those sites which require the user to scroll content in separate frames. Simply put, frames are bad.

9. Splash Pages.

Entry pages that instruct the user to กEnterก, usually decorated with a large graphic or a flash animation. The index page of a web site is the one that search engines read first. More often than not the only readable content on this type of page is a link that says, ขskip introก Splash pages lack indexable content, usually contain no links and often contain a กredirectก to the real home page. Search engines do not like redirects, they want the real thing. Avoid splash pages unless you aren’t serious about being found by search engines.

10. Submitting To 10,000 Search Engines

I sometimes have a difficult time believing that these services are still making money, more importantly that people still think that they work. The fact is that a handful of search engines account for about 90% of all the web traffic generated and the rest comes from people typing in a web siteกs URL indirectly into their browserกs address bar. The amount of viewers generated from these MegaSearch Submittal services is so negligible that itกs hardly worth consideration. Don’t waste your time or your money.

11. Not Clearly Defining Action Points

Another mistake that is repeated quite is often is the failure to clearly define what the objectives of a web site are. What are the main goals of a site? Who will the primary audience be? What actions are desired of the site’s visitors? If these questions aren’t answered prior to designing a site they will reflect a poor user experience in the final result. Action points or calls to action are a terminology handed down from the traditional marketing world. They serve to define a desired action and are often supported by persuasive sales copy. Though the basic concepts are the same as traditional marketing, calls to action can take many different forms on the internet. Often they appear as links or as part of a shopping cart. The nature of a web site determines its type of action point. The most important thing to consider is that without them, viewers have little or no idea what the purpose of your site is. Imagine an infomercial running a half hour long advertisement on television, yet the commentator says nothing during the whole ad, just stands there holding a cardboard box, you are left trying to guess what’s inside, the advertisement offers no explanations or means of contacting the company involved. Pointless isn’t it? This is exactly what a web site without clearly defined points of action accomplishes; nothing. It’s an exercise in futility.

About The Author

Jeff Palmer is a search engine optimization specialist and senior interactive designer for Openvision an Internet marketing company located in Hilton Head Island South Carolina.

www.openvision.com

email [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 06, 2005

by jeff palmer