Frequently asked questions
I'm not sure if I really
need a website.
It's all so complicated and I don't understand it.
Can you afford to ignore it? Your competitors won't. They're already using
it to improve their business, gain customers and reduce costs. I can help
you understand the Internet and eCommerce and how it can apply to your business.
You need to start somewhere, so get started today.
I have more business now than I can cope with.
Has your business always been like this? If you have built up a good business
you already know that you can never sit still. Your customers may leave,
simply because it is easier to do business with your competition.
You can also use the Internet to reduce your running costs eg: why not send
out your customers accounts using email instead of incurring paper and postage
costs, not to mention the time spent stuffing envelopes.
It takes a while to fully appreciate the benefits of the Internet. Don't
wait for your competitors to get there first!
My customers like things the way they are. They're not even using the
Internet.
Are you sure? At last count, 49 percent of NZ homes had a computer and many
more people have access to the Internet at work. Latest statistics show that
78 percent of New Zealanders can use the Internet. As more and more customers
go on-line, they will expect you to have a web site.
Also in the very near future New Zealanders will be able to access the Internet
through their televisions. This will mean that even more people will want
access to your products and services.
Worldwide, trade over the internet in 2002 was $US2.3 billion, and is expected
to reach $US3.9 billion this year. In Europe, internet sales over
Christmas were up 86% over last year. These figures can't be ignored.
The Internet doesn't have a lot to offer a business like mine.
How do you know? Check out what your competitors are doing with the Internet.
Using the Internet, businesses all over New Zealand might be attracting your
customers right now. Once you've done some thinking and planning about how
the Internet could benefit your business, you might be surprised about the
benefits.
It seems less personal to do business over the Internet.
Maybe. The Internet is both "high-tech" and "high-touch". Used to it's fullest
extent, it allows businesses to personalise their dealings with customers
and get closer to them by making use of information about previous dealings
and things that may interest individual customers.
Technology always costs so much and then it doesn't work properly.
It's up to you. You can decide to start out small or to make a big splash.
The basics aren't that expensive and can be built on as you become more familiar.
I can show you what to do. It is my goal for your business to maximize
the benefits of the Internet while staying inside your budget.
What happens if I decide I don’t want my website anymore?
You can cancel your agreement after 12 month's billing. Because I charge
no upfront fees, I absorb the initial costs over this time.
I am already on the Online Yellow Pages, why should I have a site with
you?
The On-Line Yellow Pages is a very small part of the Internet. Why would
people limit their search to the Yellow Pages when they could search the
whole Internet just as easily?
The advantage of having your own web site is that you can market on the Yellow
Pages site and then anywhere else you want to by registering with search
engines.
What about Overseas Search Engines?
Your company will be registered with the major search engines that are
used in New Zealand and Australia as well as the major International search
engines.
I've decided that I want
a website, so here are a few technical questions.
What is website hosting?
Think of website hosting as the computer your website resides on. Your website
is a collection of computer files, and to be accessible to the internet
continuously it needs to be on a server (computer) that is always on, has
full time connection to the internet, and is fast enough to handle multiple
visitors at the same time.
Why don't I get website hosting with my domain name?
Your domain name is just the name that people use to connect to your website,
example www.bizlinks.co.nz. When I create a web hosting presence for your
website, I link your domain name to the hosting space.
Should I get a "co.nz" or a ".com" domain name?
Think of who your primary audience or customers are. If you are targeting
the international market, then you can't beat a .com name. If you are targeting
New Zealand customers, then a .nz domain name is appropriate. You can have
more than one domain name pointing to your website, so you could have both
a .com and a .co.nz domain name.
Can I get email with my domain name?
Yes, that's one of the key advantages of having your own domain name. You
can "brand" your email address as your own. As an example, instead of
bizlinks@xtra.co.nz, you can have david@bizlinks.co.nz. You can have as many
addresses to your domain name as you like including generic addresses such
as info@bizlinks.co.nz, sales@bizlinks.co.nz, etc.
What makes a good website?
Think about why you want or need a website.
You know your business, so you are the best judge as to what you and your
customers want to get out of your website. Make a list of what you want to
achieve, eg, provide information on your products and services, list contact
information for your business, keep your customers and potential customers
up to date on your offerings, online sales and so on. Also think about what
you want your website to achieve from a customer viewpoint. Make a list of
this too.
Spy on your competition.
Why not? They will be spying on you. See what's good about their websites
and see what's bad. And don't just look at New Zealand competition. Use search
engines and check out similar businesses in other countries to see if you
find any good ideas.
Put everything together in a brief.
Website designers like customers who know what they want. Lack of a brief
can lead to a poor result, and disagreement over expectations. It will also
help if you can prepare any ideas for content (text) and provide images,
logos, photos, etc, of your products and business.
Contact some web designers.
Take your brief to some web designers. Make sure they understand your
requirements, and gauge how well they grasp the needs of your website. Also,
ask them for any ideas they have to help you achieve what you want, ie,
technology or techniques you can employ to make your website function better.
Check out some of their work. Get an estimate of costs and decide who you
want to work with. Then agree on basic website layout and content, and firm
up a price for their services.
Work in stages.
Remember you can phase your website development. Stage 1 may be to get a
basic brochure site up, stage 2 may be to add an online catalogue, and stage
3 may be online sales with credit card facility. The internet lends itself
to this type of approach so consider it from the start with your designer
and you can avoid major costs to add a new feature.
Be professional.
A bad website can be a liability, so take time to get things right. Use a
reputable web designer and review their portfolio. Make sure the web designer
checks the operation of your website on different browser versions (Netscape
and Internet Explorer). Construct a privacy policy, terms and conditions,
refunds policy, etc. You may already have this information in other material,
but otherwise there are many online tools that can help you construct these
policies.
Help your website.
Make sure you or your designer registers your site with New Zealand and
international search engines. Consider even paying a specialist to do this
work. Add your domain name to all company printing, eg, business cards, email
signatures, letterheads, signs, vehicles and advertising. Make use of techniques
such as mailing lists to keep your customers up to date. Remember that you
should obtain permission from recipients before emailing them, and include
an opt-out instruction so they can be removed from your list if they no longer
want to receive your messages. Consider advertising and other promotion to
market your website, and finally, check email regularly and respond to
information requests promptly.
15 tips for designing a successful
web site.
(1) The main page of your web site should load in 8 seconds or less with
a 56K modem.
According to two surveys, conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group,
ecommerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due
to customers click-away caused by slow loading sites. If a page takes too
long to load, your potential customer will not wait. Ultimately costing you
business.
(2) Make sure you include proper META tags within the HTML of each page of
your web site. META tags are HTML code that enable the Search Engines to
determine what keywords are relevant to a specific site. About 80 percent
of all web site traffic originates from the major Search Engines. It would
be a good idea to make sure you've done your homework and fully understand
how to optimize your web pages prior to designing your site.
(3) Be cautious when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds
make text difficult to read and draw attention away from the text. Always
be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site. Your
site should be nicely organized and uniform throughout.
Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors
as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more
cheerful or happy. Colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect.
Dark colors such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good rule
of thumb is to use colors based on the type of effect you're trying to achieve.
(4) Avoid using too many animated graphics. Not only can they be very
distracting, but they can also cause your page to look unprofessional. In
addition, animated graphics cause your page to load more slowly. Fancy graphics
won't make sales.
(5) Your main page should specifically let your visitors know exactly what
you're offering. How many times have you visited a site and never figured
out exactly what they were selling? If your potential customer can't find
your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking
for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never return. They're
visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site
offers. Whether it is information, a product or service.
(6) Try to avoid placing banners at the top of your page. These can instantly
take your customers or even be indexed by Search Engine robots. Limit the
number of banners on your site to no more than two per page. One is ideal.
(7) Always, include your contact information on each page of your site. In
addition, try to reply to all comments and suggestions within 48 hours. This
will help promote good business relationships. Your business relationships
are the key to your success.
(8) ALWAYS check and double-check your site for spelling and grammatical
errors. In addition, make sure your images and links are all working properly.
If you have several errors, your site will appear to be unprofessional. If
you've been out of school for a while, you may want to refresh your memory.
(9) Design your site to be easily navigated. Place your navigation links
together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to
neatly align your links. If you are planning on using graphic buttons to
navigate your site, keep in mind, with each graphic you add to your page,
it will take that much longer for your page to load. If you only have a handful
of navigational links, using graphic buttons will be fine. If you have over
six links, it would be wise to simply use text links to keep your load time
down.
(10) If you must use frames, use them sparingly. If frames are not properly
used, they can make your site look unprofessional. Avoid making your visitors
have to scroll from side to side to view your content. This can be very
irritating and cause your visitors to leave. If you must use frames, offer
your visitors a choice. Frames versus no frames.
(11) Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page
to any other page on your site down to three. Keep in mind, your visitors
may enter your site from pages other than your main. Always have good
navigational links on every page and place your company logo at the top of
each page.
(12)There are thousands of free scripts available on the Internet that will
enable you to create all kinds of special effects. You may be tempted to
try some of these scripts. However, be very selective and only use a special
effect that will add value to your site.
(13) If you're using music on your site, make sure that you do not set it
to "autoplay." It can be very distracting.
(14) All web browsers are not created equally. View your site through different
browsers and screen resolutions so you will see how your visitors will view
your site.
Visit the following site to test your web pages:
www.NetMechanic.com - Provides a variety of free services for your web site
including browser compatibility testing, graphic file size reduction, link
check, HTML check, load time check, spell check and more.
(15) Continually add new content to your site. Give your visitors a reason
to keep coming back.
The best advice I can offer is to keep it simple.
The simple, well-designed, professional looking web
sites make the sales.
More reading: Biggest
Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015
How to write your website in 60
minutes
Don’t be daunted at the prospect of writing your website copy. Here’s
a simple outline that shows you how to compile the framework for a successful
business website – and it shouldn’t take more than 60 minutes.
If you're like most small business owners, the prospect of writing your website
fills you with dread. You don't know where to start and you're not sure what
to write. Or perhaps you already have a website and you're wondering whether
it's really working to build your business.
Well, here's some good news. Follow the simple steps below and you'll have
laid the groundwork for an effective business website that will not only
turn visitors into customers but will also rank well with the search engines.
And you can achieve this in just 60 minutes … maybe less.
The reason for a 60-minute time limit is that it forces you to focus on the
key aspects of your business.
Of course, in 60 minutes you won't be able to write everything you'll ever
want to include on your website. But you will have the basic information
that your customers need to do business with you. And you'll have a website
that's already way ahead of most small business sites in terms of effectiveness.
Step 1
So let's start. The first step - and one that most people overlook - is to
think about the words and phrases a potential customer would enter into a
search engine to find your site. Website designers and copywriters usually
call these "keywords".
For example, if you're a dentist in Christchurch, you might come up with
"dentist, Christchurch, NZ" plus other phrases such as "dental services",
"cosmetic dentistry" and any other field of dentistry that you specialise
in.
Take a few minutes to think about these key phrases, as they apply to your
business. Imagine you are searching for your business in a search engine.
What words would you enter? Remember, people tend to enter phrases of two
or three words into search engines, rather than single words. Once you have
selected three or four key phrases, these will become the foundation of your
website content. This should only take 5 to 10 minutes. It is a vital step
that most businesses neglect when writing their websites.
You will need to keep this list of phrases in front of you as you write your
pages, and make sure your keywords are on every page.
Step 2
Now it's time to start writing your home page. The first step is the headline,
which must catch the attention of your readers immediately, otherwise they
may click away without reading further.
Your headline should contain your most important key phrase. It may be as
simple as "Bill Gummer, Dentist, Christchurch, New Zealand". But don't just
put your company name in the headline. It must tell the reader exactly what
your business is about. Another five minutes for the headline.
Step 3
The next step is to write two or three sub-headings. These must tell the
reader what your product or services can do for them. For example, continuing
the dentist theme, you might say: "Are you looking for a dentist who will
ensure you feel no pain during your treatment?". Or: "Top quality dentistry
at an affordable price". Or: "Cosmetic dentistry is our speciality"
Okay, now you've spent about 20 minutes and you have a main headline and
two or three sub-headings. These are what most visitors to your site will
read first. Only later will they get to the copy between the headings. This
is why you focus first on the headlines.
Step 4
Now it's time to write the main copy for your home page. Imagine you are
chatting one-to-one with your potential client. Tell them why they should
choose your business over someone else's.
Refer to your list of keywords as you write, and try to use at least one
of them in each paragraph, with the most important phrase in the opening
paragraph. Your home page doesn't have to be long. About 250 words is enough
at this stage, to get across the essential facts.
Make sure you include vital information such as your contact details, street
address and opening hours on your home page.
You should be able to complete this in 10 minutes. Total time elapsed, 30
minutes.
Step 5
Next, you'll need to write a page about your products or services. Start
by making a list. This should only take two or three minutes. Then, take
each item on then list and say a bit about it. Again, remember you a talking
one-to-one with your reader, so don't be too formal, but try to weave your
keywords into your copy.
This is the page where you should also include prices, if appropriate.
If you get stuck for words here, don't worry. You can come back later. But
at least you now have the basic framework of your page. Later, you can expand
this page with more details. Don't spend more than 10 minutes on this page.
Step 6
Next, write a page called "About Us", or something similar. If you're a
one-person business, this can be similar to your curriculum vitae. If you're
a larger business, it will include the history of the company and its main
achievements.
Again, don't take too long over this. Just jot down the key facts, which
should only take a few minutes. You should include photos of yourself and
your staff on this page, too.
Step 7
Next, write a page called "projects" or "clients" or "portfolio" or something
similar, which outlines projects you have done. Make a list at this stage,
without worrying too much about filling in the details. Again, try to work
in your keywords.
If you're a well-established business, this list may be quite long and you
can break it up later into several pages.
Step 8
Next, write a page called "Frequently Asked Questions" or "Questions and
Answers". Think of the top three or four questions related to your business.
Make sure one of these includes your prices. This should take another 10
minutes.
Step 9
Finally, write a page with all your contact details. This should take two
or three minutes at most.
Step 10
Make sure you spell-check your copy. Read it through a final time and check
for grammar. Double check that your main keywords appear on every page.
Now, you have the framework for a basic six-page website, which not only
tells your potential customers the vital information they need to know about
your business but also is well placed to rank on the search engines.
You really can do this in 60 minutes. If you feel you need professional help
to take your website copy a step further, you at least have the basic framework
that a website copywriter can polish up into really sharp sales copy.
Article reproduced with permission from Chis Mole, who is a website copywriter.
You can contact him through his website at www.web-words.co.nz.
Web Copy – How Much is Enough?
These days, there’s widespread acceptance that a website is an integral
part of the marketing plan of any business. Likewise, it’s commonly
accepted that web copy is a vital component of any website. But how much
web copy is enough?
The pure volume of information available on the Internet is daunting –
often counterproductive. There are approximately 550 billion documents on
the web, and every day another 7 million are added. According to an A.T.
Kearney, Network Publishing study (April 2001), workers take so long trying
to find information that it costs organizations $750 billion annually!
Yet people continue to use it. Information gathering is the most common use
of the Internet (American Express survey, 2000). And it seems work-related
searches are amongst the most common, with 48% of people using the Internet
to find work-related information, as opposed to 7% who use magazines (Lyra
Research, 2001).
Interestingly, however, the average person visits no more than 19 websites
in the entire month in order to avoid information overload (Nielsen NetRatings
in Jan 2001).
So how do you ensure your site is one of those 19? How do you make your content
helpful without making it overwhelming? That’s what this article is
about…
Here are 5 quick rules of thumb to help you decide how much is enough.
1) Know your audience (Reader or Search Engine?)
Think about whether you’re targeting human readers (potential customers)
or search engines. This must always be one of your very first questions,
as the answer will determine your approach to content.
In general, human readers think less is more. Search engines, on the other
hand, think more is more (well, more or less…). In many ways, it comes
down to a question of quality versus quantity. Human readers are interested
in quality, whereas search engines are interested quantity. Human readers
want you to answer their questions and make it clear how you can benefit
them. And they don’t want to wade through volumes of text. Search engines
want a high word count, full of relevant keywords, and short on diagrams.
You need to think carefully about your audience. In most cases, it’ll
be a trade-off. A high search engine ranking is important (or at least
beneficial) to most businesses, so a happy medium is required. The following
tips will go some way toward providing this balance.
2) Make it concise
Say everything you need to say, but always ask, “Can I say it with fewer
words?” The literary world may be impressed by complex writing, but
visitors aren’t. Keep it simple, and keep it brief. Your home page
shouldn’t be more than 1 screen long. In other words, visitors
shouldn’t have to scroll. Subsequent pages can be longer, but try to
keep them to a maximum of about 300-400 words each (approximately 1 scroll).
A lot of people will tell you that you also need 300-400 words or more on
your home page for a good search engine ranking. You don’t. If you focus
on the right keywords and generate a lot of links to your site, you can achieve
a high ranking without losing your readers’ interest by padding.
TIP: For most businesses, a good rule of thumb is to make it conversational.
The old school oppose conversational copy; don’t listen to them. Unless
you’re writing for an old-school audience, feel free to write as people
talk.
3) One subject per page
On this, both readers and search engines agree. Don’t try and squeeze
too much information onto a single page. For example, instead of trying to
detail all of your products on a single Products page, use the page to introduce
and summarize your product suite, then link to a separate page per product.
This way, your content will be easier to write, your readers won’t be
overwhelmed, and you’ll be able to focus on fewer keywords (so the search
engines will get a clearer picture of what you do).
4) Make it scannable
According to a 1998 Sun Microsystems study, reading from a monitor is 25%
slower than reading from paper. As a result, 79% of users scan read when
online. So make sure you accommodate scanning. Use headings and sub-headings.
Highlight important words and sections. Use bulleted lists and numbered lists.
Use tables. Use statistics. Use meaningful indenting. Use short sentences.
Most importantly, be consistent in your usage. Oh… and follow rules
2 and 3 above.
5) Use a simple menu structure
Try to keep your high-level menu (Home, About Us, Contacts, Products, Services,
etc.) to a maximum of about 10 items (5-8 is ideal). If you have too many
options, your site will seem unstructured and your visitors won’t know
where to start. In order for a visitor to want to come back to your site,
they need to feel comfortable when they’re there. They need to know
what to expect. If they can’t identify any logic in your menu structure,
they will always feel lost. What’s more, this lack of structure will
reflect badly on your business.
The Internet can be an incredibly cost-effective form of promotion because
the cost per word to publish is so low. Don’t be fooled into thinking
more is more just because it costs less. Audiences – even search engines
– don’t want everything; they just want enough.
Happy writing!
Reproduced with thanks to Glenn Murray who is an advertising copywriter and
heads copywriting studio Divine Write. Visit www.divinewrite.com for further
details.
7 ways to increase your online sales
The 2003 sales figures are in and online sales boomed last year. Total online
sales in 2003 increased from $4 billion to $6.4 billion. Online commerce
increased by 59% during the holiday shopping season.
Did your online business process its share of online sales? If not, try these
seven techniques that encourage visitors to buy.
1. Encourage impulse buys. Fast food restaurants understand this concept.
Think: "do you want fries with that?" Well, you can do that online as well:
-
Suggest related products. Amazon.com is a leader in this technique. An online
shopper searches for a particular book and clicks to view the details and
reviews. The detail page offers the book at a special price if the customer
buys it together with a book on a related topic or by the same author.
-
Associate linked products. If a customer buys a video game, ask if he'd also
like to buy some batteries, games, or other peripherals. Those are items
the customer may forget to purchase or might not realize are available.
-
Limited time offer! A visitor is more likely to take advantage of a special
offer if she knows there's a time limit. "Only 2 days left!" But don't get
carried away. An advertised limited time offer really needs to expire. Otherwise,
you lose the trust of your customers.
2. Offer online-only specials. Many Web users prefer to gather information
about products online. They visit a few sites to get an idea of what's available
and at what cost. But they don't complete the sale online. Instead, many
log off and head directly for nearest brick and mortar store to make their
actual purchase.
Combat this tendency by providing an incentive to buy online. Advertise an
offer that's only available at your Web site and you give your visitors added
incentive to become a customer. Remember though: most users are quite well
educated about what's available. They'll know if your offer is really a special
deal.
3. Ship larger orders for free. It doesn't take much more time and effort
to pack and ship 5 items than to pack and ship 1 item. It's more efficient
for you to pack more items in each order, so give customers an incentive
to purchase more at one time.
How? Many online shoppers really hate paying shipping charges. It's not uncommon
for the shipping charges for a small, low-priced item to add an extra 50-70%
to the purchase price and customers feel that retailers take advantage of
them.
But for a small retailer, small orders are a pain to deal with. Raise your
profit margin and encourage larger orders by offering free shipping for
multiple-item orders or orders that reach a certain dollar level. Large online
retailers have found to this to be very effective at boosting sales.
4. Be honest about pricing. People want to know the total price before they
start filling out a shopping cart order form. Most users will leave a site
without completing their purchase if the site doesn't show total cost - including
shipping - before asking for personal information.
5. Provide great customer service. You don't want one-time customers! It
takes far more effort to attract new customers than it does to keep existing
ones. That simple concept seems to be forgotten in these days of anonymous
email and the torture of automated phone systems:
"Press 1 for the Order Department, Press 2 for Sales, Press "Wish Again"
to speak to a live operator!"
Nobody expects you to stay up all night to field phone calls, but promptly
respond to queries within 24 hours if possible. Forrester data shows that
42% of US Web buying consumers made their most recent online purchase because
of a previous good experience with the retailer.
6. Create compelling Web site copy. Web site design is an important component
of Web site credibility, but design only takes you so far. Visitors quickly
note the design, but then look for content. Format your content to reflect
how people read online and consult The Copywriter's Handbook for instructions
on how to write persuasive, convincing online copy.
7. Have complete product information and photos. People want to see what
they're buying and they want to know a lot about it. But consider overall
page size and download time when you're adding this information.
Informational pages. You accomplish two goals when you create informational
pages. Pages loaded with useful information attract human visitors and search
engine spiders. Good information turns your site into an authority site on
the Web so customers feel more comfortable buying from you.
Create thumbnail images and link them to full-size photos of the product.
Even if you can post life-size images of your product from several viewpoints,
don't place them on the main informational page. Instead, create thumbnail
images the link to the larger photos. Visitors with slow dial-up connections
will thank you!
Optimize images. In fact, you should carefully optimize the size of all the
images on your Web pages.
Visitors have a limited amount of time and patience, so make sure they're
spending time reading your content instead of waiting for the page to load.
Closing The Sale
The basic idea of methods 1-4 is to close the sale while visitors are at
your Web site.
They help encourage visitors to buy before they leave your site. None of
these methods are underhanded or unethical. They're based on common knowledge
of human nature. Successful marketing and salespeople use them and so should
you!
Even so, methods 5-7 are the most important because they depend on your site
having good content and service. The hard sell may work in person (sometimes!),
but it almost never works online. Spend the bulk of your time writing good
content that clearly describes your value proposition, explains how your
product works, and tells how much it costs.
Good content will increase your search engine visibility, attract more visitors,
and encourage them to become customers.
Increase your search engine ranking
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like
rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue.
I am here to tell you - the time has come to face your website! A high search
engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest
desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue
to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find
websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea
of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted
customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The
higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffïc
that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization
is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online
to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings.
Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments,
and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should
examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words
that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine
rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most
important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then clïck on all your links and examine the
title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar
on every single page of your site should contain the
most important keywords and phrases taken from the
page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords,
keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating
keywords more than once in the title bars, and make
sure that identical words are not next to each other.
[ Check what are the most common key words
people use to find services like yours. Go to www.overture.com.
Click on "Visit the Resource Centre", then
"Keyword Selector Tool". ]
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search
engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than
scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important
keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search
engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due
to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want
to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However,
the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must
be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight
a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text
will not highlight, it is probably in graphic format. In this case, ask your
webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search
engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something
out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe
that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality,
they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event
that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code.
To do this, clïck the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select
"source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created
the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the
window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords" content=.
If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them
in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little
boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is
extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search
engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based
on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you visit Google and type in "link:" (without the quotations) followed
by your site address (no space after the colon), you will be shown the sites
that are linked to your site as per Google. Example link:www.yoursite.com.
Note that searching link:yoursite.com will return different results than
searching link:www.yoursite.com . To find your site's link popularity on
other search engines search the phrase "free link popularity check" and try
one of the many link popularity tools available on the Web.
If you find that there aren't many sites linked to
yours, or that the sites that are linked have low
search engine rankings, consider launching a link
popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting
quality sites and requesting that they exchange links
with your site. Of course, this requires checking
out the rankings of the websites you want to link
up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only
boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs
more quality traffïc to your website.
[ You can also use www.linkpopularity.com
to check the links back to your website. ]
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet
marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization
company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you
can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important
factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking,
the more quality customers will be directed your way.
Article reproduced with thanks to Dan Meiyers
(www.emarketingbooks.com).
Website check list
To help you start planning your website, I've created a Check List that will
help identify your requirements. Click here
to display the Check List (PDF file 19 kb).
Statistics information
What do all those columns mean on your website statistics pages?
Total hits:
Total file requests. If a page has 2 images on it, that will register as
3 hits - the two images and the page.
Total files:
Total file requests that made it through. i.e. the user didn't abort part
way through etc. Not all hits will send data, such as requests for pages
that are already in the browser's cache.
Total pages:
Total page views. If a page has 2 images on it, it will register as 1 page
view.
Total visits:
Total distinct visitors.
Total unique sites:
Total distinct locations visitors are coming from. If a person visits twice,
that would register as 1 unique site and 2 visits.
Total unique URLs:
The different web pages or files that have been viewed on your website.
Total unique referrers:
Pages that link to the site.
Total unique user agents:
Internet browser types.
Which total tells you the number of different visitors to his
site:
Total Visits.
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