Internet Marketing, Web Design, SEO, Web 2.0 Optimization
site optimization
The posts here look at the optimization of your website
Cost of a Bad Website
02 weeks ago
Web Design
Having a functional website is imperative in today’s business world. Even though it is very important to establish a solid web presence, just having a web site is no longer sufficient. There was a day when just any site was acceptable; but as online marketing has escalated and internet traffic has increased there is a greater demand on creating quality sites with valid and pertinent information. Having a website that functions poorly or not at all can certainly cost the business down the road.
What Makes a Site “bad”?
A bad site is usually identified very quickly. Perhaps you notice the formatting, images that do not load properly, or glaring grammatical mistakes; these are all immediate signs that the site is not a quality site and not worth spending your time on. But there can be other issues that make a visit to a website an unpleasant experience. Content that is not kept up to date is a sure give away that the site is not getting the attention it deserves. A site that has poor functionality will cause great frustration for users. Forms that request information but do not send properly, back buttons that do not work or broken links will cause visitors to get off the site as soon as possible. Websites are many times a customer’s first impression of a business; it is important to use SEO best practices so that the site reaches a customer’s view, but website optimization also includes being able to interact properly with the online population.
How Does a Bad Site Cost You?
The whole point of an SEO campaign is to optimize a website so that it holds a top rank in search engine results. The point of that is so that potential clients and customers will see the site and visit it. It does no good to have lots of traffic graze through the site if no one is connecting with the business for the services or products being offered. A good site will be both search engine friendly and user friendly. It takes both of these elements to make a site work.
With that established, a bad site may still get some traffic if the SEO campaign was successful, but there will be no connection between clients and the business. The success of a business will involve the purchase of products or services by customers. A website is like the interface, or a shop window that displays to customers what a business has to offer. If the user has a bad experience on the site they will likely not become a customer. This can mean loss of revenue; and that is hitting a business where it hurts. A site that is poorly designed will greatly reduce the chances that a customer will make any kind of purchase or attempt to contact the business. It is very important for websites to be trustworthy. A poorly designed site can have a loss of traffic and a loss of revenue. This will also mean that the money, time and effort spent on web development were all a waste. It is costly no matter how you look at it.
Bad Website ans Your Online Reputation?
IF you type your name or the name of your business into any major search engine it is very likely to appear many times in search results. There can be some good, and some bad. Too many bad reviews of your business or your site can definitely have an ill effect on your online reputation. Too many negative reports can harm your attempts at branding. A bad experience on a site can certainly cause bad reviews by customers who did not find what they were looking for – or were very troubled with their ill experiences with a bad website. While a poor online reputation can be overcome, it can take much time and effort to try to clean up even a few bad comments or reviews. With the online traffic that is using social media and web 2.0 platforms a little bit of information can go a long way to harm an online business’ reputation.
A bad site can also have a very high bounce rate. This simply means that someone found your site in SERPs, clicked on the link and then backed right back out because they did not like what they saw. Too high of a bounce rate maintained over a long period of time can certainly hurt the site in SERPs as it will be deemed a low quality site.
What is Dwell Time?
22 months ago
Dwell Time is another way to measure your site’s bounce rate that will give you deeper insight into how your visitors interact with your site. Using SEO best practices can get a site or a page at the top of the search engine result pages; and that is indeed the goal. And while it is very important how a search engine views your site and ranks it, the web crawler is not going to order your products, call for your services or show a true interest in your content. While we always want to practice website optimization, we need to remember that the point of the website is to interact and connect with our audience. Dwell time is not directly used in any matrix that helps rank the site any higher in SERPs. However, dwell time and bounce rate is a measurable activity that can help us know if a page is a success with its intended audience. Running Google Analytics is a tool that can clue web design professionals in on how effective the page or site is with the audience. Dwell time is simply how long visitors spend on the landing page before clicking the “back” button, closing the browser or entering a different URL. This is a very useful metric that can help SEO specialistsmeasure the quality of the site’s content and effectiveness.
Dwell Time
Standard and Actual Bounce Rates
Finding a standard or actual bounce rate is relatively simple. Calculating a bounce rate assumes that a person visits a web page through performing an organic search, or another link. Perhaps the page is low quality and loaded with ads and the visitor clicks back in a matter of 5 or 6 seconds. This is considered an “actual bounce” as there was very little dwell time on the site. If another person clicks on a site via an organic search and finds an interesting blog or site and spends about 20 minutes reading all the information before clicking back to get off the page, this is also a bounce. But this is a “standard bounce” since the visitor spent 20 minutes in dwell time. Due to the dwell time even though this is a standard bounce, it is not recognized as a negative blemish to the search engines.
How to measure your Bounce Rate
Technically, the bounce rate is determined by calculating the percentage of visitors who leave the page compared to the total number of visitors to the page. When you divide this out, you will get a decimal number, such as 0.5999. This decimal is then multiplied by 100 to change the number to a percent. So if you got 0.5999 when you divided, just multiply it by 100 so that your bounce rate would be 59.99 %.
What your Bounce Rate tells You
If a site has a very high actual bounce rate it may indicate that the site needs to undergo some changes. Even though a low bounce rate does not guarantee that the site will be successful, but you want to strive for the ideal situation: a low bounce rate and a high conversion rate.
A high bounce rate may be an indication that there just needs to be some changes in logistics. Perhaps it indicates there needs to be some changes in web design NJ, or just some minor changes to the site. It is certainly a good time to reevaluate the site to make sure it meets the goals for a successful SEO campaign and is also effective with the targeted audience.
How to reduce your Bounce rate
Relevant content is one way to ensure that a visitor stays on the landing page long enough to gather the desired information. If you design your site and include instructions or information such as “how to choose interior paint colors,” make sure that this is indeed the content included on the page. You want the page to deliver the desired content. A long loading time or too much third party content can add to a negative bounce rate. Make sure that any third party content adds to the website and it is relevant to the page, or it can turn visitors away. The site design is also very important. It needs to be appealing to visitors without being overwhelming. And it needs to be designed so that it is easy to navigate and easy for visitors to find the desired information.
Learn About SEO
110 months ago
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization is a common practice throughout the internet. In a nutshell, SEO is the active process of getting organic traffic from search engines by optimizing your website. By improving internally and externally, SEO practices can vary. There are a number of ways to optimize a website and it’s important to actively use SEO for your website.
Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing drive majority of traffic to websites. If your website can’t be found using a search engine, it’s not likely you are receiving traffic (or potential customers). By using SEO and optimizing your site, search engines can find you and point users to your website. Search engines use a number of qualifications when crawling websites in response to a web search and it’s important to research things like keywords, products and competitors.
Search engines are always working to improve their results, which means you always need to be working to improve your rank. There are a number of ways to increase your rank and it’s a constant process. When search engines conduct a search they show results that are relevant and important. Relevance is simply having a page with the search keywords displayed and importance is perceived value or popularity of the site. It’s important to rank for both of these concepts by using relevant keywords in your content and value comes from things like backlinks, blogs or Page Rank.
Gaining popularity and acquiring an “importance” in your industry takes time. There are endless ways to help your rank in search engines. Link building is important to your website as Google, Bing and Yahoo use back links to evaluate your website’s credibility. For example, like discussed above, popularity (“importance”) is shown by the number of links leading to your website. Link building is part of SEO and there are a number of ways to increase your backlinks.
What can seo do for you?
01 year ago
I know that I have said this before… but a website without SEO is “…like winking at a girl from across the room when the lights are off…” If you have already taken the time, the effort and money to start a website, a blog… and assuming that you want your site, blog… to be seen by other people, and to be listed in search engines… then you need SEO. I will admit that professional SEO services can get pricy, and not everyone can afford a top SEO firm, but you do need to get your website optimized! For those of you out there who are planning to go about Search engine optimization the DIY route, I applaud you! But I warn you, getting your site ranked in search engines can be an uphill battle for a novice, and you need to devote the proper amount of time to this task. (More often than not people who try to do their own SEO get discouraged and give up, but if you are up to the task this blog should provide you with most of the basic tools you’ll need to get started).
In terms of specific results that a well optimized site can deliver, I cannot give you any concrete answer, but I can tell you that since getting their websites optimized with us many of our clients have gone on to get their biggest contracts ever! Since becoming our client, Dirty Blinds, a commercial window cleaning company in NJhas gone on to receive their biggest contract, being contracted to clean the windows in an entire school district! I can give you dozens of examples of how SEO has helped to improve this or that business, and how, even through this recession, companies with good websites have continued to see healthy growth… most of our other clients constantly tell us that they have been able to get consistent growth in their businesses and that much of their new business is originates through their websites, but the point is that, if you want to see consistent healthy growth in your company, SEO is a way to achieve this.
Have you recently discovered SEO? Please share with us and tell us what proper website optimization has done to your traffic…
Questions about nofollow
02 years ago
Today, quality backlinks are still the most important thing when it comes to getting your site to rank for your top (competitive) keywords (discussed in previous blog post, Link building 101). Links can come in many forms, but one of the key distinctions is between “Do follow links” and “No follow links”; a no follow link means that that link is not given weight (or is given much less weight) by search engines. No follow links were invented a few years ago in an attempt to try to cut down on spam links. Better understanding no follow links can help you better hone your link building strategy and can help you get the biggest bang for your buck.
This video discusses some features of Do follow/No follow links as they pertain to proper SEO. This video features Matt Cutts, who is one of the senior developers at Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4UJS-LFRTU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
The position of keywords in your URL
02 years ago
In proper the little things count. The little things are particularly vital if you are trying to rank well on very competitive keywords, in this case it helps to take advantage of every tiny, virtually insignificant/obscure preference that Google might have towards this or that. The exact position of keywords in your url is one such preference that plays a small role in the way that Google ranks your pages (if you do all of the small things that each play a small role in your rankings, the net result will be a big improvement in your rank!)
This video discusses the importance (small as it may be) of the position of your keywords in your URL. This video features Matt Cutts, who is one of the senior developers at Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Some facts about H1 tags
22 years ago
H1 tags are one of the more important technical features of your on-page SEO; this is b/c the H1 tag is a title tag that essentially tells search engines what the particular page is about. Having good H1 tags therefore helps greatly improve the SEO of your site. Here is a video that helps explain some more about H1 tags. This video features Matt Cutts, who is one of the senior developers at Google.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn5qJKU8VM&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Website marketing: Do you have a message?
02 years ago
One of the more important non SEO aspects of your website is having a clear message. By focusing on a clear message you are able to better target your keywords, as well as the look/feel of your site, making your site more appealing to your niche. For example, if you are trying to create a college prep tutoring website that would appeal to high school students you may not want to have a look that would discourage students or parents from spending time on your site, (b/c lets face it, in most cases parents are the ones looking for these services for their children) nor do you want the copy on your site to discourage your visitors from looking around; imagine a tutoring website that is targeted for elementary school kids vs. a SAT tutoring website, even though the subject of each site is tutoring, how might each best present their message? Who is their target audience? The most important thing to remember when you are trying to come up with your message is who is your audience? And, what kind of a site would appeal to them?
I know that you probably want to hear more about marketing theory and… but I feel that this concept would best be explained through an anecdote: A few yours ago I was approached by a client who had a book price comparison site, the site worked very well and was able to find very good prices, sure it needed some on page SEO, but basically it was good. The biggest problem with this site was that it completely lacked a message and had an undefined market, when I asked my client what was his niche, he responded “we compare all books, so anyone who buys books” while in reality he wanted to target his website to college students and comparing textbook prices (this was something that I gleamed from him in subsequent conversations). Once my client understood that he needed to have a niche and chose his niche the rest quickly fell into place, we were able to advise him on the look of his site, so that it would more appeal to a younger audience (college students) we were able to write proper copy for the site, and perhaps most importantly, we were able to pick good keywords that the client would have chance ranking for (“books” or “textbooks” are not seen as competitive keywords b/c they are too broad, but “cheap textbooks” and “used college textbooks” are high traffic, competitive keywords that with a little work it is possible to have a good rank.)
The moral of this story is, Have a message! And, hone your site to appeal to the correct audience!
What does SEO have to do with Buddhism?
02 years ago
I realize that many might find the title of this blog post odd, and I want to apologize in advance to anyone who practices Buddhism and who might be offended by the analogy that I will make here, but I thought that this was an apt observation and I wanted to share it.
In Buddhism there is an old parable the moral of which states that a man can take many different roads to achieve nirvana, and although few men are likely to travel the same path, many are likely to end up in the same place. The same might be said for SEO, there are many different ways to achieve success with your search engine optimization strategy, you can choose to follow any of these paths, but as long as your path is just (you have a good website, and you follow the rules set up for SEO) and as long you are willing to make a commitment to the Path for the proper amount of time (you are interested improving your site over the long term and are willing to commit to SEO for years rather than months) you will succeed in making your site great and you will see tremendous results from your efforts.
What is a crawler?
32 years ago
Throughout a number of posts in this blog I have made reference to improving the way that Google “indexes” your site, and to optimizing your site for crawlers, I feel that I should discuss this issue deeper.
Today, a core job of a search engine is to find all of the information on all of the web pages that exist, including all of the pages that have undoubtedly been created in the 30 seconds that you’ve taken to read this blog post. A “crawler” or a “Meta crawler” is a program that helps Google and many other search engines locate and index all of these pages and to constantly “crawl” the web in search of new websites and new information. It is like an arms race between the search engines to see which of them can find the best and the most accurate information b/c the search engine that can find all pages quickly will have an edge in providing accurate information. (In case you are unsure of the current leader in this sphere, it is Google).
The basic way that a crawler works is by going to a website, and then from there going to every link on that website and every link on those websites and… (This is why it is vital for all new websites to get quality backlinks fast and for all existing sites to have good internal links; b/c without good backlinks it will take search engines much longer to initially crawl and index your site, and without good internal linking all of your pages will not get indexed). **”indexing” refers to the categorization of your pages by a search engine.
Once your site is crawled initially a schedule is set by the crawler to determine how often it will visit your site (based on the rate that the crawler thinks your site gets fresh content, and on what your server can handle). This crawling schedule determines how long it will take for any new information that you publish on your site to appear in a search engine. For example, if this blog is crawled every Monday and every Friday, and I post this post on a Tuesday, it will most likely not make an appearance in search engine results until the next time the blog gets indexed, but if your site is dynamic, and new content is added daily, then it is likely that Google will crawl your site daily. The moral of the story is that optimizing your site to better appeal to search engine crawlers can do wonders for your overall SEO.
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