Five basic things that will help improve my website

Worried that your website is having trouble finding its target audience?

Here are five basic activities, some of which you may already be doing, ALL of which are foundational tools in the website marketer’s toolbox.

1. Check how you use your keywords

Keywords, or more correctly “keyword groups” or “keyphrases”, are essential for powerful search engines to index your website. In its simplest form, a keyword group is a set of words that you expect (hope) a potential visitor will type into a search field when searching for exactly your type of product, service, or information.

Regularly researching and monitoring the keywords you use on your site is vitally important if you are going to reach and continue to reach your target market or “demographic”.

How do you find the best keyword groups?

The first and easiest guideline is to ask yourself what you would type into a search engine if you were looking for your own website. It’s always a good idea for any website owner to imagine themselves in the shoes of their ideal website visitor or ideal lead.

Make a list, it doesn’t have to be long, and test these keywords in a real search engine. Do the sites you see on the list offer a service similar to yours? If so, you are probably starting on the correct lines. Anglers tend to fight over the patches with the most fish!

Another simple task is to ask family and friends, people not very close to your project or too “net savvy” what THEY would write if they searched for your site. Their answers can often be quite surprising, but very illuminating.

In addition to real people, there are plenty of tools out there to help you analyze your groups of keywords online. Google AdWords has a great tool to help you find groups of keywords. The Google Analytics suite in general is a great free set of tools that can give you a lot of useful information (although you do need to sign up for a free account).

So, you have a good set of keyword groups and you want to know how best to use them on your pages. The rule of thumb is to use your key phrases in a way that gives them emphasis without stifling the value of your website’s content. Nothing is less fun to read than a paragraph filled with repetitive combinations of key phrases that obscure any meaning or readability in the text. Write them into your web content, yes, but don’t sacrifice content quality to do so. A good web writer can weave keywords into the text so that you hardly even know they’re there. If writing website copy isn’t your thing, why not consider hiring a professional? Many are very reasonably priced, and everyone should be able to give you samples and referrals.

A quick note on “Flash”. Flash animations look very nice, but any text content embedded in a Flash movie is often completely invisible to search engines and therefore does nothing to improve your search placement. Use Flash sparingly and never just because it looks cool, although I know this is very tempting. The “ooh and ahh” factor is very tempting, but there are still many users who don’t allow flash, and it can be slow to load and annoying to navigate. Never, ever, ever start your site with a splash page movie. It’s very bad for search engine placement, and 99% will just want to hit the “skip this screen” button to get to the pages that really matter.

The most important places to rank for your keywords are “tags” (important elements in the actual HTML), your title tags, meta description tags, the h1 tags and your junior tags (h2, h3) and the keywords tag. itself (although this has been greatly devalued by search engines in recent years because it is frequently misused).

Each page of your website should be optimized for just two or three key phrases (although different for each page, if necessary).

A title tag should be 7-10 words maximum, and any keyword should not be used more than twice (a good trick is to use variants, eg “design” with “designers”).

A description tag must be no longer than 150 characters (letters including spaces), must be written in plain English (or your site’s language), and must directly describe the content of that page.

Both title tags and description tags must be unique for each page on your site.

The H1 tag wraps the key text header on your page. It must be near or at the top of your page, include at least one of your keyword groups, and only have one per page.

Many designers still use the keyword tag itself, but Google and others have often stated that it no longer plays a role in ranking because in the early days of search many sites abused it, using it to pad large amounts of words. key with no value to the visitor or search engine.

I’ll dedicate a future post entirely to tags and how to use them, and don’t be afraid if you laugh at the frequent use of the word “tag.” I still do it all the time, but then again, I’m British.

On the other hand, there are several “don’ts”. Don’t try to hide keywords by making the text the same color as the page background. Don’t create lists of your key phrases that are repeated at the bottom of the page. Don’t duplicate content on your site as a quick and easy way to increase your keyword count.

As a general rule of thumb, if it looks sneaky, shady, or misleading, it probably is, and you’ll likely be penalized for it by a search engine system that’s seen it all before.

2. Make sure your online and offline marketing work together

All avenues of marketing must be mutually reinforcing. Make sure you have a fairly consistent style in both your print and online materials. If you have a logo or corporate color scheme, make sure they are used consistently. Be sure to advertise your web address whenever possible. It should be on your business cards, t-shirts, vehicles, emails, email footers, mugs, in fact anywhere you’re looking to attract people to your organization. Your website is effectively your online storefront, but no store will attract visitors unless people know it exists. If people see your site address regularly, it will stick in their mind and be at the top of their list to visit when searching for your particular service.

Don’t be afraid to include your website address when meeting in person with potential customers or in interviews or press releases. Your website is a showcase for what you do. Encourage people to visit and be impressed!

3. Feedback – What do others think of your site?

When you spend hours building a website, it can sometimes get too close to the project to be able to effectively assess what it’s doing well and what it’s doing less well.

It’s always helpful to get unbiased opinions from colleagues, friends, family, associates, and ESPECIALLY from actual visitors to your website. The more objective and honest the opinion, the more useful it will be.

Ask visitors to browse your site, try your shopping cart, read your text content. Even seemingly small issues, like poor grammar or an unclear line on a web form, can have a big effect on the number of visits to your site that actually convert into a useful sale or opportunity.

Many sites have a comment area where visitors can post suggestions or just tell you how well you’re doing your job. Internet users like to be asked for their opinion, hence the widespread use of surveys on millions of sites. As a website owner or administrator, you should value every feedback you receive. Even seemingly creepy or silly comments tell you something about the type or audience your site attracts.

4. Web 2.0: use of the latest tools and trends

The Internet is constantly changing and growing. In recent years there has been a big trend towards more online social networking and interactive content. It is important to embrace these trends whenever possible. These new ways of using the website are often referred to as Web 2.0, even though it’s really just an extension of the original Internet. As technology improves, these concepts will become increasingly important.

Set up personal pages and pages for your organization on social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook to promote yourself.

Start writing a blog, tell people about your organization, or offer people valuable content about your particular area of ​​expertise.

“Tweet” (tweet or mini, instant blogs) making noteworthy updates on your activities, but please don’t babble nonstop about your latest coffee, hair wash, or posting the same thoughts over and over again. Moderation when tweeting is a much appreciated virtue! Use the appropriate text if possible. Using obscure acronyms or overusing “trendy” abbreviations is honestly quite annoying. I said it there.

Make a video and post it on one of the many Internet video sites (for example, YouTube).

Post regular audio podcasts for people to follow with RSS and listen to at home or on your iPod on the go.
Most of these services are free, apart from the investment of time and effort.

Don’t be afraid to ask others what they use and how they promote themselves. Most people are only too happy to share something new and exciting that they have found on the web.

If everything still seems overwhelming, talk to a friendly Internet professional. If they know what they’re doing, they should be able to answer your questions and concerns very quickly.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to include a link to your own site! That, after all, is where you really want everyone to go.

5. Happy, happy, happy!

This is the one area that I can’t speak highly enough of. The more fresh, well-written, useful and entertaining content you post on the internet, the more traffic and therefore more business you will attract to your site.

Keep the content of your own site up to date.

If you post content on another site, make sure it is of some use or interest to the users of that site. If you’re adding text to your site, consider breaking it up into manageable parts with graphics or headers. The attention span of internet users is staggeringly short, even for the best of us, and nothing makes the heart sink more than a huge page of non-stop text in tiny font (hope you don’t find me hypocritical here! )

The more work you put into your website content, the more successful it will be. It must be valuable content, which means that visitors will get something from it. Keep it clear, keep it snappy, and keep it interesting. In your case, I also believe in keeping your content fun. If you can make a visitor smile, you’ve gone a long way in keeping them on your website.

Happy web creation and content writing. Every touch of the keyboard takes you one step closer to website success!