January 30, 2006

Do You Make These Three Webpage Optimization Mistakes?

1. Wrong use of Title Tag in the HTML Heading
   I've seen webpages with titles like 'new page 1', or only containing the business name (no specification) and even one with only scrolling characters. Many webpages had no title at all.
   
   So .... USE YOUR TITLE tag and use it to its fullest extent. It's the most important HTML tag.
   
   Include your main keywords in it. If that's the name of your company, then also put your niche and location in it, that's more targeted. Don't use a single word like Webdesign. Also don't make it too general like Easy Webdesign.
   
   So instead of COMPANYNAME, make it COMPANYNAME NICHE LOCATION. And if you can add something specific for your company, add it.
   
   So, instead of 'BluePrint' (your company name) use 'BluePrint Webdesing Boston'. That's more targeted.
   
   Here's how to work that out.
   Think about your business or service. Why should anyone buy from you or why should anyone sign up for your newsletter? What is so special about you, your product, your service, your newsletter? What makes you unique?
   
   Then ....
   
   open up your text-editor (not a word processor like Word, but something like NotePad) and write 4 or 5 lines of 65 characters, stating why I should buy your product or service or why I should sign up for your newsletter.
   
   Save that little text file on your desktop. Not somewhere on your hard disk, no, right on your desktop so you can see it every day.
   Open it every day, make several versions trying to improve with each version you make.
   
   Always use the best version whenever you send out an email, make a post on a forum or a comment on a blog. It's your signature file.
   
   Then make a one liner out of your sig-file. THAT should be in your title-tag!
   
   
2. Not telling immediately What's In It For Me!
   
   On quite some sites I had to guess, click and read too much to find out what your site is about and more importantly, what it can do for me, the visitor.
   
   Here's one on which I found the following:

   "My name is XXXX and I want to thank you for visiting my site. I'm sorry I don't have it completed yet but I hope you'll return again and look around. My plans is to have this a continuous growing site so you may want to visit often."

   Well guess what?
   
   THEY WON'T COME BACK!
   Thanks for playing, insert coin and start all over again.
   
   You know why? Because there was no reason to come back. There's nothing 'In It For Them'. That's why.
   
   Here's another one:
   

   xxxxx.com...... the home of great downloads, information, articles, resources and links to more free stuff!!!

   Yeah right. Is it about babies, bulldozers, tickets, holidays ....?
   Why let me guess? Tell me IMMEDIATELY what's in it for me and I may hang around.
   
   
3. Bad use of Anchor Texts.
   
   On most websites, to navigate to the home page, I had to click the link 'Home'.
   You can improve your ranking drastically if you replace that by 'YourMainKeyword Home'.
   
   Anchor texts are the words that appear in between the <a> and the </a> part of your link. Search engines add value to anchor texts, because they usually say something about what's coming. Even within your website, use of a good anchor text is important.
   
   In the link to the home page, refer to www.yourdomain.com, without the index.htm(l).
   
   If you're exchanging links, the anchor text is very important. Here's a great tool to see how your anchors look like from outside links: anchor checking tool.
   
   

Article by Case Stevens of Affordable Online Strategies.
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