Website Optimisation Articles

Use of Keywords and Keyphrases in your Web Page Content

Selecting the right keywords for your web site optimisation will be critical to the success of your site being found by the correct market segments. When defining your internet marketing campaign it is most important that you have clearly defined your market position, your market segments and your product alignment strategies. Only after you have completed this should you research your keywords. This article does not attempt to keywords research – this is covered a future article. For now we assume you have found the keywords that work best to your internet marketing strategy.

9 Secrets to Writing Good Copy

So you think you have something worthwhile to sell. Great ! So sell your product but be sure you don't just talk abut it or yourself. If you are putting together a web page to sell your services or a product there are 9 last minute secrets you should think about when writing your content.

What are you really selling - Be clear in your mind, go back to the very core of what your product is and what purpose it serves. If it doesn't solve a problem then you have nothing to sell.
Turn features into benefits and then into feelings - At the end of the day any buying decision is 80% emotion and 20% logic, therefore be sure you tap into the feelings of your audience.
What is the biggest benefit - People like the non-complex. Keep it simple. Find the biggest benefit and focus on that.
Opening and Close - Hit them right up front with your value proposition and be sure to not leave them hanging on your words as they read through your content. Your close is just as important as your first paragraph. It should take them to a focused point of decision.
Short words and sentences - It has been proven that in selling, use of short words and short sentences is the most effective weapon you have at your disposal in convincing your market to your product.
Write as you speak - Don't write flowery sentences sprinkled with complex or confusing words. Be yourself and write as you would say it. Your readers with the style of writing will relate to this style.
Read your copy aloud - When you have finished print off your content and read it aloud to your self. If you stumble at any point then CHANGE IT !
Stories sell - Every speech writer and every copy writer knows that there is no better way of persuading your audience than to hook them in with a personal story that they can relate to.
Open loop - Always keep bringing your readers back to your action point. You want them to do something, have them come back to you for the sale.

Maintaining an Effective Optimised Web Site for Your Business

In order to attract and continue attracting the right sort of visitors to your web site you need to ensure that it is effective in its delivery of information and functionality. If there is no value to your VISITORS then they will not return and to have them return is what you want. You also need to ensure that they take some form of action that leads to business opportunities for you.

Research shows that only 40% of websites are indeed effective. My personal experience would put the figure MUCH lower. How do you measure effectiveness. As the owner of the website you can answer that question by asking yourself - To what extent does my website positively contribute to the way in which I conduct my business.

As to what constitutes a positive contribution and what you can do about that is another matter. Contribution is most often measured in terms of bottom line revenue, be it direct or indirect. You should measure this after all you have most likely put a heavy investment into your business website and unless you are in the practice of throwing money away I would suggest you conduct an audit of your website to clearly determine just how effective it really is.

In the mean time you may wish to consider the following points:

Treat your website with respect - You have spent a lot of money putting it together. You continue to spend money keeping it active. You pay far more for a salesperson who invariably is involved in activities that can be achieved through your website. Be smart, use your resources effectively and deliver better results your
The website is not the domain of your IT Manager of PA - This is a corporate tool and impacts every part of your business. Get your whole management team involved with decisions made about the look and feel, the functionality and the support. Be sure to involve the marketing people by the way!management
Document the processes - This is no different to any other aspect of your business. Every aspect of your site and its operation and support should be documented and managed to a plan. This is a valuable business asset. The review of its effectiveness should be conducted on a regular basis and in accordance with a documented plan. Be sure that your operational staff have an input to the design. Whilst web developers are good at creating terrific looking websites they are not business people and have little understanding of such so do not be lead by them in how your business should operate its website.your
Designing to meet the needs of those with disabilities - Whilst it may sound strange to expect blind people to read your website this is in fact a requirement under W3C standards and in fact a disabled person apparently took the Sydney 200 Olympic website to court because they could not read it as a visually impaired person and won their case. A few websites now have the ability to be read aloud as they comply with the W3C standards but I would venture to say this is a small minority.
Does your website address your entire market - How many websites seek an international audience yet are only delivered in English. In Australia we are particularly notorious for this and so of en such websites seek out our Asian partners as a key target market. Even matters as simple as providing phone numbers without international codes or giving out 1300 or 1800 numbers without the local number. We sometimes overlook the fact that terms in our own country are not understood overseas.
The last aspect to consider is the integrity of your code - Be sure that all program code is without error and that all links go to an actual page. Misusing links are one of the greatest downfalls in websites. A number of websites provide free testing tools to verify W3C compliance, missing links or poor page upload speeds.

Responsibility for an effective website belongs with you as the business owner. Engaging suitably experienced Web Architects can assist in delivering an effective design that will provide functionality that works with your business and an Internet marketing strategy that will promote your website responsibly.

There are keywords and there are keywords...

When I first became interested in getting my website to rank in the search engines many years ago it was all about setting the right key words in your META TAG. While the search engines have moved away from this now unfortunately many people have quite cottoned onto this and continue to believe that filling your META KEYWORDS TAG is important.

The more interesting points to come out of 10 Site Audits

A number of business owners sought assistance in determining just how well designed their websites really were and why they failed to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Though not an exhaustive list this does show up the more common shortcoming in many of the sites reviewed and are common problems with many websites.

The preliminary audit conducted examined only the home page for each of the sites and looked at the page from two perspectives:
a) The quality of site design by way of layout and compliance to good presentation standards for maintaining visitor interest
b) The degree to which the site was optimised around some base criteria being quality of the meta tags, effective use of keywords, site popularity in the search engine indexes.