Seven daft things not to do to your website

Written by Gareth Davies


1. Splash pages

Most ofrepparttar time splash pages are uncalled for. There are only a handful of reasons why you may ever need to use a splash page on your website but these reasons don’t seem to apply to most ofrepparttar 140161 splash pages you can see onrepparttar 140162 Internet. The worst example of a splash page is when a company creates a page and adds their logo with no content. They may also add a ‘click here to enter’ button link when there is no reason to have not entered already.

If a website was a printed brochure then it may be fine to put a company logo onrepparttar 140163 front cover with no text to accompany it - however onrepparttar 140164 Internet it is a bit of a no-no. Print and web are different mediums and as such require different approaches.

I say get torepparttar 140165 point and get torepparttar 140166 point fast, as you only have about 8 seconds to impressrepparttar 140167 typical visitor so you don’t want to throw obstacles like splash pages in their way.

2. Create large file size Flash Intros

Its ill advised to put a heavy loading flash movie right atrepparttar 140168 top end of a website, especially if you actually want people to read pages on your site. A flash intro can look impressive but used irresponsibly can alienate a proportion of users. Even for those interested in motion graphicsrepparttar 140169 novelty will likely wear thin after a couple of viewings so you need to offer a skip intro button if you use a Flash Intro Movie.

Atrepparttar 140170 same time you can make sure you do get value from any Flash motion graphics you commission. Think of a flash movie more as a commercial and they become more useful tools. Getrepparttar 140171 intro made as a general purpose sales movie and you can put it on CD ROM or include it as part of any online or mailing list promotion.

3. Make pages full of exceedingly small text

Really small text is an often ignored but growing problem. Webmasters can spend time and effort creating content for their website, upload it torepparttar 140172 web server sorepparttar 140173 world can see what they have to say, but then they decide to show it in a tiny font size.

There is a simple rule here; text needs to be easy to read if you want people to absorb your message. It’s respectingrepparttar 140174 user to provide any content you wish them to read in a size that is suitable forrepparttar 140175 web. Font size 2 would berepparttar 140176 smallest size you would want to use. If your target audience is over 40 then it is recommended font sizes are increased to point size 3. Do not assume your website visitors all carry a magnifying glass with them - keep body fonts at a sensible size.

4. Very long or complicated enquiry forms

Most folks have a million and one things to do, and one big reason people like usingrepparttar 140177 Internet is to SAVE TIME – so bare this in mind.

Whilst website owners need to capture a certain level of customer info on lead generating websites, visitors like things to be quick, easy and simple. So an online form with 25 mandatory input fields so a user can make an enquiry is not a good idea.

Creative Search Engine Optimization – A Case Study

Written by Halstatt Pires


Search engine optimization this and search engine optimization that. You read and hear about it all day, but what about your site? While there are plenty of articles providing useful information, this article shows you how a real world example met with success. The point of this article is to emphasize creativity when approaching tough optimization situations.

Problems for BusinessTaxRecovery.com

In November of 2004, our firm took onrepparttar seo marketing for BusinessTaxRecovery.com. The site was being promoted through offline activities and pay-per-click campaigns. No effort had been made to achieve high rankings in Google, Yahoo or MSN.

Keyword analysis revealed that combinations ofrepparttar 140077 root keywords, “business” and “tax” were going to be difficult to attack. The primary problem concerned government agencies with web sites. The IRS site, for instance, had roughly 9,680 inbound links and an absolute ton of content. State agencies weren’t far behind. The California tax agency site had roughly 7,000 inbound links and, again, tons of content.

For a final nail inrepparttar 140078 coffin,repparttar 140079 client informed usrepparttar 140080 business was cyclical withrepparttar 140081 busiest months being January through April when people focused on taxes. The site absolutely had to rank highly during this period. We had two months to achieve results.

Gulp!

The Solution for BusinessTaxRecovery.com – 140,000 Hits

After staring at a Salvador Dali painting for a few hours, we came up with a solution. It involved a combination of internal site page focus, meta tag optimization, link exchange and massive article promotion. The results produced 145,828 hits from January through April, with only 5,000 coming fromrepparttar 140082 pay-per-click program.

The first step was to changerepparttar 140083 focus ofrepparttar 140084 site fromrepparttar 140085 home page torepparttar 140086 article page. Jumpingrepparttar 140087 tax agency sites on keywords such as business tax and taxes was impossible in two months, so we didn’t even try. Instead, we decided to focus onrepparttar 140088 keyword phrase “business tax articles” and bring people intorepparttar 140089 site throughrepparttar 140090 article page. Meta tags were optimized and a link exchange program undertaken. The key to campaign, however, was a strong article promotion campaign.

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