|
|
| |
|
The Most Common Small Business Web Site Traffic Killers
Copyright 2005 John Jantsch
A prospective client asked me to view his web site and
give him some advice on how to make the site better.
Unfortunately, his site was such a mess it became the
inspiration for this article.
One of the primary reasons to have a web site is to attract
and educate visitors. However, this obvious concept seems
to be lost on many web designers. The way your site is
designed, whats there and whats not there, including
what's in the unseen HTML code, can have a great impact on
how much traffic your site will generate.
Heres my list of the most common web site design sins and
traffic killers. Use this list as you design your own site
or show it to your web designer. If your web designer
doesnt understand these points or dismisses them as
unimportant. . .move on!
One word of warning, we are going to look under that hood
of that shiny web page and see some of what makes it run
from the search engine view. This is not always for the
squeamish.
No title tag or meaningless title tags. Title tags are
part of the HTML structure of every web page. Think of them
as the informal name of the page. See for yourself. Go to
http://www.ducttapemarketing.com . Look up there at the
top of browser window and you will see the words - Small
Business Marketing Ideas and Strategies thats the title
of that page. Now right click your mouse in the page and
hit view source or view page source. When you do this,
you are looking at the HTML code for this page. Now, see
that [title]Small Business Marketing Ideas and
Strategies[/title] Every page has got them and they are one
of the most important aspects of your web site. . .yet most
people dont even use them. NOTE: While you are looking at
this source code realize that this is what the search
engines see. No matter what your page looks like it wont
be found if this code doesnt help you get found. More on
that.
Your title tags can be a great tool for getting you search
engine traffic if they are combined with good page content.
Notice that my title tag is not Duct Tape Marketing or the
often used Welcome to My Site. My tag is Small Business
Marketing Ideas and Strategies. Now, think about this for a
minute. Not too many people search for Duct Tape Marketing
and nobody searches for Welcome to My Site, but small
business marketing, now thats another story. Most small
business owners waste the effectiveness of their title tags
with something like: The name of their business or our
products. Use title tags and make them part of your site
content. Think about what people search for in your
industry and name your pages based on that.
Flash Intro pages Dont get me started on this one. You
know those pages that do all this really cool animated
motion graphics and then present you with an entry or
splash screen. Ill admit, these are works of art and I
couldnt design one if I had to, but visit
http://www.superclubs.com/home.asp and do that View
Source trick again and tell me if you think a search
engine could tell what that page was about. Remember,
search engine spiders can't see pictures or hear sounds!
Cleverness There are lots of little things that designers
like to do because they can. The question is whats it
costing your site. One of my favorites is that date thing.
Youve likely been to a site that publishes todays date.
Perhaps there is a good reason for that but go on back to
view source on one these pages and you will see the price
of that little trick. This date trick adds 300-400 lines of
JavaScript code at the beginning of your page. All of this
makes it hard for those search engines to find your real
content. Think long and hard about adding stuff that gets
in the way.
No Anchor Text Hyperlinks Web site designs like to make
little buttons and badges for navigation links. Now, this
can be okay but this is also a place where less is more.
Text with a hyperlink is easily understood by search
engines. Remember, they cant see images. Help them
understand what your page is all about. Even if you have
images navigation, put text links at the bottom of your
page with all of your navigation.
Referral Marketing - This is a text link
Contact info hidden There are some web site owners out
there that dont want to be easy to contact but Im
guessing thats not you. Put your address and contact
information on every page and make them text. More and more
people are turning to their web browser like a phone book.
Lots of local address and content links can make it easier
to find you in your own town.
Most important content out of order Search engines read
your source code in the order they come on it. Some engines
only read a small portion so you should make sure that your
most important content is early on your page. Left side
navigation columns, commonly found on web sites, appear at
the top of the source code and could be hindering your site
from receiving proper credit for the content it contains.
No use of Heading tags HTML uses a series of H or heading
tags to help structure a page like an outline. H1 for the
most important headings h2 for subheads and so on. Each of
your pages will do well to contain a keyword rich headline,
much like an ad for the page, and h1,/h1 mark-up in the
code to let the search engines know that this is a really
important part of the page. Then, do the same with sub
sections with h2,/h2 tags. I know that most designers
understand these tags when it comes to styling a page but
few get the important role they play in the search engine
game.
Look, there is plenty more to learn about this subject and
certain aspects will change from week to week but now that
you have a better understanding of how search engines view
your site you can go out there and make pages that get
found.
------------------------------
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas
City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business
marketing tactics and is the creator of Duct Tape
Marketing a turn-key small business marketing system.
Check out his blog at
http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php
More articles by John Jantsch - http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/John-Jantsch-89/
|
|
|
|
