In an earlier article we explained why the key visitors to a web site are people and search engines. Which one is more important does not matter, suffice to say both are important and both are essential for a web site to thrive and prosper.

In the earlier article, seven essential aspects of website optimization for search engines were discussed. Although we are examining website optimization as separate parts one part for people the other part for search engines in practice both have to be considered at the same time.

This is on account of the fact that website optimization for the search engines often conflicts with the website optimization requirements for people. This is a frequent dilemma that requires compromise in favour of one or the other.

Here we examine website optimization further to see how it can affect a person’s behaviour.

But before we get to that, have you undertaken any website optimization aimed at people ?

If so:
Did you track, test or measure how effective your web page optimisation actually was ?

I would take a guess and say you would say “NO” to at least one if not both these questions. Even if you possess the design skills it can be very difficult to be detached and objective when viewing your own website, the more so if you did the design.

What is of significant benefit is the trained eye of an independent person to shed new light on aspects of the design that could be improved. If you would like an assessment carried out on your website complete a webpage optimization form on our website for a FREE evaluation.

Establishing the effectiveness of any web page optimisation can only really be done through visitor tracking and measuring definable visitor actions, combined with A/B split-testing or Multivariate split-testing.

When undertaking site and page evaluations from a human visitor perspective we suggest the emphasis be on seven factors that influence people the most when visiting a web site.

An in-depth evaluation involves many more aspects, but for simplicity the main ones are summarized as:-

Visual Appearance
The overall color scheme should be sympathetic to the theme of the site, with text of a size and color that makes it easy to read. Backgrounds or images should not be distracting and should compliment the look and theme of the web page providing additional useful information and enhancing the visitor’s perception and understanding of the site. Do not use images unless they contribute to your message.

Visitor Impression
The web page should clearly convey the impression you want the visitor to have all within 3 to 5 seconds of them landing on the page. Your web page must give people a quick and clear summary of what you are offering. If people can’t work this out quickly most will generally become frustrated and move to another page, or another web site.

Transparency and Offer Value
A visitor must be able to clearly determine what your web site is offering. Uncertainty regarding what’s being offered leads to confusion and visitor loss. Any proposition or offer must also have value in the mind of the visitor. The page needs to answer the questions why should they accept what you say or buy from you rather than someone else and what’s in it for them.

Slide and Glide
The page should be clearly laid out in a single column avoiding two or three column layouts. Studies show that multi-column layouts distract visitors and cause them to deviate from what should be an easy flowing path down the page. Many studies have also shown that in general, key information or impressions you want to impart to the visitor should be across the top of the page below the header, in the top left corner and page center. Using these guidelines a layout can be designed with minimal distractions and an easy to follow flowing path to the objective of the page.

Page Navigation
Navigation of the page should be easy to use, links in the page should look like links – blue underlined and it should be clear what they are leading to. Make use of image alt tags and link tags as an aid to the visitors understanding of where links are going. Using link and image tags will make your site more accessible to the visually impaired and add to your compliance to W3C web design standards.

Web Site Navigation
This frequently causes one of the biggest conflicts in website optimization between what is best for the search engines and what is best for people, as both usually have different requirements. Site wide links should be consistent in appearance and location. The only exception to this is normally the home page. Large sites can benefit from a search box and all except sites with less than 10 pages, should have a site map as a further aid to visitor navigation.

The Proposition Experience
If a site provides downloadable information, purchasable products or services, or sign-ups to obtain information, products or services, then the system the visitor must follow should be short and without distractions and hindrances. A poorly designed fulfilment system is a major contributor to offer abandonment.

Typical deficiencies are:

• Having too many steps and/or pages to the fulfilment process
• Insufficient use of trust builders
• Requiring unneeded personal data
• A failure to reaffirm the value of the offer during the process
• Insufficient reassurance of the customer during the process
• Asking for too much information too early in the process
• Absence of customer assurance

If you have a fulfilment or order process with more than 3 steps you should look closely to see what can be done to shorten the process.

Download Speed
With the advent of high-speed Internet, many web site designers have abandoned mainly text web page designs preferring instead graphical designs with flash movies and videos. Modern web pages have become so bloated that even for someone with a high-speed Internet connection they can be slow to access with a normal browser.

The consequence of this is that for 30-40% of Internet users with no broadband connection these sites are unavailable to them or take longer to download than most people are prepared to wait.

What makes the problem far worse is that many image laden web pages are not effectively optimized. This means the images and movies in the design are not optimized for quality while maintaining the smallest downloadable file size. In our experience across 100’s of sites savings of 50% or more in the download size of images are common and achievable through better optimization.

We provide web design and website optimization service that enable site owners to improve functionality and increase profitability of their web sites. We also specialize in web design and research and publish free reports on web page optimisation.

Most of our website optimization service we provide are Guaranteed under a No-Win, No-Fee basis. If we don’t win you the agreed results you pay us nothing.

We also provide website optimization service, site evaluations and carry out product investigations. Visit us for a consultation or a FREE website optimization report on your web site.

When looking at some of the ways to get high ranking backlinks, such as, Link Development Backlinks Link Development Backlinks are a very good system to get your website to the top ten of the search engines. The only thing is that you are probably not too happy with the workload. Who has the energy to build a website, promote it, lay out and implement a marketing strategy, and write multiple articles?

Most people just don’t have that kind of time. So, it’s important to locate resources to help you build the backlinks that you need. This can take the form of hiring people on your team to help you build or re-write PLR articles or to help with article submission to different directories. Also, you might want to consider article submission software to help automate the process and reduce your workload.

Contract Others To write For You

Like software developers there are plenty of copy writers that are willing to write custom articles for you. You can find some at exquisitewriting.com, Elance.com, Guru.com or at RentAWriter.com. DigitalPoint.com also offers forums for people looking to hire writers. Craigslist.com can give you access to local writers in your area, if that’s important to you. You will have to buy the full rights in order to use them in the article directories.

In large bulk orders, you might be able to get away with $5-10 an article ranging within the 300 to 700 word range. While there are people willing to create articles at very low prices, you may find that the quality isn’t what you tricky and often a very secretive business. After all, if we knew exactly the algorithms that major companies use to rank the sites in their listings, than anyone could fool a search engine and the entire industry would collapse overnight.

So, while you can learn as much as you want about forums that allow backlinks Link Development Backlinks are a subject that takes a while to grasp. You won’t get the finer points of which backlinks are worth more than others to your website, unless you take the time read some of the good reports that are available to you.

You will find out what specific aspects of a backlink are important in Chapter 2 of “Backlinks: Marketing Gold”. There I discuss the importance of the anchor text that is linking back to your site and the types of sites that link to you. This is just one of the attributes that can affect your search ranking, but it appears to be a strong criterion in how you rank, at least in the Google search engine.

Google has captured over 60% of the search engine market so I feel that is the only search engine to spend valuable time to optimize for. In “Backlinks: Marketing Gold” you can also learn how the context and positioning of a backlink has a great effect on how useful it is to improve your page rank in search engines. Of course, you will want to get backlinks from sites with good page rank, as they will be weighted more or considered more relevant by the search engines.

The higher up you are in the page listing (home page not necessarily being the best page), the more the backlink is weighted. You will learn why link referral pages are no longer as good a strategy as getting your link on relevant pages with few other backlinks. Also, it may surprise you to learn that where the link appears on the page (top, middle, and bottom) can also influence how strong a backlink it is perceived to be by the search engine-ranking algorithm.

There is of course more to why you need back links. Specifically “One Way” back links. Learn why you need link development, backlinks, and most importanly where and how to get good high PR backlinks without spending a dime. Visit: http://pleazz.com/craigs/Get_more_backlinks.htm

Also read this post about free website traffic.

There are a plethora of methods that will drive visitors to your Internet site. You can pay for it by buying web ads; you can create it by social networking; you can build a mailing list, or partner with other peoples’ email lists; or you can obtain visitors from organic search engine listings by employing SEO (search engine optimization). This article will go into detail about the latter technique, which will probe two aspects to bear in mind when applying search engine optimisation to your site and content.

The Search Engines Adore Theme Relevancy

When writing content for a webpage, do some preliminary keyword study to discover a variety of associated keywords that have bearing within that market.

For example, if you were creating some content relevant to self development, you should sprinkle your content with other associated and relevant words such as ‘goal setting’, ‘law of attraction’, and ‘career success’. It’s assumed that the search engines can detect the length of time a visitor remains on a webpage, and the greater the time they stay, the more likely it is seen that a webpage is more likely to be of relevance and value to the users’ search, and therefore the more likely they will increase the ranking of your page.

So make your content helpful and relevant for this purpose. This will also boost the chance that visitors will bookmark your site as one of their favorites, which might lead not only to return visits, but again to more credibility in the search engines.

The Meta-Tags Behind Your Webpage

A further element with search engine optimization is to be assured that you make the optimum use possible of the meta-tags on each of your webpages. The most important ones are the Title Tag and the Description Tag. The Description tag is what appears underneath the title in the search engine result lisitings, and the Title Tag is the blue underlined text link that appears above the description. The title tag should not be greater than sixty characters long, this includes the spaces, and the Description tag should not exceed 140 characters.

Consider the Peel Away Ads website as an example. If you Google the term peel away ads you will see its title tag display as: “Peel Away Ads with Awesome Bonuses - $17″, and the description tag is: “Peel Away Ads is the perfect solution to grab the attention of your website’s visitors. This Peel Ads package includes 7 software programs for a total …” You will see that the description tag has been truncated after the first 150 characters. The same will occur with a title tag which is over 65 characters.

What you place within the Title and Description tags are not only highly relevant for ranking for the keywords that you are targetting, but in addition to that, what you write within them will have an enormous bearing as to whether visitors click on to your site or not. You can learn a lot more about search engine optimization and all the other aspects of Internet marketing within the PortalFeeder group.

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