SEO… SE-shmo … what is all the hype about, I have a website that’s enough for me. WRONG! Unless you only want people that can remember your website address you need to do at least some basic SEO. Some of the easy things that you can do include keywords, and meta-data.  So, what is SEO anyway? Search Engine Optimization is the process of making changes to your website to make them show up better on search engines. There are two main camps of SEO “black hat” and “white hat” and everything in between. Black-hatters use deceptive means to try to rank higher like having a webpage specifically written for spiders that is completely different than any user will see. White-hatters on the other hand use common practices and common sense in tandem to improve your site’s content and keywords so that the users can find the information that they are looking for. In general the Big three (Google, Yahoo, Bing/MSN) frown on making changes just to improve your ranking on the search engine without improving the user’s ability to find what they are looking for. This point is actually one of the main reasons that Google is changing their algorithm. In short, if it doesn’t allow a potential customer/user to find the information that they request then don’t do it!

At Next Step Computers we run a custom program over your site to determine a score based on best practices. For example, does your site have keywords listed in the meta-tags that are actually on the page itself? Just because you shove a bunch of words in the meta-tags, doesn’t make them KEYwords in the eye of search engines. There are also many free tools available that will tell you bits and pieces of the information that you need to accomplish a good SEO. One of the best tools comes from Google, Google Webmaster Tools.  There are many others, but through Google you can access a community that will help you with questions, the tools will give you information on true keyword usage on your site, etc.

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2. Customers are looking for familiarity. They look for logos, trade symbols, etc when going into a ‘brick and mortar’ shop, why would a website be any different? Keep the look of your site consistent from page to page, making sure that the navigation and information area remain in the same general area. This will assist the customer in focusing where you want them to focus. If you change it up too much a customer might think that they left your site and someone or thing is hijacking them.  Only use alternate colors to accent areas of your site.

Our websites use CSS and html templates that allow pages to be easily added in the future. This also allows for easier updates to the site. If you would like a free consultation on your website please call or send us a message.


Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 2

What are the secrets of the super sites? Why do some sites succeed while others fail? As A business owner you should be asking yourself this daily. Over the next few days I will be posting some tips for building (and maintaining) a better web site.

1. If customers can not at least begin to read about your product in under 10 seconds, they will bounce (leave your site). To minimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (Javascript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your presentation.

Quite a few "web designers" will use a program that will convert an image of the site into smaller images of the whole to make up the site. This means a couple things, slow load time and low search engine recognition. You can tell these sites when you try to copy and paste something and you can't because it is an image.

Our websites use CSS and html with as little javascript and flash as possible to make load times almost instantaneous. If you would like a free consultation on your website please give us a call or send us a message.
Spread the word: Reading: Website Secrets Revealed Part 1