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Write You - With SEO, Usability Equals Visibility
One law of physics tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.Well I'm here to tell you that, in the case of the internet, that is all wrong.There is nothing "equal" about the reactions of internet users!You know what I mean if you've ever, for example, received an email from a friend (who received their email from a friend of a friend...) telling you "you may have a vir*us on your computer." These emails generally include instructions on how to remove some vital piece of necessary programming from your operating system - something no sensible person would ever do without investigating first.Then... a few minutes or hours later, you get a second email, only this one is an apology. Your friend is embarassed but willing to admit that he/she was duped and now has in his/her possession proof that the above WAS all "just a hoax."In the
On the SEO side, title tags help search engines understand what a page (and by extension a website) is all about. On the usability side, descriptive title tags help people understand what your site is about, especially when they see it listed on a search engine results page with nine other sites.
5. Cross-reference related items.
Here's an easy way to improve your usability and visibility on every page of your site. Recommend related items. At the bottom of an article, for example, you might have "Related article" followed by the keyword-ric
Technology is a wonderful thing as long as it is used as a sales tool and not a crutch. Let me give you a recent example where I didn’t practice what I preach and it came back to haunt me.A client e-mailed me and asked me about doing a program for their management team. I emailed her back and she emailed me back – yada yada yada. The final email (the fourth exchange) she decided that she didn’t have enough left in her training budget to hire me.My point. The email exchange took place over a period of five days and the outcome was not exactly what I would have liked. In hindsight I asked myself, “Why didn’t I just pick up the phone and call her and get it resolved one way or another in one ten minute conversation in one day? When I add up the time to create, write and send five emails and then read her five emails the time spent totaled a little over an hour. This was only one prospect.
In other words, usability equals visibility. So here are seven ways to make your website more usable for people and more visible to search engines.
1. Limit the use of Flash.
Client-side plugins like Flash tend to reduce both usability and visibility, albeit for different reasons. When used carelessly, Flash can frustrate users and send them packing. Overuse of Flash also reduces search engine visibility, because search engines can't decipher your Flash movies. Actually, Google can index Flash files and offer a text representation of them, but you won't like the way it looks!
I'm not saying "All Flash is bad." I'm saying that many of the Flash implementations I see reduce both usability and visibility. If you're going to use Flash (and you care about SEO), contain your Flash within its own space, and offer textual content in addition to the Flash movie. For examples, check out Adobe.com, WebTrends.com or ClickTracks.com.
2. Have at least one basic text menu.
I've seen it time and time again -- dynamic menus preventing internal pages from developing the visibility or ranking they deserve. I've worked with a lot of sites that only have dynamic, Javascript-heavy navigation menus, and they all have one thing in common. The home page will be indexed, frequently crawled and well-ranked. But the internal pages will be virtually invisible.
When you have a Google PageRank of five on your home page but zeroes across all of your internal pages, something is wrong.
I'm not saying to stop using Javascript-based menus completely. But you should know that they're hard for search engines to navigate. Some search engines, like Google, are getting better at crawling dynamic menus. But they still tend to choke on them.
There's an easy fix to all this. Simply create an alternate, text-based menu at the bottom of your site. It won't change the look and feel of your site, but it will improve your site's usability and visibility.
Keep the "fancy" menu to impress your visitors, if that's important to you. But add a simple text menu to help search engines find, index and evaluate your internal pages. At the very least, have a text hyperlink to your site map, which will help search engines find their way inside. And speaking of site maps...
3. Create a site map.
First, let me explain what I mean by site map. In this usage, I'm talking about a site map page of your website that lists all of your important pages. I'm not talking about an XML site map that you put on your root folder for search engines to crawl. Both have value, but I'm only talking about the web page version in this article.
In this discussion, a site map is simply a page that lists all of your other pages (or most of them) as hyperlinks.
Site maps help people find the information or page they're after. They also help search engines crawl your entire website, while offering descriptive hyperlinks to help the engines understand your site's overall theme.
If you have a small to medium-sized website, you could link to every one of your pages. If you have a larger website, it's probably best to focus on your most important, top-level pages.
4. Write specific title tags.
Title tags can be a small change with big impact. I've worked on a lot of older sites with solid PageRank and link popularity, but weak title tags. The title tags on these sites were usually too general to be in line with any kind of search activity. So my first action would always be to rewrite the title tags, making them more descriptive and incorporating key phrases. This single adjustment can have dramatic results, especially on older websites.
On the SEO side, title tags help search engines understand what a page (and by extension a website) is all about. On the usability side, descriptive title tags help people understand what your site is about, especially when they see it listed on a search engine results page with nine other sites.
5. Cross-reference related items.
Here's an easy way to improve your usability and visibility on every page of your site. Recommend related items. At the bottom of an article, for example, you might have "Related article" followed by the keyword-rich
Many aspects of search engine optimization are tedious to perform. Composing compelling meta tags and pondering keywords for every page on a website can become drudgery like mudding and sanding drywall seams before you paint. Aside from the nitty gritty details of website coding, search engine optimization is actually a fascinating pursuit, and blogging is the best part.Operating a blog performs a crucial function for the optimization of a website. Blogging supplies search engines with a steady stream of content, and, if keywords are thoughtfully included in this content, then the search engines will present your blog to your target audience of searchers. A blog that is a complementary component of a commercial website will help to funnel these targeted searchers to that website.A blog also attracts search engines with its frequently updating content. Even a website that is updated often will t
I'm not saying "All Flash is bad." I'm saying that many of the Flash implementations I see reduce both usability and visibility. If you're going to use Flash (and you care about SEO), contain your Flash within its own space, and offer textual content in addition to the Flash movie. For examples, check out Adobe.com, WebTrends.com or ClickTracks.com.
2. Have at least one basic text menu.
I've seen it time and time again -- dynamic menus preventing internal pages from developing the visibility or ranking they deserve. I've worked with a lot of sites that only have dynamic, Javascript-heavy navigation menus, and they all have one thing in common. The home page will be indexed, frequently crawled and well-ranked. But the internal pages will be virtually invisible.
When you have a Google PageRank of five on your home page but zeroes across all of your internal pages, something is wrong.
I'm not saying to stop using Javascript-based menus completely. But you should know that they're hard for search engines to navigate. Some search engines, like Google, are getting better at crawling dynamic menus. But they still tend to choke on them.
There's an easy fix to all this. Simply create an alternate, text-based menu at the bottom of your site. It won't change the look and feel of your site, but it will improve your site's usability and visibility.
Keep the "fancy" menu to impress your visitors, if that's important to you. But add a simple text menu to help search engines find, index and evaluate your internal pages. At the very least, have a text hyperlink to your site map, which will help search engines find their way inside. And speaking of site maps...
3. Create a site map.
First, let me explain what I mean by site map. In this usage, I'm talking about a site map page of your website that lists all of your important pages. I'm not talking about an XML site map that you put on your root folder for search engines to crawl. Both have value, but I'm only talking about the web page version in this article.
In this discussion, a site map is simply a page that lists all of your other pages (or most of them) as hyperlinks.
Site maps help people find the information or page they're after. They also help search engines crawl your entire website, while offering descriptive hyperlinks to help the engines understand your site's overall theme.
If you have a small to medium-sized website, you could link to every one of your pages. If you have a larger website, it's probably best to focus on your most important, top-level pages.
4. Write specific title tags.
Title tags can be a small change with big impact. I've worked on a lot of older sites with solid PageRank and link popularity, but weak title tags. The title tags on these sites were usually too general to be in line with any kind of search activity. So my first action would always be to rewrite the title tags, making them more descriptive and incorporating key phrases. This single adjustment can have dramatic results, especially on older websites.
On the SEO side, title tags help search engines understand what a page (and by extension a website) is all about. On the usability side, descriptive title tags help people understand what your site is about, especially when they see it listed on a search engine results page with nine other sites.
5. Cross-reference related items.
Here's an easy way to improve your usability and visibility on every page of your site. Recommend related items. At the bottom of an article, for example, you might have "Related article" followed by the keyword-ric
Brochures are one of the oldest marketing weapons in the business arsenal. And for good reason. A well done brochure lends an air of credibility while laying out a persuasive sales message. It conveys a lot of information and moves the customer along in the sales process. When it’s done right.When done wrong, a brochure is an exercise in futility. It bores the reader and makes a beeline to the round file. It’s a waste of time, effort, and landfill space.So how can you make sure yours are done right?First of all, stay out of the “we.” Believe it or not, telling your prospect what you think is so great about yourself only impresses you. And it’s not about you. A good brochure, like any other marketing message, is all about what your product or service does for your customer. Every word should be about her, and how what you are offering benefits her.Next, don’t let Sgt. Friday write
I'm not saying to stop using Javascript-based menus completely. But you should know that they're hard for search engines to navigate. Some search engines, like Google, are getting better at crawling dynamic menus. But they still tend to choke on them.
There's an easy fix to all this. Simply create an alternate, text-based menu at the bottom of your site. It won't change the look and feel of your site, but it will improve your site's usability and visibility.
Keep the "fancy" menu to impress your visitors, if that's important to you. But add a simple text menu to help search engines find, index and evaluate your internal pages. At the very least, have a text hyperlink to your site map, which will help search engines find their way inside. And speaking of site maps...
3. Create a site map.
First, let me explain what I mean by site map. In this usage, I'm talking about a site map page of your website that lists all of your important pages. I'm not talking about an XML site map that you put on your root folder for search engines to crawl. Both have value, but I'm only talking about the web page version in this article.
In this discussion, a site map is simply a page that lists all of your other pages (or most of them) as hyperlinks.
Site maps help people find the information or page they're after. They also help search engines crawl your entire website, while offering descriptive hyperlinks to help the engines understand your site's overall theme.
If you have a small to medium-sized website, you could link to every one of your pages. If you have a larger website, it's probably best to focus on your most important, top-level pages.
4. Write specific title tags.
Title tags can be a small change with big impact. I've worked on a lot of older sites with solid PageRank and link popularity, but weak title tags. The title tags on these sites were usually too general to be in line with any kind of search activity. So my first action would always be to rewrite the title tags, making them more descriptive and incorporating key phrases. This single adjustment can have dramatic results, especially on older websites.
On the SEO side, title tags help search engines understand what a page (and by extension a website) is all about. On the usability side, descriptive title tags help people understand what your site is about, especially when they see it listed on a search engine results page with nine other sites.
5. Cross-reference related items.
Here's an easy way to improve your usability and visibility on every page of your site. Recommend related items. At the bottom of an article, for example, you might have "Related article" followed by the keyword-ric
You have spent a few hours looking for a product to promote in your new affiliate marketing business but you are not sure how the merchant will know that the person you sent to their website came from you.This is where tracking comes in. Tracking is the most important thing here. Tracking is what allows you to send as much traffic to the merchant's website and every time someone buys their product that comes from you, you get paid.Here is how it works. A merchant will generate what is called an "affiliate id" or an affiliate link which is unique to you. This will help the merchant in tracking sales generated by you. Often times this is a code that you sends a visitor to a merchant's website and records the referral to your affiliate account.Since one of the more well known merchant database's that you will more than likely check out for affiliate programs is Clickbank I am going to use t
In this discussion, a site map is simply a page that lists all of your other pages (or most of them) as hyperlinks.
Site maps help people find the information or page they're after. They also help search engines crawl your entire website, while offering descriptive hyperlinks to help the engines understand your site's overall theme.
If you have a small to medium-sized website, you could link to every one of your pages. If you have a larger website, it's probably best to focus on your most important, top-level pages.
4. Write specific title tags.
Title tags can be a small change with big impact. I've worked on a lot of older sites with solid PageRank and link popularity, but weak title tags. The title tags on these sites were usually too general to be in line with any kind of search activity. So my first action would always be to rewrite the title tags, making them more descriptive and incorporating key phrases. This single adjustment can have dramatic results, especially on older websites.
On the SEO side, title tags help search engines understand what a page (and by extension a website) is all about. On the usability side, descriptive title tags help people understand what your site is about, especially when they see it listed on a search engine results page with nine other sites.
5. Cross-reference related items.
Here's an easy way to improve your usability and visibility on every page of your site. Recommend related items. At the bottom of an article, for example, you might have "Related article" followed by the keyword-ric
The best part of getting involved in your own wholesale business opportunity or a home based business is that you can always find a winner if your willing to work for it. You can start your own business today and begin earning extra money right away. You need to remember though that opportunity often shows up in overalls and looks like work. Your own internet business opportunity can work great but you must work at it. If you choose not to work it the way it should be, your internet business can become a living nightmare. If you do, you too can be cashing in on the internet revolution.In my opinion, getting involved as a drop shipping retailer is hands-down the best business opportunity online. A drop shipper will provide the product you offer, and ship the product you request to your customers. The best part of using a system like this is that you don't have to inventory merchandise, thus keeping you
On the SEO side, title tags help search engines understand what a page (and by extension a website) is all about. On the usability side, descriptive title tags help people understand what your site is about, especially when they see it listed on a search engine results page with nine other sites.
5. Cross-reference related items.
Here's an easy way to improve your usability and visibility on every page of your site. Recommend related items. At the bottom of an article, for example, you might have "Related article" followed by the keyword-rich title of a related article. About.com does this well.
On the SEO side, this increases your internal linking profile, improves the "crawlability" of your site, and helps search engines understand the theme of your site. On the usability side, this helps readers find related information, improves the "stickiness" of your site, and enhances your overall navigation scheme.
6. Unwrap your PDF files.
Search engines can index PDF files, and they will assign them some value based on their titles. But a PDF does not compete with a web page when it comes to SEO. So if you "unwrap" your PDF files by making web pages out of them, you give the search engines more information to read, understand and evaluate. As a result, your rankings will improve. You can still add a "Download PDF version" link on each page, if you want.
On the usability side, you improve the reader's experience by giving them the option of reading the page now or downloading the PDF for later. You're also eliminating the surprise of having unmarked PDF files. People expect links to go to web pages, unless they're labeled with PDF, WMV or some other application type. Don't launch someone's Acrobat program unless they're expecting it.
7. Offer descriptive content.
I hate mystery websites. You know, the ones that practically hide what they're selling, promoting or offering. You've seen these sites before. They're often 85% Flash or image-based, with the occasional snippet of text here or there. And where they do have text, they often use poetic, meaningless language that some junior copywriter labored over in hopes of a creative award.
I leave these kinds of websites without any idea of what they offer, and I leave quickly. Search engines leave the same way, without the precious data they need to evaluate the site and determine its meaning. Without descriptive content to support each of your pages, products and services, you're depriving two audiences -- potential customers and search engines.
Don't ever let a creative agency tell you that people don't read websites. A truer statement is "people don't read bad websites, or irrelevant websites, or poorly organized websites." But if somebody wants what you're selling, they will read everything you offer before picking up the phone or pulling out their wallet. The question is, are you offering them anything?
The right people will read the right content 99 times out of 100. Search engines will read your content 99 times out of 100. So why not capitalize on a sure thing?
* You may republish this article online if you retain the byline and the active hyperlinks below. Copyright 2006, Brandon Cornett.
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