Website Design and Promotion

Submitting Your Site to Search Engines

This is really passe, for the most part. Still, many people think the way to get good search engine rankings is by submitting their site to the search engines. That's such a small part of getting your site ranked highly by Google et al, that I rarely even bother with it any more. Especially the ones that charge — in particular for smaller socially responsible businesses on a budget.

Having said that, it still doesn't hurt to submit to Google and Yahoo's free directories. Reason being that people can find your site by looking through the directory listings (as opposed to doing a regular automated search) and they provide links to your site.

Google's directory is hooked up to DMOZ's Open Directory Project. To get listed there, you need to suggest your site to the Open Directory. Sites are filtered out by actual humans, which is good in that the "riff raff" gets picked out. The bad news is that is can take quite a while (sometimes months) until your site gets listed. But, what do you expect for free? ;)

Yahoo's free directory works similarly. You need to suggest your site. Then wait. Unless you want to be in the paid Express submission.

In both cases, you suggest the specific category that your site should be considered for.

Again, don't put too much energy into these submissions. But, if you're a new, small socially responsible business, just starting out, with a new website, their a decent, free starting point. But, there are many other ways to get good rankings that you mustn't forget — see previous posts.

Do I Need a Site Map?

Before I start... Last chance to enter our FREE draw to win a professional review of your web site.

Okay, what's the deal with site maps? I'm not talking about Google Sitemaps, but having a "table of contents" type of page on your site. No, you don't NEED one, but they can be useful for a couple of reasons:

1. The obvious reason - it can help your visitors find a page, without having to dig around too much (especially if your site map is somewhat organized). And, it can be an easy way to have a quick glance at all that's available on your site.

2. Google likes 'em. It places importance on your site's pages (partially) based on how many clicks it takes to get there from your home page. If you have a page that's buried within a section within a section within a section, Google figures that's not an overly important page. But, if it's within a click or two from your home page, it's probably worth something. If your site map is linked from your home page, then it's only 2 clicks to each page listed. Not too bad.

Title Tags and Your Business Name

Title tags are the words you see at the top of your web browser when you visit a web page. They are an important aspect of SE rankings and a lot of websites are not using them to their full advantage. People often make the mistake of putting the name of their business in the title tag, but not enough of the keywords  in order to get the best possible ranking for their site. I am often surprised at the number of reputable businesses that do this. While you can use the name of your business in your title tag, you should place it at the end after your important keywords as search engines read from left to right.

For more information on title tags, Blog Business World has a good post explaining their importance  and how you can use them to increase your rankings.

Test Your Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines, like headings in copy, are one of the most important and challenging aspects of a strong campaign. Nick Osborne explains how and why to test your subject lines with a select group of your subscribers before sending out your newsletter to your entire list.

Nick tests 4-5 subject lines with 500-1000 names each depending on the size of his list. He then checks for open and click through rates and points out that the one with the highest open rate won't always be the one that brings you the best revenues. After running his test, the next day, Nick sends out the newsletter to the rest of his list with the headline that had the best results.

It's a clever idea that could make a big difference in your marketing.

New Year's Promotion: Free Draw

We are offering a FREE DRAW to win a professional review of your existing website.  The review will point out what's working and what's not in your website and will be an invaluable tool in helping your site to get the results you’re looking for — more visitors, more clients, more sales. We will provide suggestions to help improve the site's design, navigation, copy (text) from a marketing perspective, and make your site search engine friendly so that your site will be better indexed in the search engines.

The lucky winner will have their site reviewed on our blog, which will also provide you with some additional exposure for your services.

To be automatically entered in the draw to have your website reviewed, simply subscribe to our newsletter, Net Results (at the top left of this page). Note: We will never share your contact information with any third party. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Deadline for contest entry is January 27, 2006.  Get your entry in soon!

Are We Overdoing the Links?

Funny thing I notice in some websites, particularly "newbie" websites: too many links. But how can you have too many links? Isn't that the whole point of the Web? Well, yes it is, in a way, but anything can be overdone.

The idea of a website is that it is interactive, meaning you're reading something and then you see that you can click on a link to get more information about something. And, from there, you can get more information about something else. And on and on... Until you've gone off on such a tangent that you can't remember what the original page/site was that you were looking at.

You really don't want people leaving your site before they've read what you've got to say. So, be careful with having too many links, especially to external sites. Even internal links should, for the most part, be placed so that there is a natural flow for the reader — i.e., they've read most or all of a page (or a news snippet) and then at the end see a "more" type of link to continue to the next logical page (or rest of the news article).

Remember, you're writing and designing your site so that your visitors will read through and stay on your site — and then take a step of action towards contacting your or giving you business. It's easy to lose 'em by pointing them elsewhere. You've got to do their best to guide them within your site, not to someone else's.

Why Customers Leave Your Website

Marketing Journal has posted the results of a study conducted by Juniper Research on the reasons why customers leave your website. Here is the summary:

• slow or broken links: 84%
• unable to find needed information: 68%
• unable to find company information: 31%
• limited search functionality: 23%
• poorly labled links: 16%
• outdated FAQ: 6%
• site map too general:4%
• site uses pop-up ads: 4%
• other: 3%

This research shows how important it is to check your links and make sure they are all working. I know nothing frustrates me more than going to a site where the links are broken. The importance of having solid information on your site is also highlighted by this study. If people don't find what they are looking for off they go.