Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips » online marketing

8 Keys to a Designing Great Website

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:25:22 +0000

8 Keys to a Designing Great Website

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

If you’re a small business owner, you probably can’t imagine running your business without a website. And if you want to be a successful business owner, you need to have a really great website. This means that before you do anything else, you need to determine your target audience, the website’s purpose, your budget, your design, your navigation, and your content. Just making all of this up as you go along will result in a mediocre website that doesn’t work effectively for you. Follow these 8 keys as you create a great website that becomes the difference between success and failure for your business.

Know Your Purpose. Before you do anything else, you must determine the purpose of your website. The purpose is the basis of everything else, including content, navigation, and design. Is the purpose of your website to educate? To generate leads? To entertain? To make sales? If you neglect to define your purpose at the very beginning, then the rest of your effort is wasted.
Know Your Budget. Be clear about exactly what you can do with the budget you have and then make the most of exactly what you can afford.
Know How to Design. Pretty pictures are wonderful, but most search engines give preferential treatment to websites that go easy on graphics and focus instead on text. Minimalism is the way to go when creating your website.
Know Your Audience. Who are you hoping to attract to your site? Take this information and design a website that will be attractive to that audience.
Know How to Create Good Navigation. If your website is difficult to navigate or is cluttered with irrelevant graphics and text, your visitors will leave as quickly as they arrived. If your website doesn’t make sense to a visitor, if there are too many or too few links, or if it’s just too hard to get around your site, you will lost visitors right and left. A great rule of thumb is that is shouldn’t take a visitor any more than three clicks to get anywhere on your website.
Know Your Content. Your website must contain a good deal of keyword-rich text in order to get high search engine rankings. But your content mustn’t give the impression that you’ve been sitting in front of your computer all day trying to figure out how to cram in just a few more keywords. It must still be relevant, clear, and well-written in order to appeal to the humans who visit your site.
Know How to Build It. Who’s going to build your website? Are you going to do it yourself or are you going to hire a professional to do it for you? Your budget will go a long way towards answering this question, but remember that you get what you pay for. Find a happy medium between what you can afford and what you really need in a website.
Know How to Market. Believe it or not, people aren’t just going to show up at your website once it’s up. In fact, your website should be just one part of your overall marketing strategy that includes print information about your company (be sure to include your web address on all of your print material), television ads, and radio spots. If you’re not sure how to go about marketing your business, call upon the expertise of an internet marketing professional who can help you figure out where to go once your website is up and running.

A well-designed, relevant website is key to a successful business, but unless you’ve put a lot of thought, energy, creativity into creating your website, you won’t see any results. Follow these 8 keys as you prepare your website and you’ll see what an enormous difference a little planning can make.

8 SEO Mistakes to Avoid

admin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:59:30 +0000

8 SEO Mistakes to Avoid

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

When it all comes down to it, SEO isn’t really that difficult. In fact, it ultimately all boils down to one thing: great content. If you intentionally write great content, paying attention to details and the words you use, you’re not going to have a problem doing SEO. But here are 8 mistakes you may be making, aside from publishing poor content, that will hurt your business.

Using Common Keywords. It’s unbelievably difficult to get high search engine rankings if you’re optimizing for the same keywords everyone else is optimizing for. If nothing else, common keywords are typically already dominated by Wikipedia.com and About.com, so find less common words to use.
Using Your Company Name in Every Title Tag. Your title tag is your primary on-site optimization element, so take advantage of it by using keyword phrases for which you hope to rank on search engines.
Images for Headings. Remember that search engines don’t read images, they read text. Sure, your heading looks prettier when your web designer uses images, but search engines won’t see them. And headings are a great way to optimize on site. Instead of using images to create the font you want for your heading, use a font that works on the web that still provides the “look” you’re going for.
Dynamic URLs. Always make sure that your URLS are legible by people, because search engines read text like humans read text. So avoid URLs that use strings of random letters and numbers. If you currently use a content management system that uses strings of numbers and letters in the URL, get another one that gives you control over your URLs. But make sure you’re using keywords in your URLs as search engines rank your website based on how relevant the URL is to the content on your site.
You’re Using Image Buttons. Chances are that you aren’t, but if you are, start using text for your links rather than images.
Making SEO an Afterthought. If you seriously consider your SEO before you design your website, your SEO will guide design, content, navigation, and all other aspects of your website. Not only that, but if you use a web designer who isn’t also well-verse in SEO, you’ll find yourself forking out big bucks later on to have that designer make changes to your site every time you want to publish new content optimized around your keywords. This doesn’t mean that your whole business has to be centered on a few keywords, but if you you’re losing out on potential customers if you don’t make SEO part of your website planning from the very beginning.
Deciding That You’re Finished. One of the most common misconceptions about SEO is that there’s some sort of stopping point. Too many business owners are quick to say that they’re “done” with SEO. In fact, SEO is an ongoing process. There are always new keywords to rank for. There are always ways to improve your rankings for the keywords you’re already using.
Using Flash. Search engines don’t see Flash. There’s no way to rank in search engines if you’re website is built with Flash. You might as well not bother using a website at all.

Remember that SEO is an all-encompassing process. It should guide the way you design your website, and it should guide the content you publish on your website. You should continue doing SEO for as along as your company exists. Otherwise, you will fall behind in search engine rankings and watch potential customers do business with your competitors. Don’t think of it as a simply one part of your internet marketing plan; think of it as the foundation of your internet marketing plan. And if all else fails, hire an SEO professional to help you out. Just make sure he doesn’t recommend that you use Flash!

3 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Want to Avoid

admin — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 09:04:01 +0000

3 Internet Marketing Mistakes to Want to Avoid

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

One of the great things about internet marketing is that allows you to measure your return on investment fairly simply…if you’re doing it right. The following three mistakes made by many internet marketers, however, make it very difficult to measure your return on investment. If you can correct them, then you can ensure that you’re using your marketing dollars wisely and making the most of your marketing efforts.

1. You’re Not Making the Sale. The whole purpose of a business website is to compel your visitors to purchase your product or service. This means that you have to sell what you’ve got. You can’t just assume that your visitors are going to poke around your site and be so overwhelmed by the magnificence of what you have to offer that they’re just going to jump right in and buy. You have to motivate them to buy. You have to ask them to buy. So simply including a “Contact us” button or a “Request a demo” button isn’t going to do the trick. You need to have multiple offers on your website, offers that your visitors will have a hard time refusing. You need to have clear calls to action that motivate your customers to do something right now. And your landing pages need to be designed well so that visitors will see and respond to your offers and calls to action contained therein.

Make sure that you have plenty of offers, and make sure that those offers help your visitors make the connection between the challenge they are facing and the product you are offering. You compel potential customers by showing them that your product helps them go in the right direction.

2. You Haven’t Done Your Keyword Research. Most business owners truly believe that they’ve done sufficient keyword research when they’ve really only scratched the surface. Keyword research needs to be an ongoing process rather than a one-time endeavor. It isn’t enough to give your webmaster a list of keywords to use when creating your website and then call it a day.

Effective keyword research involves a number of factors. These include: identifying relevant keywords, identifying which keywords have high search volume, identifying which keywords are easy to rank for, constantly monitoring traffic generated by each keyword, and determining which keywords are turning into leads. If you do this regularly and rigorously, you may be able to increase your traffic up to tenfold.

3. You Don’t Know Where Your Leads are Coming From. This is the key to internet marketing. When you know where your leads are coming from, you can determine what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong in your efforts to attract potential customers. The most important thing to do is to figure out which efforts are attracting the visitors who become your leads. What works most effectively for you? Keyword optimization? Social media sites? Focus on those and you’ll see that your leads increase. Avoid spending too much time worrying about how many page views you have or how long your visitors spend clicking around on your site. Those factors aren’t going to tell you anything valuable and they aren’t going to help you make the necessary changes that will increase traffic to your site.
Internet marketing professionals and SEO experts are invaluable when it comes to helping you figure out the kinds of mistakes you’re marketing in your internet marketing strategy, so don’t hesitate to solicit their input as you correct the errors you’ve been making so far. While the task of fixing your mistakes may seem overwhelming, these professionals have the experience and expertise to quickly determine how you can turn your internet marketing campaign around so that it works for you. Fix your mistakes quickly and see how your business grows!