Archive for the ‘Marketing Your Website’ Category

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What Is a “Page View”?

Monday, September 6th, 2010

What Is a "Page View"?

Each time a user visits a unique web page on your web site, a “page view” occurs.

The number of page views your web site receives within a given time period is recorded by your web site statistics control panel. Contact your hosting service to find out how to access your site statistics.

Page views are commonly confused with “hits.” A hit is recorded for each object that loads during a page view.  For example, if a web page contains two images and references two style sheets and three javascripts, a single viewing of the page by an internet user will yield one page view, but seven hits. If a page contains over two hundred images, one page view will record over two hundred hits.

If you want an estimate of how many different people have accessed your web site within a given time period, find the “unique page views” field on your site statistics control panel.

The number of unique page views that your web site has received within a given time period is determined by the number of unique IP addresses that have accessed your site. So, even though a user may access several pages of your web site several times within a given week, your site statistics control panel will only record one unique page view for that same user during that time period.

Standard site statistics control panels will only yield estimates of your traffic — do not assume that you are seeing exact numbers when you access your site statistics control panel.

Use your site statistics control panel to determine trends over time — not exact numbers.

Google tracking and Google Analytics can also be used to examine your statistics.

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Posted in General Web Design Tips, Marketing Your Website, Starting Out | No Comments »

Think Before You Link!

Friday, August 27th, 2010

WARNING: Some link exchanges might be scams.

A dishonest link-exchange broker can shield a links page from the search engines, so that no one will ever see your link on their page. Meanwhile, you’ve done them the courtesy of linking to them on your Web site, and you have received nothing in return.

While there is no way to detect this, you can discourage link-exchange hoodlums by asking them the following:

“Please verify that the LINKS page where you post my reciprocal link does not block the search engine spiders from accessing the content on that links page through the use of any robot.txt file or “no follow” metatag element.”

If nothing else, the dishonest link-exchange broker will see immediately that you are no babe in the woods, and perhaps turn their attention elsewhere.

Also, as an added precaution, search the URL of the party linking to you in Google or another search engine, to make sure they are legitimate, and haven’t been penalized for unscrupulous behavior.

Remember: a Web site can be judged the the company it keeps. Linking to bogus Web sites or crooked organizations can backfire on you. Better to be the worst house in the best neighborhood than the best house in the worst neighborhood — location is everything!

Posted in Advanced, Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

Not Number One with the Search Engines?

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

If you are a website owner, you probably have received spam emails that say they can get you to number one with the search engines. Beware of these: they are scams.

My website ChristopherMerrill.com IS number one with some keyword phrases, and has strong rankings with others (I work regularly on my site to maintain my search engine rankings), and I still get these spam emails.

No one can guarantee a number one ranking with the search engines, and any one who claims they can do so is taking you for a ride.

Whatever decision you make regarding search engine optimization, be sure to choose carefully. See cautionary news article about SEO scams. Some so-called experts will get you high rankings for a few months, but then your site will drop down the list and eventually disappear, unless you maintain your website with legitimate search engine optimization techniques.

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Posted in Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

Boost Your Rankings with the Title Attribute

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Boost Your Rankings with the Title AttributeIf you hover your mouse over a link that includes a title, the title will display in a small box next to the mouse.

Here is an example of a title attribute:

<a href=”attorneys.htm” title=”Our Attorneys”>Our Attorneys</a>

Adding the title attribute will generate a “tool tip” in major browsers, giving the user more specific information on what is contained in the link.

The title tag is also beneficial for handicapped users. See more about creating handicapped-accessible web sites.

Title attributes are a completely valid way to get additional content onto your pages that will attract the search engines to your keywords and phrases, allowing you to adjust the keyword saturation of your web pages.

Remember that users will see your titles tags in major browsers when they hover the mouse over the element, so be sure to choose the text for your title tags carefully.

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Posted in Do-it-yourself SEO, Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

What is a Bounce Rate?

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

A bounce rate is the percentage of initial visitors to a site who click away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

Analyzing and adjusting your main-page content, as well as the design, can help you to reduce your bounce rate – however, your bounce rate should also be compared with your repeat visitors rate in order to get an idea of what might be needed to improve your client turnover.

Avinash Kaushik of Google.com has stated:

“It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”

While reducing your bounce rate can be important for e-commerce sites, it is of more questionable value for sites that relate news and information, where many visitors can immediately find what they need on the first page.

See Google Analytics Bounce Rate

and

See About Bounce Rate

for more information.

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Posted in Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

Send ‘Em Back for More!

Friday, May 21st, 2010

If you find your clients asking you the same question over and over, consider posting a page on your web site that ANSWERS that question. Then, every time a client asks you that question, you can refer them to the particular URL on your web site that provides the answer.

It’s a win-win situation — their repeat visit to your web site will boost your rankings, you’ve answered their question, and you’ve saved time as well.

Remember, the search engines can detect repeat visitors to your web site, and will reward you for these repeat visitors with higher rankings.

A small investment of time (the time needed to create the web page that answers their question) can lead to big results for your rankings. In terms of cost effectiveness (your time vs. the possible economic return), updating your site with valuable information for your clients is a good investment.

Posted in Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

Use a Call to Action to Tempt Your Customers

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

A call to action is a phrase  that urges the reader, listener or viewer to take an immediate action such as “write now,”  “call now,” or “click here.”

Answer.com defines a call to action as “a  statement usually found near the conclusion of a commercial message that summons the consumer to act. A call to action will implore the consumer to ‘run right out’ and purchase, ‘call now, while supplies last,’ write a letter, return a coupon before a deadline, or call an 800 phone number to place an order. Many clever commercials have failed to sell a product because, although they were entertaining, they lacked a clear call to action.

It may sound corny, but it works. No matter how funny, cute or sexy an advertisement is, if it doesn’t cause people to purchase the product, the advertisement is a failure.

Formatting the text in your links as a call to action can also increase your rankings.  As much as possible, use active verbs in internal links so as to draw in the user.

Avoid using the same call to action on the bottom of every page. The web site that has “Questions? Contact Us” at the bottom of every page may rank behind the website that has a different, page-specific call to action on each page.

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Boost Your Rankings with the Alt Attribute

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

You can increase your rankings with the search engines by naming all the images on your site using the ALT attribute.

It’s easy to do, and can be very valuable in helping to move your site up the ladder.

Here’s how to do it:

Simply add the following code to each image tag:

alt=”Title of the Image”

Here’s an example:

<img src=”imagename.gif” alt=”Title of Image”/ >

Naming all the images on your website with relevant, keyword rich text can be very valuable. It’s a small detail, but it can add up: and it’s one of the most common areas of search engine optimization neglected by many web sites. Though this can be time consuming, it is simple to do, and it can really help to give your site a boost.

For more information about search engine optimization, see SEO.

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Posted in Do-it-yourself SEO, Marketing Your Website | 3 Comments »

Clean Code Will Improve Your Rankings

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Clean html code throughout your web site is one of the most important steps toward improving your rankings with the search engines.

Broken links, extraneous code, unvalid html — all of these will increase the likelihood that your web site will fall down the rankings with the major search engines.

And just because your web site looks clean on the OUTSIDE (within the browser window) doesn’t mean that it is clean on the INSIDE.

Dreamweaver offers a validator and other tools that allow you to test the code on your pages, searching for broken links, invalid code and just plain messiness.

Google Analytics and Google tracking also offer tools that help you locate those problem areas and fix them.

Simply use these tools to scan the pages of your web site, and these tools will locate the problems by indicating the line number, and how far from the left margin the offending code resides. They will also recommend actions you can take to fix the problems.

Remember, a clean web site is a POPULAR web site!

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Posted in Marketing Your Website | 1 Comment »

Limit the Length of Your Title and Description Tags

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

caution2Here’s something that you can do on your own to optimize your web site — and you won’t have to pay any money  to a website optimization service in order to do it:

Limit your title tag to 12 words, or between 60-90 characters; and limit your description tag to 25 words, or approximately 125 characters.

The days of being able to jam the title and description metatags with as many keywords as possible are long gone. The algorithms set up by the search engines can detect this ploy, and will penalize you for it.

In your source code, simply find the information between the title tags, which look like this:

<title>text here</title>

and the information within the description metatag, which looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”text here.”>

and fill these tags with keyword-rich text that does not go beyond the limits I just described.

Be sure to insert unique title and description tags on each separate page of your website as well.

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Posted in Marketing Your Website | No Comments »

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