Have you ever wondered whether different layouts on your website would improve the conversions and sales you receive as a direct result of your website?

Google website optimiser will help you to answer many questions by allowing you to run simple but effective tests to see what the visitors to your site prefer and what aspects encourage them to pursue their interest further by making an enquiry or by purchasing a product directly from your site online.

Firstly you need to sign up for a free website optimiser account and then you need to look at your site with either your marketing team or your web designer. Deciding what elements of your site you would like to test is the first step you need to take.

Once the aspects of the site you would like to test have been decided you will need to create a duplicated page of the site with the alternative change made. This variation page will be uploaded and registered with website optimiser as the variation page and certain java script code which is provided will need to be added to the html to show the aspect which wants testing.

What the optimiser will then do is divide the visits to your site. One half will be sent to the original page and the rest to the new changed variation page. You would have stated a landing page for the goal completion, for example a thank you page following a purchase or an email enquiry.

The results will be taken and you will be able to see which page variant results in the most conversions.

The great thing about the website optimiser is that you are able to conduct multi-variant tests along side each other in one go so after the recommended period of time has passed you will be able to see all the results which indicate the best aspects from all the tests and put together a super site based on the best conversion features.

Things that can be tested are up to your imagination and creativity but common aspects to test are things like company message on headings, images, text sizes, thumb nail images of best products, different prices, colours and web page layouts.

So try web optimiser it could make fantastic changes to the success of your website and your Internet marketing campaign.

For best results in SEO you must start with a cleanly coded website. The search engine spiders will find it easier to crawl and index your site if the code is clean.

There are other benefits of validating your code, these include:

• Cross browser compatibility
• Increased accessibility
• Faster loading times

You will probably find your site will start to climb the rankings once you ensure the site complies with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) web standards. It is important to check each page validates, and every new page you add to your website should be checked.

Validate your code

Use the W3C HTML validator to check your HTML code. The vaildator will give you prompts to help you fix any bugs it finds.

Use the W3C CSS validator to check your CSS. Again, the validator will help you fix any problems it finds.

By making sure your site validates for both HTML and CSS you are ‘future-proofing’ your site, ensuring long term success.

A key aspect of proper SEO is keyword placement. It is important to remember it isn’t just about the quantity of keywords. In fact, you can get penalised if you over-do the keywords. It can also look unnatural for the reader, and you must make your reader feel as though they are in the right place at all times to ensure your site actually does what you want it to do: get sales, enquiries etc.

Many people believe that if they fill their web pages with keywords then they will ‘get to the top of Google’ – this simply isn’t true. You should ensure your keywords are placed in the correct HTML tags.

Use these guidelines to optimise your page:

• Place your keywords in the Title tag, Meta Description tag, Meta Keyword tag, and if applicable in the Alt tags.
• Place your keywords inside one h1 tag,  h2 tag and h3 tag.
• Ensure your keywords are in the first paragraph of the page – ideally this should be in the first 25 words.
• Place your keywords at the end of the page – ideally in the last 25 words.
• Make sure your keywords are in strong (bold) tags at least once on the page.
• Italicise your keywords at least once on the page.
• Put your keywords in lists.

By following these simple guidelines your site should not only read better than a page stuffed with keywords (and therefore be better at converting a browser into a customer) you are far more likely to get high rankings.

Recently I was talking to friend who owns a successful business who originally used a programmer friend to create a web site some years ago.  Presently I am working for a leading design company as a SEO consultant.  As we were taking he asked me to check this web site and give him a professional opinion about the site.   He emphasized that the web site brought him little traffic and was just a landing page for his business (in his words) instead of giving out business cards.

At this I would like to point out that this person is not arrogant, he clearly is at the top of his profession and has his client’s interests come first. He also added that because of his reputation at doing such a good job, his client list was full and this had come about from word of mouth.  I know this to be correct because I am one of his clients.   With no aspect of a sales pitch I agreed that when I get the time I would spend a few minutes to evaluate the relevant optimisation and send him a report.
After loading the site I could see that the landing page looked much like one of those social sites that seem to give images of your family and friends. Which is fine if you want to make friends or promote your popularity and before you comment I know that they promote all kinds of healthy social networking and do wonders for the people who use them.  However, they not really the type of site I would like to promote any business to, even though I do use (stealth slogging) I mean blogging, occasionally.   I do prefer to submit a business to prominent directory that has the clout to give a client maximum exposure for there particular products.

The point that I am trying make is that the site was poor with no opimisation, the type of site that is so typical on the web and that I see so often when I am surfing the net for inspiration and sound technical advice.  Later I emailed him to express my concerns and when we met on my next appointment he thanked me for my comments.  If I was a salesman I could have pushed for a total redesign or refresh of his site and full optimasation as soon as possible but the fact is I am not and much prefer to leave that sort of thing to a salesperson to pitch for business.  I did recommend that he contacted our sales team for a chat so that he would fully understand the importance of having the site optimized professionally.  As yet he has not taken up the option but I am optimistic that he will eventually commit to this idea because I know that it would be so good for his business.

Web 2.0 has had many success stories as the integration between web content and user interaction becomes evermore seamless. However, the most popular of this new series of web technologies is blogging – a means whereby users can post articles and opinions on any topic of their choosing on their own web space. The result of this is an online community where posters and readers can post comments, and more importantly, hyperlinks. As a SEO strategy, this can be a very effective method of communicating not only the existence, but the significance of your website in the industry, especially if corresponding blog posts speak favourably of your site. The major benefit is that blogs can reach very wide audiences if implemented and promoted correctly.

Imagine a situation where everytime you had an idea to share, 5,000 people who trust your opinions see it in your blog. The majority of those 5,000 people also write blogs in your field or related fields. Some of those bloggers may frequently mention your site on their blogs, and they themselves could have thousands of subscribers. Within a short space of time your blog could have the attention of hundreds or even thousands of users. Where people go search engines follow, so if many users link to your blog, it will also boost the search engine ranking for other parts of your site.

It is important however that your blog postings avoid ‘commodity status’, which includes short comments on somebody else’s work, and simply posting for the sake of generating optimised keywords. Posts must maintain quality, originality, depth and have its content driven by the user’s expertise in order to acquire popularity amongst web communities. I have studied in-depth, the work of usability expert Jakob Nielsen, and I have found an interesting article of his; Write Articles, Not Blog Postings, which encapsulates this matter perfectly. He asserts that leadership (or prevalence of the poster’s expertise) in blog postings, blog-post variability and regularity are of high priority in gaining trust and recognition. I believe he wants to encourage you to personalise your posts, by giving your own opinions and judgements on your subjects to provoke interest and even raise debate.

He also points out however, that if the content isn’t the main concern for your site, and you simply want to communicate simple answers to your user’s questions then “you should comply with the bulk of content usability guidelines: be as brief as you can; use bulleted lists and highlighted keywords; chunk the material; and use descriptive headings, subheads, and hyperlinks.” These guidelines all fall nicely into the standard Search Engine Optimisation requirements. I believe it is therefore essential that blog postings for SEO manage to achieve a balance where expertise and content usability can work together simultaneously to bring the right users to your site.

One of the chief objectives of Web 2.0 and web logging is to make the Internet a more community-based entity, and by using the blogging practice in the most effective way for your website, you can take advantage of this. This doesn’t just mean writing articles on your chosen topic and leaving it there, but it means interacting with the wider community. Quoting and linking to other popular bloggers, leaving useful comments on other related blogs, writing articles for other blogs and actively soliciting & replying to comments can really push users towards your blog.

With RSS feeds also enhancing the likeliness of your articles being noticed and linked to, it will only improve your website’s probability of being picked up by Search Engines, making blog posting a valuable resource for optimisation.

Reference:

Wall, A M (2007). Search Engine Optimisation Book. California: Aaron Matthew Wall. 87-91.

Jakob Nielsen (2007) Write Articles, Not Blog Postings [online] available from <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html> [15 January. 2007]